MWC 2014: Huawei MediaPad and Ascend hands-on

Huawei Huawei MediaPad M1 hands-on

The Huawei MediaPad M1 is the bigger but lower-ranked Huawei tablet shown on the Mobile World Congress floor in Barcelona.

Huawei MediaPad M1

It sports an 8" 1280 x 800 display that's good for around 188 ppi. It sports a slim waistline at 7.9 mm and weighs a comfortable 329g. It's powered by a 4800mAh battery that Huawei says is good for 24 hours of browsing time. There's also reverse charging and you'll be able to charge your phone or other device off the tablet's battery.

There's a 5MP primary camera and 1MP front-facer on the MediaPad M1.

The MediaPad M1 looks quite a lot like the HTC One with two micro-drilled speaker grilles mounted above and under the 8" screen, delivering DTS surround sound. The device is a mix of aluminum and plastic and feels quite sturdy.

Huawei MediaPad M1

It will be launching in May and is, at the time of writing, using a Huawei's Emotion UI OS on top of Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS. A quad-core HiSilicon 1.6Ghz processor is doing the math.

The interface feels fluid and responsive. Weight-wise it's pretty balanced, neck and neck with Apple's iPad mini 2. Single-handed operation isn't very comfortable at this display size.

The price at launch will be €299.