The Huawei MatePad Pro is an Android tablet with a 10.8 inch IPS LCD display, a Kirin 990 processor, and support for up to 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. With optional 4G LTE support as well as optional accessories including a keyboard cover and pressure-sensitive pen, this is basically Huawei’s version of Apple’s iPad Pro, Microsoft’s Surface, or Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S series tablets.

But it has a few features most of the competition lacks — such as support for both wireless charging and reverse wireless charging… and, as expected, it also has a punch hole design that features a hole in the display for the front-facing camera.

Huawei unveiled the tablet in China today, and it’s expected to go on sale in that country on December 12th with prices starting at about $470 for a WiFi-only model with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage.

The MatePad Pro measures 10″ x 6.3″ x 0.28″ and weighs about 1.1 pounds. It features a 2560 x 1600 pixel display, Android 10 software (with Huawei’s EMUI 10.0.1 user interface), and Huawei’s top-of-the-line Kirin 990 chip, which features:

  • 2 x 2.86 GHz ARM Cortex-A76 CPU cores
  • 2 x 2.09 GHz ARM Cortex-A76 CPU cores
  • 4 x 1.86 GHz ARM Cortex-A55 CPU cores
  • 600 MHz ARM Mali-G76 GPU
  • Dual-core neural processing unit

The tablet has a 7,250 mAh battery with support for 40W fast charging (wired), 15 watt wireless charging, and 7.5 watt reverse wireless charging (which means you can charge your phone or other gadgets by placing them on the tablet).

Other features include a 13MP rear camera, 8MP front camera, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 5.1, USB 4.1 Type-C, and quad speakers.

There are a few features you might be expecting from a premium tablet that you won’t find here. The MatePad Pro isn’t waterproof and it doesn’t support NFC. Oh, and it doesn’t come with Google Play, so there’s that.

But with a starting price of less than $500 (in China, at least), it does seem like a competitive option — for folks that don’t need access to Google apps and services out of the box.

There’s no word on if or when Huawei will bring the MatePad Pro to other global markets. But it’s probably worth noting that no Android phones or tablets sold in China ship with Google Play, so the fact that this tablet doesn’t feature them isn’t a problem in Huawei’s home country. Elsewhere, it might be.

via GizmoChina and Engadget

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3 replies on “Huawei launches MatePad Pro premium Android tablet (punch hole and all)”

  1. It’s still a bit of narrower vertically than the now discontinued 9.7″ iPad line. But that was Apple’s budget option and this is supposed to be the professional Android tablet with the tallest vertical screen among Android tablets.

  2. I just pulled the trigger on a tab s6. Thankfully it’s currently one hundred dollars off for the basic version (the discount on the top tier one is a little more iirc) so it was only $550. This, coupled with the wait for the matepad, the markup of resellers and the punch-hole (I am fine with notches and punch holes in phones where they extended the screen/resolution by adding them (so even if you “hide”them you still get standard resolution), means I am not feeling buyer’s remorse (though I would have liked the slightly larger screen).

    Here it’s the normal resolution so all you get with the punch hole is slimmer bezels which is arguably of little benefit on tablets.

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