Alcatel OneTouch, the French electronics brand that’s now owned by Chinese tech company, TCL Communication, is well-known for its mobile phones in many parts of the world. Although the company claims to be the fourth-largest mobile phone manufacturer in the US, not many in the country would be familiar with its products like the Alcatel Idol 3, which happens to be one of the best-selling models from the TCL-owned company. The brand dropped the ‘OneTouch’ moniker recently and is now simply known as Alcatel, and is expected to launch the upper mid-range Alcatel 4 and 4S fairly soon, having shown them off at the Mobile World Congress event in the Spanish city of Barcelona earlier this year.
However, smartphones are not the only things the company does, and the proof of that lies in the ‘Alcatel Xess’, which is an upcoming Android-powered tablet that follows the extra-large form factor first seen with the Samsung Galaxy View, which was launched last year as a media-oriented device by the South Korean manufacturer. As for the Xess, the device was originally announced late last year itself, but was unveiled by Alcatel at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) last January. However, it is only now that the company is finally launching the device and making it available for purchase in North America. According to the press release by Alcatel, the Xess will be available for purchase from the 22nd of this month at an “online exclusive” price of $499.
Alcatel has also announced that the North American version of the Xess will come with an in-box IP camera for CCTV monitoring purposes, and the company is really doubling down on the tablet’s media credentials by giving users the access to streaming content from a number of media companies such as Viacom. Taking a quick look at the tech specs of the Alcatel Xess, the device sports a 17.3-inch 1080p screen and has dual 3-watt speakers with ‘JBL Audio’. It is powered by an unspecified MediaTek SoC that comes with a 1.5 GHz CPU, and has 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of expandable storage with support for microSD cards of up to 64 GB in capacity. Meanwhile, the battery on the Xess is a 9,600 mAh unit.
