Nokia N1 tablet to be released Jan. 7 in China; Price, specs and features

Nokia N1Facebook

The first-ever product of Nokia after the company sold its mobile phone manufacturing firm to Microsoft in mid-2014 is called the Nokia N1 tablet, and it will allegedly come out to the Chinese market on Jan. 7. Based on a report posted by Chinese website Sina, the company will stage a press conference on the said date, where they will also release their latest product. This contradicts earlier news saying that the release of the first tablet from the Finnish tech giant will be on the same day as the Chinese New Year, which falls on Feb. 19 next year.

If the rumors about the earlier release date are true, then Chinese buyers will finally get their hands on a more affordable tablet product that promises optimum functions. For just $249, the new Nokia tablet will come with a 7.9-inch IPS LCD touchscreen display featuring 1536 x 2048 pixels screen resolution. It will also be equipped with a 2.3 GHz 64-bit quad-core (Intel Atom Z3580) processor with 2 GB of RAM.

The Nokia N1 will also reportedly run using the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop operating system from Google, together with Nokia's Z Launcher which can be downloaded from the Google Play store. The first tablet from the former Finnish mobile phone manufacturer will also feature an 8-megapixel rear camera with a 5-megapixel front facing secondary shooter, as well as a powerful 5300 mAh battery. 

Nokia was known as one of the biggest manufacturers of mobile phone devices in the past, but the emergence of smartphones overshadowed the company's sales. The news about Microsoft's acquisition of Nokia's mobile phone manufacturing arm was then announced on Sept. 2, 2013, and the deal was closed on April 25, 2014. 

Nokia is barred from coming up with new smartphone products until 2016 because of the deal, but there are no stipulations about releasing a tablet product. 

The Nokia N1 release date in the U.S. and other parts of the world is still undisclosed.