The Huawei S7 is a 7 inch Android tablet. There’s nothing all to unusual about that. But unlike some of the cheap tablets we’ve seen over the past few months, the Huawei S7 has a reasonably fast processor, a 3G modem and some telecoms are already bundling the tablet with mobile broadband service plans.
CarryPad noticed that it’s already available in Austria, where you can pick up the tablet for 99 Euros up front and 29 Euros per month for a 5GB/month data plan. And the folks at derStandard have posted a review of the tablet.
Unfortunately, the 768MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and Android 2.1 operating system weren’t enough to make the reviewer happy. The camera app crashed a few times and picture quality wasn’t great. The battery life didn’t come close to the promised 8 hours of run time. And while you can use the tablet to make phone calls, unlike the 5 inch Dell Streak, there’s really no way to pass this 7 inch tablet off as a reasonable device to hold up to your head.
But the biggest problem was probably the screen, which derStandard describes as “cheap.”
The Huawei S7 has a 7 inch, 800 x 480 pixel resistive touchscreen. It doesn’t support multitouch, and the reviewer felt that touch input wasn’t very precise — even with a stylus.
I know there are some folks out there who actually prefer resistive displays to capacitive ones. But Android really was designed to be used with your fingers, not a stylus. I’ve poked at on-screen keyboards with a stylus before, and it’s always much slower than using two thumbs to type. Although I can’t say for certain if the Huawei S7 suffers from the same problem as the Augen GenTouch78, I can also say that some resistive touchscreen displays also require you to press much harder against the display than others. Not all resistive screens are created equal.
You can read more at derStandard.
I’ve only had mine for a few days. I bought it mostly for development work but I love so far. I have never really liked capacitive screens. I play finger-style guitar and my pinky fingernail makes the best stylus. The battery life is a little short, but oh well, $300 is a great price for a well made device. I think it will hurt the galaxy tab sales.
So far so good.
I have no trouble using the screen and no one is mentioning the optical tracker button on the RH side which operates with the slightest of finger movement. The pop up keyboard is fast to use but sometimes obscures the ‘next’ input fields. I prefer a makeshift stylus when typing but fingers or the back of a nail work very well.
Having dedicated ‘back,’ ‘menu’ and ‘home’ buttons is very convenient.
My Huawie is a Telstra branded T Touch. For $300 I think it’s one of the best value bits of kit on the market. You don’t even have to pay for 3G as there are free wi fi spots at many locations.
It’s a multi function device that will do many things. I love it.
“Android really was designed to be used with your fingers, not a stylus.”
To put a finer point on it, Android was designed to be used on capacitive touch interfaces. It has nothing to do with finger versus stylus because a finger works just as well (just differently) on a resistive display as on a capacitive one, and a stylus works just as well (although differently) on a capacitive display as on a resistive one.
All that sliding and swiping is capacitive territory. It doesn’t make a bit of difference if you’re using your bare finger or a capacitive stylus. A capacitive screen responds to contact. A resistive touchscreen responds to pressure after contact. All of those finger-tendon-straining, screen smudging, display occluding (can you tell how I really feel about it?) gestures built into Android simply won’t work well or comfortably on MOST resistive screens because of the requirement to sustain pressure. A stylus can help because it focus the pressure of your hand down onto a finer point, but you’re still asking the hardware to do something other than it’s strength. People like me prefer resistive touchscreens because we can touch the screen to align our finger and then make pressure to supply the input. This is far more accurate and useful. However, neither Google nor Android are emphasizing this advantage in their mobile OS GUIs, which is why most people think that they don’t like resistive interfaces. In context, they don’t.