Sony has recently announced that it has begun accepting pre-orders for the Xperia Z3 Compact tablet in the United States and it is expected to be shipped from Nov. 2 onward. The Japanese smartphone manufacturer has priced this Android tablet at $499.99.

Currently, Sony is only offering the white, 32 GB Wi-Fi version of the Z3 Tablet Compact, while an LTE version of the tablet is likely to be released later this year.

The upcoming Sony Xperia Z3 Compact has a very slender design, measuring only 6.4mm and weighs 270 grams. In fact, the upcoming Sony Xperia Z 3 Compact is the thinnest tablet in the 8-inch class. It comes with a screen resolution of 1920x1080 and is packed with a quad-core 2.5GHz Snapdragon 801 processor, 3GB of RAM and 16GB of onboard storage.

Beyond that, the Xperia Z3 Tablet Compact also supports Remote Play features for Sony's PlayStation 4 game console, enabling owners of both these devices to play PS4 games streaming on the tablet.

Z3 Tablet Compact runs on Android 4.4 KitKat, and has the maximum water-resistance rating (IP65/68) on any consumer tablet in the market so far. The other features of the 8-inch tablet include NFC, an 8 MP rear camera, a 2.1 MP front-facing camera, microSD card support, and a 4500 mAh battery.

Last year, Sony planned to offer a high spec device in a small chassis for people who wanted the latest flagship spec and high performance, but didn't prefer a large 5-inch+ device that requires two hands for operation.

In 2014, the company has gone ahead with the plan and updated it. While the Xperia Z3 Compact is very similar to the larger Xperia Z3, which was announced a few weeks ago at IFA, some features are different.