Earlier this year, we were still talking about the idea of ASUS stepping up to the Nexus tablet plate for a third time, and delivering some sort of Nexus 8. Specifically, we heard that this new tablet might ditch the NVIDIA and Qualcomm SoCs the series had used in the past and could move to an Intel chip. At first it sounded like we were looking at a Bay Trail platform, then later one of Intel’s new Moorefield designs. While that ASUS Nexus 8 clearly hasn’t happened, we’re still getting some new tablets that aren’t not too far off from where these rumors were pointing, and this week a new Intel-powered ASUS model shows up at the FCC.

ASUS model K007 shares a surprising amount of detail about its hardware in this FCC paperwork, including the presence of an Intel Atom Z3560 SoC (a Moorefield component). This is far from the first ASUS model with such a chip, with a number of similar devices launching in late spring (not to mention ASUS tablets with even older Intel silicon, like the Fonepad you see above), but this latest one sounds decently capable for a compact model.

The tablet should have a seven-inch 1920 x 1200 display, a 5MP main camera, and may end up with a huge battery – though as phoneArena wisely points out, the 15Ah indicated here is almost certainly a typo, and we’re not looking at a power pack much larger than what we got with last year’s Nexus 7.

But will shoppers respond to an ASUS tablet that, while it may have the sort of specs that would place it in line with our expectations for a new Nexus device, doesn’t launch with that same Nexus experience on the software side? That’s very much the million-dollar question, and right now, ASUS still has a lot of proving to do.

Source: FCC
Via: phoneArena