Apparently, Nokia had a tablet ready as soon as 2001 and that was a Symbian model dubbed Nokia M510. Today we get more intel on that model, courtesy of a Finnish publication. First things first: to me this model looks like a bigger Nokia Ngage. Do you agree?
The reason why we’re addressing this is the fact that only a few days ago Nokia entered the tablet business, at least in the Android segment, since it had previously released a Windows model, but that was a different segment of Nokia. Telecommunications expert Esko Yliruusi was among the people responsible with making the tablet, that never saw a release. The Nokia 510 went into production a full 9 years before the first iPad came to life.
If you look at it closely, it isn’t exactly old fashioned and would work just as fine as the Wii U controller right now. Apparently, the project was dropped 45 minutes before the device entered production, according to David J. Cord, who wrote a book about the decline and fall of Nokia. Well, his info is not totally accurate, as the project was indeed dropped, but still 1000 devices were completed.
130 devices survived, given to the development team as a farewell gift and the rest of the models were scrapped. Even back then, the device had the Opera web browser, an email client, a calendar and a noticeboard application. It also had a stand to keep it upright, but one thing that was lacking was an ecosystem of apps. The device had 32 MB SDRAM and 32 MB flash storage and also had a 10 inch LCD display with a 800 x 600 pixel resolution. Its battery life was 4 hours.
Imagine if that product became a real thing…
