Alcatel One Touch Evo 8 HD

Building on the niche in popularity carved out by its One Touch Evo 7 HD, Alcatel has announced the release by year’s end of 2013 of the Evo 8 HD. Tablet2Cases has yet to receive a preview model, but we have to say that, from all indications, the Evo 8 HD is simply the exact same tablet wrought slightly larger and given a significantly detracting increase in suggested retail price.

Presumably to be released at some point before the Christmas holiday shopping season, Alcatel might just find this tablet awash in the competition, with a too-high $299 price tag dragging it down the sales charts. Preview images indicate the Evo 8 HD will be sporting an identical look to the 7” version, i.e. a ho-hum overly wash clunky plastic bezel framing the screen, so no bonus points there.

Getting past the unimproved too-low 4 GB of internal memory, the One Touch Evo 8 HD specs look pretty impressive – even for an 8” tablet. This one mocks the 7” version in bringing a 1.6 GHz dual-core CPU and quad-core powering the Android 4.2 operating system. And like the Evo 7 HD, the 8 HD will be available in WiFi-, 3G- and 4G-compatible versions, with the latter two including a SIM card port to upgrade to cellular (or in the case of the 3G version, 4G); all variants will include a micro SD slot, a micro USB port and two cameras – though it should be noted that these cameras appear inferior to those on the Evo 7 HD in terms of resolution.

Surely Alcatel is depending on the view from this tablet’s “HD” screen to move sales, so will wait and see. This feature has helped make the Evo 7 HD a winner against more well-known tablet models and so should certainly prove a plus for the One Touch Evo 8 HD – but the $120 jump in price is quite a gap in disadvantage to make up.