Japanese electronics giant Toshiba’s upcoming tablet, Thrive, finally has an official US release date, July 10. The news, however, comes from the company’s retail partner Best Buy and not from the maker itself.

The online retail company, on Thursday, said that the new Toshiba-made tablet will be available for purchase starting July 10. The Tokyo-based company itself has not announced an official release date for the tablet but its retail partners started taking pre-orders in June.

Best Buy had already started a pre-order page for the Thrive, which will be available in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB, and began listing delivery dates as early as July 10 for customers pre-ordering the tablet. The three versions of the tablet will be available for $429.99, $479.99 and $579.99 respectively.

Shipping charges will cost an additional $8.99 for customers ordering online, according to a PCMag report.

Toshiba’s 10.1-inch Thrive will flash a 5 MP, 2592?1944 pixels, autofocus rear and a secondary 2MP front-facing camera. The tablet will run on Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), upgradable to version 3.1, and will be powered by a 1GHz NVIDIA Tegra 2 AP20H Dual Core processor.

The anticipated iPad 3, in comparison, will run on iOS 5 and has been rumored to be powered by a quad-core processor with an enhanced A6 chipset. Details about the tablet’s camera is still uncertain, but is expected to have a Thunderbolt port and retina display with an improved 2058X1536 pixels screen resolution.

Apple will be keeping a watch on Toshiba's newest tablet and will consider it as a threat to the Cupertino-based company's long term plans.

Must Read: Apple iPad 2: Will 10.1-inch Toshiba Thrive pose a threat?

MUST READ: Apple iPad: The new canvas for budding artist?

Ipad Retail Retail Ipad