Huawei Launches MediaPad Tablet & Cloud Phones Range in India

Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei has launched a new tablet called MediaPad and two new Cloud phones- Huawei Sonic and Huawei IDEOS X3 in the Indian market. The tablet was first announced at the CommunicAsia in June, 2011 and we had mentioned about the tablet in our feature on tablets.

All three devices come with Huawei's Cloud+ service that offers 16GB Cloud disk for storage; better messaging with Message+ (to share texts, pictures, videos and voice notes); Phone Finder to locate, back-up or lock the devices; Cloud gallery for easier viewing and sharing; Huawei Streams for integrated social phonebook experience; Huawei app store for apps; sync data and over the air (OTA) Solution for OS upgrade.

The tablet will be available for a price of Rs 28,359 while the mobiles phones will be available for a price of Rs 9,210 for Huawei Sonic and Rs 10,229 for Huawei IDEOS X3 respectively. Additionally, all three devices will come with 3GB of download for 3 months with telecom operator Aircel.

P. Sanjeev, Sales Director at Huawei Devices said, "We remain on track with open market progress in India and we are confident that we will be able to achieve our objective of being amongst top 5 OEM handset brand worldwide and in India over the next 3 years."

Huawei Mediapad

The Tablet has a 7inch IPS touchscreen display (1280x800 pixel resolution) with 217 pixels per inch (PPI). It runs on the Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) operating system (no word as of now on whether it will be upgradable to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich) and is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm processor. The Tablet has 1GB of RAM and 8GB of internal memory (plus 16GB of Cloud disk for storage).

On the camera front, Mediapad comes with a 5 mega pixel auto focus rear camera that can also record high definition (HD) videos and a 1.3 front facing camera for video calling. On the connectivity front, the Tablet has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G. Additionally, it supports PC like web browsing (with Flash 10.3 support), has full HDMI output capability and GPS with A-GPS support.

The dimensions of the device are 10.5mm x 90mm x 124mm and its weight is 390 grams. The Tablet has a 4100mAh battery that the company claims will provide over 6 hours of video playback.

Huawei Sonic

Sonic is one of the world's first cloud phones and it comes with integrated social phonebook with Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin (via Huawei Streams). The mobile phone has a 3.5inch touchscreen HVGA display (320x480 pixel resolution) and runs on the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system (with modified user interface). It is powered by a 600MHz processor and has 256MB of RAM.

The internal memory of the device is 512MB that is expandable to an additional 32GB with the help of a microSD card (plus 16GB of Cloud disk for storage). Sonic has a 3.2 mega pixel rear camera but no secondary camera. On the connectivity front it has Wi-Fi and 3G (but no Bluetooth) and comes with a microUSB 2.0 port.

Additionally, the device comes with pre-loaded applications like Atom (for payments and bookings), Astute (for online TV) and Bollywoodji (for movie and star news), among others. The dimensions of the device are 116.3mm x 60.5mm x 11.9mm and its weight is 120 grams. The mobile phone has a 1400mAh battery and according to the company, it is targeted at the youth and young working professionals aged between 16-35 years.

Huawei IDEOS X3

Huawei IDEOS X3 is also a Cloud phone like Sonic and comes with Huawei's new UI that offers 3D homepage animations for better navigation. It has a 3.2inch touchscreen HVGA display (320x480 pixel resolution) and runs on the Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) OS. It is powered by a 600MHz processor and has 256MB of RAM (similar to Sonic).

The internal memory of the device is 512MB that is expandable to an additional 32GB with the help of a microSD card (plus 16GB of Cloud disk for storage), again like Sonic. IDEOS X3 has a 3.2 mega pixel rear camera and a front facing VGA camera. On the connectivity front it has Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and 3G and comes with a microUSB 2.0 port.

The dimensions of the device are 110mm x 56.5mm x 11.2mm and its weight is 120 grams. The mobile phone has a 1200mAh battery, GPS with A-GPS support and according to the company; it is targeted at the style conscious users aged between 22-35 year olds.

"We are really excited to be the first player globally and in India to launch Cloud Services. While smartphones are better than Feature phones, they still have limitations. That is where our new services like the Cloud+ service will make our cloudphones stand apart," said Anand Narang, Marketing Director at Huawei Devices.