Since the release of the Nexus 7 there has been no shortage of seven inch slates hoping to knock the king from the top of the mountain. We’ve seen a bunch of manufacturers and companies from Amazon to HP and Samsung to Apple all release smaller than ten inch tablets with varying success. None of them have come close to matching the mighty Nexus 7 in the bang for your buck category. That $200 you give Google is surely the best two hundred dollars you can spend on a tablet.
Well we now have word from the notoriously reliable @evleaks that a new contender is about to enter the seven inch budget tablet ring for battle, this time it’s Huawei. They are actually bringing two different variants with three sub variants of this device to the table according to images grabbed from the DLNA certified site.
Going by the leaked information one of these devices will have an ARM Cortex A9 1.2GHz quad-core processor, while the other will be rocking an ARM Cortex A9 quad-core CPU running at 1.5GHz. All of these variants will feature the popular seven inch display, although the resolution leaves a little to be desired as it is only 1024 by 600 pixels. Running Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box is a plus, until you consider that Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie is rumored to be coming out shortly at Google I/O when it’s widely assumed that the Nexus 7 (2) will be released with the newer OS, and also that last years model will also be updated as well. Rounding out the features will be an HDMI out port which would be a nice addition and something that at least the current version of the Nexus 7 lacks.
As for those three sub variants there are two almost givens and one that may be a bit of a stretch but it’s something we have seen from other manufacturers. The first will be a WiFi only model and the second will offer 3G or 4G connectivity, both of which have become commonplace from manufacturers. The third sub variant could be a tablet that supports phone calls, something we have seen recently with the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0.
Pricing, availability, and release dates are unknown at this point but one would think they would try to get these out before the next generation of the Nexus 7 is announced. That is to assume we will even see them stateside at all. Stay tuned to this website for further details.