At the Slush conference in Finland today, Nokia announced its next move in the consumer electronics department. The Finnish company, divested of its smartphone and feature phone business, is releasing the N1, a new tablet computer which will be powered by Android.
The N1 is a 7.9 inch tablet with a Gorilla Glass 3 covered IPS panel running at 2048×1536 pixels. The CPU is an Intel Z3580 running at 2.3 GHz with 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage.
With an eight-megapixel rear camera and a five-megapixel forward facing ‘selfie’ camera (both capable of recording 1080p video), it will be interesting to see if Nokia has retained its legendary imaging capability, or if that knowledge and experience now resides in Redmond.
Weighing 318g, the tablet has comparable specs to other tablets in this space (such as Sony’s recently released Xperia Tablet Z3 Compact, reviewed here on Forbes), and ships with a 5300 mAh battery. The reveal follows a number of teaser images released over the last few days.
Nokia’s sale of its ‘Devices and Services’ business to Microsoft closed earlier this year, and included provisions that prevented Nokia using its brand name on smartphones and feature phones for a set period. There appears to be no restriction on the use of the Nokia name on tablets – an interesting decision given that Nokia had worked on a Windows powered tablet (the Nokia Lumia 2520) before the sale of the division.
In any case Microsoft has moved quickly to remove the Nokia branding from its Lumia handsets, with the recently announced Lumia 535 carrying no Nokia branding at all.
There’s no word on what version of Android the N1 tablet will be using, but there are some pointers on Nokia’s N1 mini-site. The first is the prominent mention of Nokia’s Z Launcher, a UI that looks to learn your favourite applications and choices to present them to you on the home-screen. Previously in beta, the Z Launcher is now available as a free download and will drive the home screen.
Nokia has stated that the N1 will run Android 5.0 Lollipop, but there is no indication if the Finnish company will be using any Google-based services such as Gmail or Google Play. I can’t see any Google-specific app icons in any of the marketing material.
The Finnish company has experience of Android in consumer electronics with the Nokia X handsets released earlier this year. Those handsets were part of the Microsoft deal, so it remains to be seen if the Android fork used in the X handsets will be used in the N1.
Pricing has been announced as $249 before taxes. The tablet will debut in China, but no dates have yet been announced.
This story is developing.