China’s Xiaomi Launches Plastic 7.9″ iPad mini Knockoff Called ‘Mi Pad’

Xiaomi mi pad

In case you are interested what a colourful iPad mini with Retina display running Android would look like in plastic, you don’t have to wait too much longer: there is a new player in the tablet market, Xiaomi, which has taken a page from Apple’s iPad book and introduced the 7.9-inch Mi Pad tablet today in Beijing (via The Next Web).

Mi Pad – it doesn’t resemble the iPad (name) at all – features a 2046 × 1536 display provided by Sharp and Younda, and a 2.2 GHz Tegra K1 processor (it is the first tablet to use the Nvidia processor), 2 GB of RAM, 16 GB ROM, and will support up to 128 GB via a memory expansion card. It also comes with an 8 megapixel rear camera and a 5 megapixel front camera, and as you can see from the above image, it comes in five colours.

The 16 GB, WiFi version of the iPad mini knockoff will retail for roughly $240 (1499 yuan), the 64 GB version for about $273 (or 1699 yuan).

As Xiaomi CEO and co-founder Lei Jun emphasized during the company event today, the tablet aims to provide the best gaming experience and also aims to put pressure on Apple.

iPad sales dropped during the past quarter, and some analysts believe low tablet sales are here to stay. Xiaomi’s Mi Pad, however, isn’t available in the market yet; the only information the company is sharing is that it will open testing of the device in June.

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