BEIJING: Nokia N1 tablet is a very familiar looking Android tablet that could be bought in China for just $250.
Viewed from the front, the resemblance is worrying, but from the back and sides it’s shocking. And those press shots don’t help much either. Nokia diehards can point to the all aluminium N8 clearing the path for today’s unibody designs, but everything about this feels like an Android iPad mini.
The other thing you need to know about the N1 is it’s not actually made by Nokia it’s a Foxconn device. Nokia has licensed its brand to the Taiwanese manufacturing giant, we assume because Foxconn believes the brand still has some clout in China.
The N1 feels pretty premium, but it’s not quite at the build quality level of the iPad mini it apes. The fully laminated 7.9-inch 2,048 x 1,536 display looks great, it’s super thin (6.9mm) and at 318g, it’s actually a little lighter than the mini. Design-wise, the rounded edges bulge out more than the mini’s, and in place of a Lightning port there’s a shiny new USB Type C reversible connector. It’s powered by a 2.3GHz Atom processor with 2GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Things were generally smooth in apps, but Nokia’s custom launcher is very much still a work in progress and has the occasional dropped frame of animation or stutter.
