Report: HTC Volantis is a new 8.9 inch Nexus tablet

Amid all of the rumors involving an HTC produced 8 inch Nexus 8 tablet, it looks like the speculation was off by a tad. The latest rumor says that HTC is working on an 8.9 inch Nexus tablet codenamed the Flounder or Volantis. Back in March, we passed along some speculation that Google was planning on building an 8.9 inch Nexus tablet for 2014. Also, a Chrome bug report last month, had a reference to an HTC built device called Flounder. Considering that the Nexus 7 was called Flo, it all adds up.

Last month, an Android 4.4.3 changelist had a line that read "project device/htc/flounder/," which is pretty straight forward as these things go. There has been talk since April that HTC has been given the job of designing and producing the next Nexus tablet.

According to the leaked specs, the HTC Volantis is a slate sized at 8.9 inches, with resolution of 2048 x 1440. That works out to a pixel density of 281ppi. A 64-bit Tegra K1 CPU is under the hood, with 2GB of RAM inside. Native storage options are 16GB and 32GB. The camera on back is 8MP with OIS, while the slate features a 3MP camera up front.

The HTC made Nexus tablet will have zero gap aluminum construction and stereo front-facing speakers. Hmm. Sounds like another HTC device, doesn't it? Pricing is expected to start at $399 for the 16GB model and run to $499 for the 32GB unit. Still, the picture of the device below doesn't exactly match the rumored specs. Where are the front-facing speakers? Why does the aluminum clad tablet have a soft-touch back?

If indeed there is some truth to this, the HTC Nexus slate is expected to launch in the fourth quarter of this year.


source: AndroidPolice