Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue review: Budget extravagance

Android Jelly Bean, Emotion UI 1.5 and no app drawer

The Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue runs Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean skinned with the home-brewed Emotion UI v1.5. The result is a very simple, flat interface with no app drawer. It seems, it was Huawei's goal to make it friendly and simple rather than rework Android beyond recognition.

Other than the missing app drawer and the collapsible navigation bar, the rest is pretty straightforward and familiar, with most of the applications being the stock Android apps, with subtle Huawei touches here and there.

The lockscreen is fairly busy. At its center is a circle with shortcuts in the four cardinal directions: simple unlock to the south, camera to the north, messaging to the east and dialer/call log to the west.

The upper area of the lockscreen displays the time and date. If the music player is running, the time and date are replaced by the music player controls.

The lockscreen

Beyond the lockscreen is a fairly standard Android homescreen with five customizable shortcuts docked at the bottom. The default selection is phone app, messages, mail, web browser and contacts but you can have any app really, or folders with multiple items, visible on all homescreens.

The homescreen

There are six homescreen panes at most - at least a couple of them will accommodate actual apps. In the absence of an app drawer, anything you install pops up on the homescreen. There're no shortcuts as such -the usual routine of removing icons (dragging them up to a recycle bin at the top of the screen) will actually uninstall the corresponding app.

The thing is fool-proof and you just can't accidentally uninstall essential apps like the gallery or email client.

The downside of the flat structure is you cannot get rarely used apps out of the way, but folders partially make up for that.

A pinch on the homescreen triggers the familiar Overview mode to let you check out and organize the homescreen panes currently in use, remove or add panes as you please. Alternatively, the overview can be displayed when you hit the Thumbnails shortcut in the menu that appears upon a tap and hold on a blank spot of the screen.

The overview mode • homescreen action

Widgets are available too - tap and hold on the homescreen, then choose Widgets. The MediaPad 7 Vogue comes with a few Huawei-made widgets as well as the default Jelly Bean widgets. Of course, you can get third-party widgets off the Play Store.

Adding widgets is easy

The menu displayed upon a tap and hold on the homescreen also lets you set wallpaper and homescreen transition effects.

Transition effects

Live, static and scrollable static wallpapers are supported. You can activate the Shake to change wallpaper setting, or turn on Random change at a preset time interval.

Choosing wallpapers

Themes are available as well. A theme will change your homescreen wallpaper, lockscreen style, system icons, system font and the sound profile. There are 24 different lockscreen styles with different unlock gestures, time widgets and shortcut style and layout.

Themes menu • editing a theme

Of course, you can always opt for the default Android lockscreens - Face Unlock, Pattern, PIN or Password.

Choosing a lockscreen shortcut

The notification area features 7 toggles on a single row above the notifications list. Sadly, you can't rearrange or add and remove additional toggles.

The notification area

The standard Android notifications stack up below the toggles. The notifications can be expanded or collapsed with a pinch gesture. You can also swipe to dismiss a notification.

A shortcut to the Settings Menu and a Dismiss All button are available in the top right corner of the notification area.

If the Music Player app is running in background, media player controls will be available in the notification area too.

Music controls in the notification area and lockscreen

The Settings menu is the stock Android one and is separated into two panes - the left is for the settings categories and the right is for the actual set of settings.

The settings menu is straightforward

Finally, there's the task switcher. Its interface is the same as the stock Android Jelly Bean task switcher, but offers a few extra options. Each app thumbnail now has a dedicated close key (in addition to the default swipe to close gesture). There is also a "Kill all" key at the bottom that will terminate all running apps.