The Huawei MediaPad was released in 2011 (Q3) but will now be available in India within few weeks. This tablet comes with built in Wi-Fi and 3G. The specifications are impressive which makes the MediaPad a bit pricey.
Now when the India markets are flooded with low cost tablets, with some good ones for under Rs. 15,000, Huawei MediaPad will make its entry, and will be better than the other tablets featuring a built in 3G SIM slot.
Huawei MediaPad features
The tab is slim and light weight at 390 grams with 10.5 mm thickness. The MediaPad runs on Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) OS and is powered by a dual core 1.2 GHz Snapdragon S3 processor (MSM8260) by Qualcomm. The Qualcomm processor and the Adreno 220 GPU together are powerful enough to run many high end (HD) games. Angry Birds, Lets golf and Asphalt 6 games come pre-loaded. The processing power is much better than the tabs available under Rs. 15,000.
Display
The 7 inch capacitive touchscreen (with multi-touch) supports 256K colours with a resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels with 216 ppi pixels density. This resolution is very good especially if you love reading books on a tablet. Anyway the resolution is still good crystal clear in general. This tab comes with Gyro, Compass and Accelerometer sensors.
Memory
There is a 1 GB RAM which gives a silky smooth performance and an 8 GB internal memory of which 5.8 GB is available for users. MicroSD slot is present and you can use cards up to 32GB capacity.
Camera
The Huawei MediaPad comes with a 5 MP rear camera with LED flash support and features like fixed / auto focus and geo tagging. Another front facing VGA camera can be used for video chats. Now this is a good 5 MP camera you can use it for outdoor photography what’s more it even works indoor and in low light condition with LED flash. You can also record videos in 720p resolution at 30fps using both rear and front cameras.
Multimedia
There is a built in stereo speaker and a 3.5mm stereo jack. The sound quality is enhanced using the SRS sound feature. There is no built in radio, however the media player can play many commonly used audio and video formats like MP3, M4, HD videos etc.
Navigation
This tab does come with built in GPS so you can use this with Google maps for navigation. The camera also uses the GPS signal for geo-tagging the photos.
Connectivity
MediaPad supports 3G (HSDPA 14.4 Mbps; HSUPA 5.76 Mbps), Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n), Bluetooth 2.1, micro USB 2.0 and also comes with an HDMI port. In case of non availability of 3G the GPRS and EDGE networks are used.
Battery
The 4100 mAh Lithium Polymer battery powers this tablet with a standby time of up to 200 hours and continuous usage of up to 6 hours.
Huawei MediaPad price in India is unknown (Expected to be around Rs.20,000). Stay tuned for updates.
MediaPad Review
This Huawei is new and it may take some time before users are comfortable with the brand. The specifications are very good and all depends on the price. Now this tablet comes with Android 3.2 OS and you cannot use this tab as a phone. The reason being that the Android 3.x version comes with phone functionality completely disabled, you can use the 3G network for surfing but cannot use this tab as a phone.
However this tab can be upgraded to android 4.0 which in fact have phone functionality enabled. So with Android 4.0 and with built in 3G you can use this tablet for making / receiving calls, just like on a mobile phone.
Many low cost tabs (xtab A10, VeeDee D10, Micromax Funbook) have limited support to external 3G. For users who want 3G net access on their tab, a built in 3G enabled tablet will be a good option.