Huawei MediaPad – Review
The Huawei MediaPad was supposed to be the first 7-inch tablet running Android 3.2, but was beaten to the market by such slates as the Acer Iconia Tab A100. Here it is, just in time to rub shoulders with the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 Plus and, soon, Toshiba Thrive 7-incher. In the US the MediaPad goes by the name of the T-Mobile Springboard, and sells contract-free for $430, or $180 with a two-year contract. Huawei originally promised the MediaPad would be a sub-$200 slate, so the device has a lot to live up to – a 7-incher pitched just under the premium tablet entry point.
Design-wise the smooth aluminum surfaces are interrupted only by a couple of plastic triangles housing the camera and card slots. Build quality is good and it’s pleasantly light at 390 grams. At 10.5mm it’s quite a thick piece of kit – compare some ultrabooks at under 1cm – but the 7-inch format has a fair few parts to cram in. Hence the chunky build. Lets’ see some of these detailed MediaPad SpringBoard pics:
A quick size comparison to some other 7-inch tablets like HTC Flyer, Blackberry Playbook, Iconia Tab A100, shows that MediaPad isn’t doing too bad though.
The volume dial and power buttons are also constructed from metal, and up top there’s a 3.5mm headphone jack and twin speakers, while down under there are micro-HDMI and micro-USB sockets, as well as a microSD slot for memory expansion. The Huawei MediaPad or Springboard is powered by a dual-core 1.2GHz Qualcomm CPU and a healthy 1GB RAM.
But you’ll hardly notice; it isn’t especially slow, just not ‘instant’. Pinch-to-zoom can be tardy as well, which detracts from the immersiveness of browsing. The occasional momentary stutter while scrolling is a continuation of the same theme, and confirmed our suspicions that the Springboard doesn’t offer a first-class browsing experience.
In battery tests the T-Mobile Springboard offered six and-a-half hours of looping video at half-brightness – quite impressive, beating the Iconia Tab A100 by a full 100 minutes.
T-mobile offers an attractive 2 year plan with which this MediaPad, or should we say Springboard, looks like a good buy. Signing up with T-Mobile for two years will get you this Springboard for $180. Buying it outright will set you back by $430 and that suddenly doesn’t seem like a steal.
Related posts:
- First 7-inch Honeycomb 3.2 tablet – Huawei MediaPad
- Acer Iconia Tab A100 pre-order
- Acer Iconia Tab A200
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