Google has been tipped to be prepping its own large-screen tablet to take on the iPad Pro and Microsoft's hotly anticipated Surface Pro 4. And unlike its existing Pixel laptops, the upcoming tablet is said to run on Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box, signaling Android's seeming win over Chrome OS, which runs on Google's Chromebooks, including the Chromebook Pixel released earlier in 2015.
The news comes from Android Police, which cites insider sources who say the Google Pixel C, internally known as Ryu, will make an appearance at Google's media event on Tuesday. Although the website says there's still a chance Google might not show off the device at the event, Android Police says it is "almost certain" that Google will unveil the Pixel C in the near future.
According to the report, Pixel C will sport a 10.2-inch display, two inches smaller than the display on the iPad Pro and the Surface Pro 4, with a screen resolution of 308ppi. The screen will feature a super-bright backlight that can go up to 500 nits. All that brightness will be powered by a quad-core Nvidia X1 processor paired with a Maxwell GPU under the hood. The tablet will also have 3GB of LPDDR4 RAM.
The Pixel C will reportedly share the same crafted aluminum build of the Chromebook Pixel but without a keyboard. There will, however, be two premium-looking keyboards that users can purchase as accessories, likely at a separate cost. One will have an aluminum form to match the tablet's design, while the other will be made from leather. Both keyboards will be able to attach to the tablet so that it can be used as a laptop.
At the back of the tablet, there will be a four-color lightbar that indicates how much battery the device has left, similar to the lightbar on the Chromebook Pixel. The device will also have a USB Type-C port, the latest and fastest USB standard.
Android Police notes that the Pixel C is not a Nexus device or a Chromebook laptop, so users who are interested in picking one up when Google launches it in November should make sure they have the funds to do so. The prices for tablets in this category are not cheap, as you can tell from the Surface Pro 3.
That said, customers who are dying to see what the latest Nexus devices have to offer can look forward to the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P, which are rumored to start at $379 and $499 respectively.
