Huawei's 7" Tablet Power House: Huawei MediaPad

I have been a long time user of the Samsung Galaxy Tablets such as the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. Both of these are very spiffy and very easy to use, especially since both of these Samsung tablet models sports a dual core chipset and is running Android's Ice Cream Sandwich software. Only problem for many is that they would normally want to look for something of a cheaper price range but not sacrificing on the quality of build and more importantly performance. That is where Huawei comes in with their 7" entry to the tablet arena - Huawei Mediapad.

The Huawei Mediapad is the first tablet in the Huawei line to sport the Ice Cream Sandwich software, though they have released earlier models of the Huawei Mediapad that is running on HoneyComb 3.2 which is now being upgraded OTA to the current Android 4.0 ICS. It isn't something that is heavy either contending the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 at only 390g and 10.55mm thick. They have improved PPI by giving it a 217PPI making HD videos and e-book reading quite pleasurable. It also sports a 1.3CMOS front camera and a 5MP Autofocus rear HD Camera (Samsung 7" models only offer upto 3MP). Processor-wise it sports a 1.2Ghz Dual Core Snapdragon S3 chip, HSPA+ and WIFI 11 Highspeed internet is supported. It even has GPS/A-GPS support which makes navigation without an internet(using MapFactor Navigator-offline maps have to be downloaded) possible. It also has an expandable microSD card slot upto 32GB.

Taking note of all that, most people would really care about is if it can perform all that it's competitors would offer which the Huawei Mediapad seemingly delivers without a hitch. I guess in a way you can compare the performance of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 and Huawei Mediapad is pretty much at par and in some instances especially in gaming the Huawei Mediapad outperforms well above the competition. In terms of battery performance it also performs just as well with 4100mAh non-removable battery roughly giving 6 hours of non-stop video viewing. Gaming again is pretty good considering that it has 1.2Ghz of Dual Core Snapdragon S3 with 1GB ram to work with. This is mostly due to the GPU that it comes with which is the Adreno 220GPU.

Call quality on a tablet can tend to vary(Yes you can make phone calls here as sim-card support is available enabling also the use of HSPA+ for internet as well) but with the Huawei Mediapad this is something it does well with great reception. Though it doesn't support an earpiece, you can use speaker phone option or have a bluetooth paired along with it. SMS and MMS is also available and it is pretty much basic, but it does give you a huge sms interface to work with.

Overall, the Huawei MediaPad is a pretty awesome tablet power house that one can pick if you want a cheaper alternative to that of the Samsung 7" tablet line. It doesn't have many cons considering its price value.

Here is a quick run down of the specs of the Huawei MediaPad
Huawei MediaPad specs:
7″ IPS LCD display @ 1280×800 pixels, 217ppi
Qualcomm SnapDragon 1.2GHz dual-core
Adreno 220 GPU
8GB internal storage
up to 32GB via microSD
HSDPA 14.4Mbps, HSUPA 5.76Mbps
WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1
GPS w/ aGPS support
mini-HDMI output
5MP autofocus camera
1.3MP front-facing camera
720p video capture
HiFi audio player
4100mAh battery, up to 6 hours
Adobe Flash 10.3

Till Next Time...

-Metz-