We’ve always thought Nokia must have plans to get on the tablet bandwagon, but as the years have drawn on we became sceptical, especially after the partnership with Microsoft birthed a focus on smartphones for the Finnish manufacturer.
However, various rumours over the past year or so have suggested that Nokia will in fact launch a tablet, running Windows, of course. We saw what looked like a Lumia tablet pictured in slides at a Nokia presentation and heard various reports which hinted at a tablet with Windows RT.
Now we’ve caught our first glimpse of the tablet in the flesh, which is legit according to Chinese site Digiwo. We don’t yet know if the device will fall into Nokia’s Lumia range, but The Verge has already spilled the codename; Vanquish. The same site claims to have word from insider sources that Nokia has plans to reveal the tablet officially on September 26th.
The image shows the tablet in a rather bright red colour, presumably the same red as Nokia’s Lumia range of phones. There’s also Verizon 4G LTE branding, so it looks as though the device will have support for some of the speediest mobile networks. The Verge also claims the device will be on other US network AT&T’s 4G network and will sport a speedy quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor.
If legitimate, the pictured tablet is running on Windows RT: a scaled down version of Windows 8 designed for tablets which has unfortunately not produced the goods in terms of sales so far for Microsoft. It’s also sporting a 10.1-inch screen, a size which used to be the standard size for tablets, which could show us just how long this thing has been in the works.
Hopefully we’ll find out all about this mystery red device next month at a Nokia event.