Huawei primarily focused on its flagship Ascend D quad smartphone during the company's media event at Mobile World Congress, however the company also brought along its new MediaPad 10 FHD tablet. The latter device received only a mere mention during the press conference, but Electronista had a chance to try it out following the main event.
Huawei is the first to start a series of introductory events at Mobile World Congress. It's expected to be one of the first with a quad-core smartphone in the Ascend D Quad (formerly D1 Q) as well as a 10-inch tablet, the MediaPad 10. Check Electronista's live coverage page from 9:30AM Eastern for updates as they happen from the Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona.
Huawei's MediaPad 10 was spoiled a few days ahead of its Mobile World Congress debut on Tuesday after a leak through Russia's Mail.ru. The 10-inch design is at once a refinement and close cousin of the seven-inch version. It keeps a very thin aluminum design and is believed to be lightweight, albeit with a familiar looking dock connector similar to that of the iPad.
Huawei's media event at Mobile World Congress may have already been spoiled early after company chairman Yu Chengdong possibly spoiled it in his Weibo profile. The February 26 Barcelona event would purportedly include the Ascend D1 Q, a presumably quad-core cousin of the Android 4.0-based Ascend P1 S. Its choice of chip wasn't mentioned, but would most likely be NVIDIA's Tegra 3 given the company's own event and other phones coming from Fujitsu and HTC.
Huawei will bring out its seven-inch MediaPad tablet on AT&T's network tomorrow, February 3. Unfortunately, it will only be offered to enterprise users, so a business account is required. Pricing is not being revealed either, with the carrier stating only that prices will vary depending on the business account.
Huawei has dated its Android 3.2-powered tablet, the MediaPad, for a first official appearance in Malaysia. The 7-inch device will arrive there by the middle of October, while shoppers in the US, China, Hong Kong and Thailand should expect to get it before year's end. In Singapore, the tablet can already be pre-ordered, priced at the equivalent of about $473.
Google quickly followed up on the launch of Android 3.2 by posting the software development kit. In addition to helping create native apps, it also helps explain the new tablet support. The release is very narrow on its new tablet requirements and explains that it will be focused only on seven-inch tablets with a 1024x600 display in addition to the nine- and ten-inch tablets it saw before.
Motorola Xoom may be given an unexpected upgrade to Android 3.2 soon based on the comments of a Google staffer at the official Android Open Source Project discussions. When addressing problems with Exchange after Android 3.1, the employee anticipated an update "within days" that would fix the issue for Xoom owners. He didn't say what else would come with the patch.
