14 DAY TRIAL // Chinese handset maker Huawei and AT&T have just announced the upcoming availability of the MediaPad Android-based tablet. Beginning February 3, enterprise customers will be able to purchase the Huawei MediaPad at varying price points, depending on their business accounts.
Although Huawei confirmed last month that it would start delivering MediaPads with Ice Cream Sandwich on board in Q1 2012, the AT&T variant will be shipped with Android 3.2 Honeycomb.
However, the Chinese company said that MediaPad tablets that ran previous versions of Android would receive an Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade during the first quarter of 2012.
Unfortunately, there’s no telling exactly when AT&T and Huawei start rolling out the latest version of Google’s mobile operating system.
AT&T is the second US-based operator to carry the Huawei MediaPad. Currently, the slate is available for purchase from T-Mobile USA, as Springboard.
The slate comes with a small 7-inch IPS multi-touch display, with support for 800 x 1280 pixels resolution and 262k colors. In fact, this would be the first 7-inch tablet to run Ice Cream Sandwich.
“We're committed to working with AT&T to create influential devices that will provide consumers the best experience on AT&T's networks,” said Cui Jiangao, president of Huawei Device USA.
Hardware-wise, Huawei MediaPad is equipped with a 1.2 GHz dual core Qualcomm MSM8260 Snapdragon processor and an Adreno 220 graphics processing unit.
Furthermore, the tablet packs 5.8GB of internal memory, 8GB of ROM, 1GB of RAM, as well as microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
On the back, Huawei MediaPad slate sports an average-quality 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, LED flash and full HD (1080) video recording, while in the front there’s a secondary 1.3-megapixel photo snapper for video chats.
Other highlights of the tablet include: Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support, SRS sound enhancement, high-speed microUSB with USB-on-the-go support, HDMI port and GPS with A-GPS.