Never underestimate the ingenuity of the Internet. Shortly after Google's new Nexus 7 tablet launched, enterprising users discovered two nifty little tidbits about the Tegra 3-powered tablet: one, that it fits neatly into cases built for the Kindle Fire, and two, that the tablet would automatically wake up if you hold, then remove a magnet over a certain spot on its left-hand side.
Phandroid's Chris Chavez noticed that the Kindle Fire case he bought for his Nexus 7 included a hand strap that sits directly over the left-hand side of the tablet. That set his mental motors spinning; a couple of minutes and one cheap horseshoe-style magnet later, Chavez found he had a homebrew $6 Nexus 7 smart cover on his hands.
With the magnet snuggled into the proper location in the hand strap, the Nexus 7 wakes whenever you flip the cover open, as Chavez demonstrates on a video over on Phandroid. That $6 case is a whole lot cheaper than the $19.99 Nexus 7 smart cover we dug up with a quick Google search, but there's one little problem: the YooMee-brand cover used in the hack only seems to be available on Amazon -- and there's just a handful of them left.
The same concept should work with any case with a hand strap over the left edge of the tablet, however, or even with a magnet duct-taped in the right spot on a case that doesn't have a hand strap. Kudos to Chavez for his quick thinking!
Image credit: Phandroid
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