The Nokia N1 is a tablet developed by

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

, running on Android 5.0. Unveiled on 18 November 2014, it is Nokia's first mobile device since the sale of its original mobile phone business to

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

earlier in the year. It was released in January 2015.

Development

According to Sebastian Nyström, Head of Products Business Nokia Technologies, work on the tablet began on 28 April just days after the acquisition of its former mobile phone division by

. The unveiling of the N1 came shortly after an announcement on 17 November 2014 by Nokia Technologies President Ramzi Haidamus, that the company would begin to contract the manufacturing of future Nokia products to third-party companies, to ensure a continued consumer presence for the "valuable" Nokia brand. As part of the sale, Nokia is subject to

non-compete clause In contract law, a non-compete clause (often NCC), restrictive covenant, or covenant not to compete (CNC), is a clause under which one party (usually an employee) agrees not to enter into or start a similar profession or trade in competition again ...

s forbidding it from producing Nokia-branded smartphones until the end of 2015, and

feature phone Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature recognition, could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (machine learning), in statistics: individual measurable properties of the phenome ...

s for 10 years after the closure of the Microsoft sale, but is still free to produce devices in other product segments, such as tablets. The Nokia N1 was ultimately unveiled the next day at the Slush conference. While using a Nokia design, its software technology, and brand under license,

Foxconn Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd. (), Trade name, doing business as Hon Hai Technology Group () in Taiwan, Foxconn Technology Group () in China, and Foxconn () internationally, is a Taiwanese multinational corporation, multinational electron ...

will be responsible for manufacturing, marketing, distribution, and technical support for the N1, and not Nokia. The N1 is one of the first major devices to include the new reversible "type-C"

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

connector; although the new design is part of the updated USB 3.1 specification, the N1 will only support USB 2.0 speeds. In response to this regression, a Nokia spokesperson stated that "our partner didn’t have access to that kind of solution on the chipset that we’re building the device on. It’s just a pure question of having the availability. We believe that the reversible connector is an easier way, and of course the chipset from Intel is quite capable and we wanted to maximize the capability there, but the 3.1 USB capability was not available for this chipset at this time."

Specifications

The overall design and hardware specifications of the N1 are very similar to the iPad Mini 2, featuring an aluminium unibody chassis, a laminated 7.9-inch IPS LCD display, a

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

, 2.4 GHz quad-core

Intel Atom Intel Atom is a line of IA-32 and x86-64 instruction set ultra-low-voltage processors by Intel Corporation designed to reduce electric consumption and power dissipation in comparison with ordinary processors of the Intel Core series. Atom is m ...

system-on-chip A system on a chip (SoC) is an integrated circuit that combines most or all key components of a computer or electronic system onto a single microchip. Typically, an SoC includes a central processing unit (CPU) with memory, input/output, and da ...

with 2 GB of RAM, and 32 GB of internal storage. The N1 includes an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. The N1 runs an otherwise stock distribution of Android 5.0 "Lollipop", but includes an alternative home screen known as Z Launcher. Z Launcher emphasizes the use of

gestures A gesture is a form of nonverbal communication or non-vocal communication in which visible bodily actions communicate particular messages, either in place of, or in conjunction with, speech. Gestures include movement of the hands, face, or othe ...

for navigation; users can search for applications or contacts by tracing letters onto the device's screen. Z Launcher was also released via

Google Play Store Google Play, also known as the Google Play Store, Play Store, or sometimes the Android Store (and was formerly Android Market), is a digital distribution service operated and developed by Google. It serves as the official app store for certifie ...

for Android

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

s, but the tablet version is exclusive to the N1. The N1 is the first Nokia-branded device to officially support Google Mobile Services and ship with access to

; the discontinued Nokia X series used a fork of Android, Nokia X software platform, which substituted Google's proprietary software with similar apps from Nokia and Microsoft, and used a Nokia-specific

application store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not in ...

.Non-Microsoft Nokia launches Android N1 tablet with Foxconn
David Meyer – Gigaom, 18 November 2014. Accessed 19 November 2014

Release

The N1 was released in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...

in February 2015, with a release in Taiwan and European countries following. It is unknown whether the N1 was released in any other regions.

References

External links

* {{Android tablets N1 Android (operating system) devices Products introduced in 2014 Tablet computers Touchscreen portable media players