Best Tablets: Holiday 2014

With the holidays approaching, it’s time for our annual recommendations for devices in various product categories. Today we’re taking a look at what tablets provide the best value and experience for different users. There’s obviously a lot of decisions to be made when buying a tablet, so read on for our recommendations for tablets of different sizes, at various prices, and running different operating systems.

Nokia Announces N1 Tablet: 7.9” & Powered By Android

Since selling their mobile device division to Microsoft, much contemplation has been had over the future of Nokia. As it slowly turns out, their future is not all that different from the past. Except perhaps that there’s a lot more Android in Nokia’s future.

As part of the Slush 2014 conference, Nokia has announced their next consumer gadget, a new tablet going by the name Nokia N1. Measuring at 7.9” diagonal, powered by an Intel CPU, and running Android Lollipop, the N1 is Nokia’s first tablet since selling their mobile device division.

From a design perspective I’m not sure there’s anything to call the N1 other than an unabashed duplicate of the iPad Mini. Built out of a single piece of aluminum, the N1 incorporates the iPad’s 7.9” diagonal size and many of its stylings, including curves, button placements, and even the location of the headphone jack. Short of the iPad’s home button, at first glance you would be hard pressed to tell the N1 and iPad Mini apart.

In any case, while in many ways Nokia is looking to learn from the masters here, the N1’s design does have some elements that set it apart (and ahead) of the iPad Mini and similar tablets. Nokia has been able to drive the tablet to just 6.9mm thick and 318g heavy – thinner and lighter than any iPad Mini. Meanwhile the display has been fully laminated, with Nokia eliminating any kind of air gap between the display panel and the cover glass.

In terms of technical specifications Nokia is tapping Intel’s Atom Z3580 to power the device. Z3580 includes a quad-core Silvermont processor running at 2.3Ghz, along with an Imagination PowerVR G6430 running at 533MHz. Paired with the processor is 2GB of LPDDR3-1600, Bluetooth 4.0, and 802.11ac WiFi. Meanwhile the 7.9” 4:3 IPS display is 2048×1536 pixels, once again identical to the retina iPad Mini. Powering the device will be an 18.5Whr battery.

One notable first here, Nokia is utilizing the new USB Type-C connector for the tablet, and not entirely in the way we’d expect. With the Type-C connector serving as Nokia’s analogue to Apple’s Lightning, Nokia is using what they call a “Micro-USB 2.0 with a Type-C reversible connector” setup, which means that while this is a Type-C connector it is only wired up for USB 2.0 and not USB 3.0. Given the design goals of the Type-C connector, we expect this will be the first of many such mobile devices to make use of it in the coming months.

Vision for the N1 will be provided by a pair of cameras on the front and back. The rear camera is an 8MP camera with autofocus and is capable of recording video at 1080p. Meanwhile the smaller front camera is 5MP and utilizes fixed focus. Finally, the tablet comes in a single storage configuration of 32GB, with Nokia’s NAND driven through eMMC 5.0.

On the software side of matters, the N1 will run a semi-customized version of Android Loliipop. In this case Nokia has made only a handful of changes, primarily replacing the standard Android launcher with their newly released Z Launcher.

Finally, while the N1 is a Nokia branded product, Nokia is calling special attention to their manufacturing arrangement with tablet partner Foxconn. As part of Nokia’s development strategy, the industrial design, IP, and Z Launcher software are being licensed to Foxconn for the production of the tablet. Foxconn in turn basically assumes all further responsibilities for the product, including business execution, engineering, and support, in many ways making this a Foxconn tablet with Nokia software and branding.

No doubt due in part to this reason, the N1 will be launching first in China before coming to other regions. Nokia’s official announcement states that it will be launching in China in Q1’15 for the equivalent of $249 USD (before taxes) with no further markets announced at this time. Meanwhile BGR is reporting that it is expected to launch in China after Chinese New Year, with further releases in Russia and parts of Europe in the following months. To that end there are no currently announced plans to bring the N1 to North America, though at this stage by no means does it mean that the N1 won’t come at a later date.

