14 DAY TRIAL // As you might well know, Nokia took its sweet time until it finally released a tablet product onto the market. Only in 2013 did Nokia manage to release the Lumia 2520 tablet which runs Windows RT out of the box.
But the company could have launched a slate a lot earlier. To be more precise, the company could have launched a tablet back in 2001, a solid 12 years before the Lumia 2520 graced us with its presence.
Finnish ISTV conducted an interview with Esko Yliruusi, who worked as a data communication specialist at Nokia from 1996 through 2001 and who was part of the team working for the tablet back in 2001. The discussions proved to be quite prolific, so we even get to see a picture of what the slate looked like.
Back in 2001, the tablet was really ahead of its time, even if it doesn't look reminiscent of the early tablet models coming out of Apple back in 2010 that were responsible for popularizing the product form factor.
Looking at the picture, we can see the Nokia tablet was quite bulky and came with a Surface-style sort of kickstand that made it sit upwards.
The display seems to be quite rudimentary too and the pixel resolution should have been pretty laughable compared to today’s standards. You can also notice some buttons on both sides of the display, which were used to navigate through the user’s interface.
The Nokia tablet seems to be quite reminiscent of the original Microsoft tablet PC that was announced during the same year (2001) but never managed to attract a lot of consumers.
So we doubt that, if this piece of history was released 13 years ago, it would have gained much traction and would have affected the path Nokia was about to take.
Nokia has had a pretty strained history when it comes to tablets. Currently, the company has only one model available for purchase on the market, in the form of the Lumia 2520 which comes with a 10.1-inch HD AH-IPS display coated with a protective layer of Gorilla Glass 2 and draws power from a 2.2 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor coupled with 2GB of RAM.
Anyway, Nokia was also rumored to be working on an 8-inch tablet project, which was dubbed Nokia Illusionist. Sadly, a few months after a few details surfaced online, the tablet was said to have been cancelled by company officials. Since then, we have been hearing rumors Nokia might be taking up an Android tablet project, after the success of the Nokia X smartphone.