Huawei MediaPad 7 Lite Review

Interface and Functionality:

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich comes with little modifications made by Huawei and that’s mostly a good thing. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And in this case it isn’t.


In Huawei’s case, in terms of ICS modifications, we’ve only noticed that the company has included its DLNA file-sharing app as a bonus, and not much else. On a 7-inch tablet, you get to benefit from split screen functionality in apps like the native mail client and calendar. In mail for example you can have two panes, one with the list of emails and another one with the actual content of an email.


Interestingly, the Huawei MediaPad 7 Lite is one of the few tablets that also comes with a full-on phone functionality. You can insert your SIM card in a conveniently placed slot on the side and use not just cellular data on the go, but also make and take calls like you do on a standard Android handset save for one important detail – there is no earpiece. And that in turn means that you are forced to either use the loudspeaker or hook up the tablet to a headset for more privacy.


We doubt there is much practical application to the phone function in a tablet, but in an imaginary scenario where your phone battery dies, you’d be able to simply plug in phone’s SIM card into the tablet and make that important call.


Processor and Memory:

If we were to point out a single feature that we’d replace in the MediaPad, that without a second thought would be the 1.2GHz single-core Cortex A8 processor. We do need to account for the low price and all the compromises that have to be made, but we noticed stutter way too often to ignore.

	Quadrant Standard	AnTuTu	NenaMark 2
Huawei MediaPad 7 Lite	1093	2637	20,8
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 (7.0)	2750	5144	30,2
Lenovo IdeaPad A2109	4011	10769	53,9

We don’t remember seeing such low benchmark tests in quite a while even on more affordable products. While benchmarks don’t always tell the whole story, arriving at the extreme low-end here is telling.

The tablet comes with 8GB of internal storage which can be expanded via a microSD card. The card slot is neatly situated on the side, so you can hot swap cards (change them without rebooting).


Internet and Connectivity:

Accessing the web happens via the built-in Android browser application or through a variety of other browsers available on the Play Store. Since Adobe Flash does not show up in the app catalog, we’d prefer using a browser like Chrome that syncs up your mobile and desktop experiences. In both browsers, performance was good. We found panning around smooth, and pinch to zoom also worked perfectly without a stutter.

3G connectivity is what justifies the price for this tablet.

In addition, you have Wi-Fi connectivity, GPS and Bluetooth 3.0 rounding up the package.