Gallery: Nokia N1 Tablet

NVIDIA Announces Holiday SHIELD Tablet Update

A little over one week ago NVIDIA committed to bringing Android Lollipop to the SHIELD Tablet before the end of November. This was fairly noteworthy, as it represents a very quick turnaround time for shipping Android updates after Google releases the source code. Today NVIDIA has made a number of additional announcements about the SHIELD Tablet, including a release date confirmation for the Android Lollipop upgrade, news about imminent expansion of their GRID game streaming service, updates to NVIDIA’s stock applications, and new game titles that have been designed to work with SHIELD.

The first part of the announcement is the announcement of the release date for the update to Android Lollipop. NVIDIA plans to begin the rollout of the update on Tuesday, November 18th, less than one week from today. Although NVIDIA is not the first manufacturer to begin to ship the Lollipop update, the speed at which they have done so is still extremely fast relative to how long it typically takes Android devices to receive updates. It’s also impressive because NVIDIA has had to spend time updating their included applications like SHIELD Hub to follow Google’s Material Design principles. 

In addition to the Lollipop update, NVIDIA will also be including a substantial update for their Dabbler app, bringing it to version 2.0. For users who don’t know, Dabbler is a sketching application that NVIDIA makes for the SHIELD Tablet to work with the stylus. Users who are familiar with Paper by FiftyThree for iPad will have an idea of what Dabbler is, but with Dabbler 2.0 NVIDIA is bringing a substantial improvement to the application with support for multiple layers in images, along with a new Material Design appearance. The addition of layers is only a single feature, but it brings Dabbler much closer to the features we see in professional art applications. Dabbler 2.0 also brings support for Twitch streaming so users can stream their drawing sessions, allowing users to watch the sketch being created.

The appeal of the SHIELD Tablet is its capability for playing games. Not just mobile games, but also a collection of PC games that NVIDIA has worked with game developers to bring over to SHIELD devices. Portal and Half Life 2 have already been available for some time now, but as you’ll see above there’s a new addition to the library of Valve games available for SHIELD, with Half Life 2: Episode One being made available for the platform. It will be available for purchase on its own to current owners, and it will also be available alongside Half Life 2 and Portal in a bundle called the Green Box, which will come free with the LTE model of the SHIELD Tablet. All that’s left is to bring Half Life 2: Episode 2, and the SHIELD tablet will have all of the released titles in Valve’s eternally incomplete set of episodic games.

In addition to Half Life 2: Episode 1, NVIDIA is telling users to keep an eye out for three new SHIELD-optimized games that are available on Google Play. The first is OddWorld: Stranger’s Wrath which is an action-adventure game. The second is Pure Pool, which allows users to play pool with high quality 3D graphics. The third and final is Strike Suit Zero which is a space combat game.

The last, and possibly most exciting announcement of the day from NVIDIA, is the expansion of their GRID cloud gaming service. The idea of a cloud based service for streaming games is nothing new, and we’re frequently promised that one that works well is right on the horizon, but it has remained fairly elusive. Based on the feedback from the beta that NVIDIA has been conducting in the Western U.S. with servers located in San Jose, California, GRID looks like it might be the first service to actually deliver on the promise of being able to stream your games over the net to a device that it could never be run on locally with good quality and minimal input lag. The service currently has over 20 AAA titles, including Batman Arkham City, Borderlands 2, and Psychonauts, with NVIDIA committing to add new games every week. 

After conducting their beta in California, NVIDIA seems ready to begin expanding the service to other places around the world. The service will be available in North America by the end of this month, in Western Europe in December, and in Asia during the second quarter of 2015. It will be available on the SHIELD Tablet and original SHIELD portable, and best of all, until June 30, 2015 it will be available for free.