Nokia’s ironically-named T20 tablet offers entry-level specs, arrives in Malaysia on 12.12

[ UPDATE 13/12/2021 08:00 ] The Nokia T20 has officially launched in Malaysia with a retail price tag of RM1,099. It comes with 64GB of storage and a single Deep Ocean colour option.

===

The Nokia T20 tablet is only the Finnish brand’s third tablet ever, and it’s also the first to be released since being part of HMD Global. While it was launched globally back in October, it has yet to make it over to our shores—until now that is. According to the official Nokia store on Shopee, they’ll be launching the Nokia T20 during the 12.12 Shopee Birthday Sale, and the launch event will be held live on Shopee at 9pm.

Despite its ‘T20’ moniker, Nokia’s latest offering is actually a fairly entry-level tablet. Powering the device is a Unisoc T610, which has two Cortex-A75 performance cores at 1.82GHz and six Cortex-A55 efficiency cores at 1.82GHz, with performance a little below something like the MediaTek Helio G80. This gets paired to a measly 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, though it’s possible to add up to 512GB of external storage via a microSD card. The Nokia T20 will come with Android 11 out of the box, and HMD Global promises 2 years of Android upgrades and three years of security updates, though its recent failure to update the Nokia 9 Pureview might warrant some worry.

Elsewhere though, the Nokia T20 perhaps doesn’t look that bad. It offers a 10.4-inch, IPS display with a 5:3, 1200 x 2000p resolution. Capable of up to 400nits of brightness, the display also has SGS low blue light certification and has a layer of toughened glass over it for protection. The back of the Nokia T20 is made of sandblasted aluminum, and the tablet also comes with an IP52 rating. There’s a 5MP selfie camera in front while the rear of the tablet has an 8MP camera sitting on top of a flash LED.

You’ll get a 8,200mAh battery with 15W fast charging over USB-C too, although Nokia will only provide a 10W charging brick in the box. Nokia claims up to 15 hours of web browsing with the battery, or up to 7 hours of online meetings if you’re using it for work. Other features of note include stereo speakers, a 3.5mm audio jack and Google Kids Space preloaded onto the tablet. There’s an optional Nokia T20 rugged flip cover accessory too, which according to their Shopee page will be given free along with other goodies if you get one during the launch event.

So far though, there’s no word just yet on the price of the Nokia T20. It launched in the UK for £179.99 (~RM1,002) for the WiFi-only version, while the T20 with LTE was priced at £199.99 (~RM1,113.26). Nevertheless, the Nokia T20 will be facing some seriously tough competition here, with the likes of the Realme Pad starting from just RM899. In fact, if you opt to top up your budget to RM1,399, you can even get the much more powerful Xiaomi Pad 5. Other solid options also include bigger names like the Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 that retails at RM899 too. Alternatively, if you’re not partial to any particular operating system, you may even consider the 2021 Apple iPad, which starts at RM1,499. Apple arguably does tablet operating systems better, and would also have longer software support than the Android space.

With a relatively unknown processor and a potentially high price tag, the Nokia T20 may struggle to convince Malaysians that it’s worth getting over other tablets from other companies. It’s quite a fall from grace compared to their original Windows RT-powered Lumia 2520 and Android Nokia N1 tablets, which were considered high-end stuff back in the day. With that being said though, I’d love to be proven wrong and see the Nokia T20 do well. However, it will depend on its price, and we’ll only find out when 12.12 comes around this weekend.