Huawei is starting to bring their brand into the consumer market here in the country by letting members of the media have a sneak peek of their MediaPad, which is a 7-inch tablet running on Android 3.2 Honeycomb that will be released next month.
Before you compare Huawei devices to the likes of MyPhone or Torque or Cherry Mobile, this MediaPad doesn’t look and feel cheap at all. Yes, Huawei has entry-level phones (Ideos) that is being offered for free on some basic postpaid plans but their MediaPad is nowhere near entry-level quality. It has a nice 10.5mm-thin body and weighs 390g which is not that heavy nor light.
It has a nice aluminum curved back with a matte finish that somehow reminds me of HTC’s design. Feels very classy and not plasticky when you hold it. You can find the necessary ports outside including a miniHDMI port. If you’re wondering where the slot for SIM and microSD is, it’s inside via a removable back panel. That’s what made me think of HTC.
Anyway, the Huawei MediaPad is powered by a Qualcomm dual-core 1.2GHz processor and as mentioned, Android 3.2. Huawei reps are not yet sure if this will be upgradeable to Android 4.0 since they still don’t have the specs for it (I’m thinking yes though). It has a 7-inch IPS glossy touch screen that looks really nice watching full HD videos. It’s not that bright to have a nice, readable display when used outside however. No custom UI here so feel free to download your own.
Other features include a 5-megapixel autofocus rear camera and 1.3 megapixel front facing camera. Internal storage is only 8GB but you can have more with a microSD. You will also have access to Huawei’s cloud storage for an additional 16GB free space on the web. Rounding up the feature set is HSPA+ capability and a battery that would last you for 6-hours, or so they say.
Huawei is mum about the exact pricing yet but they say it’s going to be competitive with other tablets. I’m guessing it’s around the 20k for the 3G+WiFi and maybe 15k for the WiFi version when it becomes available by November. Still, I’m glad that we have another player for Android devices here in the country.
UPDATE: We got word that the SRP for this is Php21,990. Right on the money of our 20k prediction.
We saw an engineering unit of the 4-inch Huawei Honor and it looks good and feels snappy, too bad they won’t allow us to take a picture of it. Let’s just wait for the high-end Huawei smartphones to be announced here then.
Huawei MediaPad Specs:
- Qualcomm dual-core 1.2GHz processor
- 7″ IPS LCD capacitive WSVGA touch screen (1280 x 800)
- Android Honeycomb 3.2 OS
- 8GB internal storage, expandable to 32GB via microSD
- 5 megapixel autofocus rear camera with HD video recording
- 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera
- HSPA+ 14.4Mbps, Wifi 802.11 b/g/n
- miniHDMI port
- Li-Polymer 4100mAh battery (up to 6 hours)
- 10.5 mm
- 390g