Barely a year after it sold its devices business to Microsoft, Nokia on Tuesday unveiled a new tablet which will be available to market next year.
In a statement posted on its website, Nokia said that the new N1 Android tablet which features simplicity will be out in China in the first quarter of 2015. It will be sold for $249 before taxes.
"We are pleased to bring the Nokia brand back into consumers' hands with the N1 Android tablet, and to help make sophisticated technologies simple...The N1 has a delightfully intuitive interface and an industrial design to match it. This is a great product for Nokia fans and everyone who has not found the right Android tablet yet," Nokia Technologies' Head of Products Sebastian Nyström said in the statement. It noted that Nyström made the announcement at the Slush technology conference in Helsinki, Finland.
Reuters said that the new Nokia tablet which it claimed as a lookalike of the Apple iPad Mini was released in partnership with Taiwan's Foxconn.
The Nokia N1 tablet will be released with the new Android 5.0 Lollipop update installed in it. The device is also equipped with the new Z Launcher home screen interface.
The Z Launcher can make it easier for its users to use the device, allowing them to "scribble a letter or two to find their content quickly."
The device's Z Launcher, after a certain amount of time usage, has the ability to predict and highlight which apps are expected to be used.
Like its interface, the design also boasts of its simplicity. The device uses aluminum in its case and is available on two colors -- Lava Grey and Natural Aluminum.
The device has a display that measures 7.9 inches and is 6.9mm thin. It has a 2.4Ghz Intel AtomTM quad-core processor.
The Economic Times reported that the device will have 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage.
Nystrom told Reuters that it is looking forward to producing more devices in the future.
"With the agreement with Microsoft, as is customary, we have this transition and we can't do smartphones... We have a time limit. In 2016, we can again enter that business... It would be crazy not to look at that opportunity. Of course we will look at it," Nystrom was quoted by Reuters as saying.
In April this year, Nokia sold its "ailing" phones business to Microsoft for more than $7 billion. Last week, we saw the new Lumia 535 smartphone being unveiled without the Nokia name but the name is still being used in other basic phones, Reuters noted.