MWC 2012: Huawei Reveals MediaPad 10 FHD Tablet – A Valid Rival to the iPad 3

You might not have heard of Huawei, but you’d better sit up and listen, as they’ve just unveiled a tablet that could rival Apple’s forthcoming iPad 3. It’s called the MediaPad 10 FHD, the FHD tag standing for ‘Full HD’.

Huawei caught the attention of many yesterday at Mobile World Congress by showing off the tablet, but kept the finer details undercover until now. The screen is a beautiful 10-inch IPS display which boasts a Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1200 – it’s super bright, vibrant and crisp, and that resolution is in fact higher than that of Apple’s rumoured Retina Display for the iPad 3. The pixel density is also a high 226ppi, which, when coupled with the Full HD resolution, is higher than any other tablet out there today.

The impressive doesn’t stop at the screen; this device packs a Quad-Core processor that’s clocked at 1.5GHz. It’s not the popular Nvidia Tegra 3 chip that we’ve seen on many tablet devices of late, it’s in fact Huawei’s own chip, known as the K3V2. That processing power is backed up by 2GB of RAM which should provide speedy app switching and a nippy recovery from standby mode.

Onboard storage is capped at 8GB, 16GB or 32GB – depending on which version you buy – but there’s also a Micro SD card slot to expand upon that by a further 32GB maximum, if you so wish. It runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich too, so you’ll have plenty of options for cloud storage to expand even further.

Connectivity options are strong with both Wi-Fi and 3G HSPA+ on board, and Huawei says there will also be a 4G LTE version for markets that have the relevant network infrastructure, such as the U.S. You’ll get an 8-Megapixel rear camera for snaps and video, and a 1.3-Megapixel front-facing option for video calling.

Unlike many tablets from budget manufacturers, the MediaPad 10 FHD is both slim and good-looking. An aluminium unibody construction lends a resemblance to HTC’s devices such as the Flyer tab, and looks smooth and sleek. The whole thing is a very svelte 8.8mm thick, weighing just 598g to ensure portability.

The Huawei MediaPad 10 FHD will join the company’s 7-inch MediaPad during the second quarter of this year (April-June), but the price is currently unknown.

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