Huawei unveils the MediaPad X1 and M1 tablets, the X1 is also a phone

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 23 Feb 2014

huawei-mediapad-x1-mwc-2014

Huawei, pronounced WAH-WAY, today announced a couple of new tablets at its press conference in Mobile World Congress in Barcelona — the MediaPad X1 and M1. The former is a 7-inch tablet with phone capabilities while the latter is a budget-oriented tablet with support for LTE Cat 4 networks.  

Huawei has designed the X1 in such a manner that should make it easy for the consumers to use the ridiculously huge device as a handset. It sports an extremely thin (7.18mm) profile with extremely narrow bezels (2.9mm) and 80% screen to body ratio. It also features an impressive 7-inch LTPS display that can reportedly deliver a brightness level of 515 nits. The highlight of the device is its radio that supports both TD-LTE and FD-LTE networks, allowing users to enjoy 4G in China as well as the USA on a single device.

Below are the full specs of the tablet:

  • 7-inch LTPS display with 1920 x 1200 resolution
  • 7.18mm thin aluminum body, 239g heavy
  • Huawei’s home-made HiSilicon Kirin 910 SoC featuring four Cortex-A9 cores clocked at 1.6GHz
  • Mali-450 MP4 GPU
  • 2GB RAM, 16GB internal memory
  • 13MP F/2.4 camera on the back, 5MP F/2.2 front-facing camera
  • Wi-Fi b/g/n, NFC, GPS with A-GPS
  • FDD-LTe, TD-LTE, WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, and GSM network support
  • Voice calling capability
  • Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with Huawei’s Huawei’s Emotion UI 2.0 skin on top of it
  • 5000mAh battery

Huawei has included quite a few software goodies on the tablet, namely intelligent grip suppression that will allow users to keep a thumb on the display while scrolling and the device will ignore it. The phablet will be available in China, Russia, Western Europe, Middle East, Japan and Latin America starting in March.

On the other end of the spectrum is the MediaPad M1 with its more modest specs and tablet-like dimensions. Huawei’s design team has also taken full liberty in being inspired from HTC’s product portfolio as the M1 looks like a bigger version of the HTC One.

Huawei_M1

Huawei MediaPad M1 tablet specs:

  • 8-inch IPS display with 1280*800 resolution
  • 7.9mm thin body
  • 1.6GHZ quad-core processor
  • 1GB RAM
  • 1MP front-facing camera and 5MP snapper in the back
  • 4800mAh battery for up to 8 hours of media playback
  • Front-facing stereo speakers
  • Supports 3G and LTE Cat 4 networks for download speeds of up to 150Mbps
  • Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with Huawei’s Emotion UII 2.0 skin on top of it

The M1 will also go up for sale in various regions of the world by Q1 of this year.

While both tablets are a decent attempt from Huawei, it is extremely disappointing that the company is releasing products that are still running Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean — more than a year after Google had released it.

Image Credit: Engadget