Leaked photo of a 7-inch Xiaomi tablet surfaces on Sina Weibo

When we interviewed Xiaomi founder Lei Jun in October 2012, he stated clearly that the startup phone-maker was not working on an Android tablet. But that was 14 months ago. A leaked image this week claims to show a 7-inch Xiaomi tablet (pictured), suggesting that Xiaomi might have been swayed by the success of budget tablets like the original Nexus 7.

The leaker, a Sina Weibo user named @PunkPanda with a fairly strong track record of sniffing out new hardware, adds that the Xiaomi Tablet – we guess it’ll be called the MiPad – has a 720p HD screen (1,280x720px resolution) and is powered by a MediaTek quad-core processor allied to a mere 1GB of RAM. That sounds a lot like the fairly basic specs of Xiaomi’s budget Hongmi smartphone.

The supposed price of the Xiaomi Tablet? Nearly RMB 1,100 (about $180), which is close to the price of the Hongmi model.

This is speculation for now. It remains to be seen if Lei Jun has been convinced that Android tablets are ready to challenge the dominance of Apple’s iPad.

This is the full image that @PunkPanda posted to Weibo:

(Via: Nowhereelse.fr)

(Editing by Josh Horwitz)