Motorola is reportedly developing a new tablet, its first in over five years.
That's according to Android Police, which was able to obtain a photo of the tablet's screen in question. The report estimates the tablet might be 9 to 10 inches in size, complete with a "premium look and feel."
Motorola's Upcoming Tablet Borrows The Yoga Book's Productivity Mode
The photo tells very little other than it'll offer a multitasking feature similar to what's found on the Yoga Book, which happens to be made by Motorola's parent company, Lenovo. The feature, called "productivity mode," lets users run apps side-by-side, with currently running apps stashed down at the "dock." It's a unique multitasking interface, especially against the typical "cards" interface many tablets employ, which requires users to push a button just to access all running apps.
True Multitasking?
The Yoga Book's productivity mode makes the tablet look very similar to the Chrome OS, and by getting rid of the traditional multitask UI, it makes great use of the tablet's larger screen size. Also, as seen on the unnamed Motorola tablet's screen, closing running apps is easy: just hold the app's icon and drag it up. This might suggest that open apps will remain running in the background until users choose to close them, which could make for a rich multitasking experience. Still, we have to wait until Motorola itself confirms this.
Motorola's Return To Tablets
If the report proves accurate, then it's quite a surprise for Motorola to suddenly break into the tablet market again after staying pretty much dormant on that front. Tablets aren't really doing well in the market these days. With Apple offering a $329 iPad, capturing a significant chunk of the tablet market might only prove difficult.
But it has to hope it can find some traction with its forthcoming tablet.
Now, if only Motorola can go back to making smartwatches again, too.
Yoga Book
Motorola's upcoming tablet pretty much lives in rumorville at present, so there's not a lot of details to go by. But for a bit of perspective, let's take a look at the Yoga Book's specs, since it stands to reason that Motorola's tablet may also feature a similar spec sheet.
The Android version of the Yoga Book packs an Intel Atom x5-Z8550 chip, up to 4 GB of LPDDR3 RAM, up to 64 GB of internal storage, and up to 128 GB of expandable memory.
The Yoga Book is a 2-in-1 device featuring a 10.1 IPS touch display with a brightness of 400 nits, and a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200. On the back is an 8-megapixel camera, and on the front is a 2-megapixel selfie camera. To power everything up is a massive 8,500 mAh battery, which Lenovo claims can output up to 15 hours of battery life.
The Yoga Book ships with Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box and starts at $499.99.
Thoughts about the Yoga Book and Motorola's alleged tablet? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below!
