Huawei MediaPad review: On the rise

Introduction

Huawei have been flexing their mobile manufacturing muscle lately and one of their latest creations, the 7" MediaPad Android tablet, is getting its high-res screen and aluminum unibody ready to take on the big boys.

Huawei MediaPad official pictures
The Huawei MediaPad skimps on almost no ingredient in a bid to challenge the best 7" tablets out there. Sure, it would have been great to have Android ICS out of the box, but the screen has WXGA resolution and 216ppi pixel density - almost as high as the 10.1" Asus Transformer Prime TF700T and its 224ppi 1920x1200 screen.
Not impressed yet? How about an aluminum unibody that's thinner and lighter than the plasticy Kindle Fire? What about some of these specs:

Key features

• 10.5mm slim aluminum unibody
• 7.0" 256K-color IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen of WXGA resolution (1280 x 800 pixels)
• Weighs 390 g
• Qualcomm MSM8260 chipset: Dual-core 1.2GHz Scorpion processor; 1GB of RAM; Adreno 220 GPU
• Android 3.2 Honeycomb, updateable to 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
• Quad-band GPRS/EDGE and dual/tri-band 3G with HSPA connectivity (HSDPA, 14.4 Mbps; HSUPA, 5.76 Mbps)
• Voice calls, texts and MMS
• 5 MP autofocus camera, 2592x1944 pixels, geotagging
• 720p HD video recording @ 30 fps
• 1.3 MP front-facing camera, 720p video recording
• Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, dual-band, Wi-Fi hotspot
• Stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• microHDMI TV-out, USB host (adapter required)
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack; Stereo speakers; SRS sound enhancement
• 8 GB of built-in memory, 5.8 GB user accessible
• microSD card slot
• Adobe Flash 11 support
• GPS with A-GPS support; digital compass
• 1080p DivX/XviD/MKV video support
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor; three-axis Gyroscope sensor
• Office document editor preinstalled
• 4100 mAh Li-Po rechargeable battery

Main disadvantages

• Poor camera
• Non-replaceable battery
• No scratch-resistant screen surface
• No LED flash

The Media Pad is certainly dressed to impress, but the name Huawei just doesn't have a premium ring to it. However, with the super-thin Huawei Ascend P1 S and now the MediaPad, Huawei is sending a clear message that they can successfully compete in the high end too.

Huawei MediaPad live pictures
The MediaPad shows no lack of ambition in Huawei. But how good were they at taking it from the blueprints to a finished product? Jump to the next page where we begin to find out.