Nokia announces 7.9-inch N1 tablet, an iPad Mini wannabe running Android 5.0 Lollipop and powered by Intel
Nokia announces 7.9-inch N1 tablet, an iPad Mini wannabe running Android 5.0 Lollipop and powered by Intel
In a surprise move, the Finnish company Nokia returned to making devices as soon as it sold its Devices and Services Unit to Microsoft. This time, Nokia is pushing into the Android tablet territory, but with a design that resembles that of the Apple iPad Mini.
Made from a single piece of anodized aluminum, it even sports an identical screen size of 7.9 inches across with the very same resolution of 2,048 x 1,536 pixels as the iPad Mini with Retina Display and the latest iPad Mini 3. While it's inevitable that some brand would eventually take a leaf out of the leader in the field, such as the existing Xiaomi Mi Pad, we least expected Nokia to further follow suit. Apart from the choice of material and uni-body design, the uncanny resemblance extends down to the positioning and placement of the camera, buttons, headphone jack and even the speaker grilles at the bottom of the device.
Despite the similarities, Nokia has taken a few steps to make sure that the N1 is somewhat differentiated when one handles the device. For starters there's no home button or chamfered edges. Instead you'll find a smooth curved edge that seamlessly meets the display, very much like the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices. The IPS display itself is fully laminated (just like the Apple iPad Air 2, but not enjoyed by the iPad Mini 3). By eliminating separate components - such as the cover glass, touch sensor and the LCD - and combining them into a single element, this eradicates the gaps between layers, makes the display thinner and brings the display closer to you (also commonly referred to as zero-gap display). These enhancements make the Nokia N1 just 6.9mm thin and weighs 318g, making it lighter and slimmer than the just released Apple iPad Mini 3.
On software and user-interface front, Nokia is promoting the company's very own Android launcher interface dubbed the Z Launcher that runs on top of the stock version of Android 5.0 Lollipop. Named after a gesture that lets you scribble out letters right on the screen, the idea is to give you app and contact suggestions that are available on your device (or online) that stay relevant to the task at hand and changes based on what you are doing or even your locality.
"We started looking around, we just didn’t find any good Android tablets out there. We have such a beautiful, simple, and elegant Z Launcher. Why not build a device that is also built on the same principles as being super simple and easy to use and elegant?" said Brook Eaton, Director for Nokia’s Z Launcher.
The Nokia N1 is basically an outsourced job as it was made known that Foxconn would be building the device in partnership with Nokia while the latter licenses out its industrial design, branding and software and IP to the big manufacturing house. As such, the Nokia N1 has no relation to Microsoft's Lumia branded products. While this may strike you odd at first, Nokia still owns its patents related to the mobile field even if it has sold its devices and services division. As such, Nokia can pretty much compete with Microsoft if they so wanted to do so by other means. However, it's a strong possibility that the Nokia N1 tablet is just a marketing conduit to showcase the Z Launcher and to help third parties build Nokia-branded products with its software. While Z Launcher is available on Google Play for certain Android phones, the tablet version is exclusive to the Nokia N1.
Nokia is planning to launch the Nokia N1 in China for US$249 before taxes, around the time of Chinese New Year in 2015, which falls on February 19. It would then soon roll out to Russia and selected European countries. That's another three months before the product sees daylight to actual consumers and with Xiaomi having a strong foothold in the China market at the moment, it could be tough for the Nokia N1 to make an impact. More so, early next year will see major tech expos like CES 2015 and MWC 2015 showcasing brand new products and services that might eclipse what Nokia is planning to unveil. If not for these 'roadblocks', the tablet's limited 18.5Wh battery might be inadequate to compete with the likes of the Apple iPad Mini 3 and Samsung Galaxy Tab S devices that have much larger battery capacities.
So would the Nokia N1 be another classic case of a Nokia product being sidelined even before it's launched? We could speculate, but it's definitely an uphill task for the Finnish company.