For China, Huawei has announced a large tablet with a 10.8-inch display. It is not clear whether Huawei’s attack on the iPad Pro will come to Europe.
Huawei attacks the iPad Pro from Apple with the Matepad Pro: The tablet presented in China has a large 10.8-inch display and high-class hardware. The LCD screen shows a resolution of 1600 × 2560 pixels. The selfie camera is housed in a so-called “punch-hole-notch”. The circular recess within the screen has already made Huawei popular with its top smartphones.
The Matepad Pro is powered by a Kirin 990, the RAM is 6 or 8 GB depending on the version. Buyers can choose between different memory types, the largest variant has 512 GB of storage space. There is a single 13-megapixel camera on the back, the 7250 mAh battery should ensure sufficient runtime. It also supports wireless charging via the Qi standard and can charge other devices such as cell phones. The cheapest version of the Matepad Pro in China costs the equivalent of 425 euros, who wants LTE and more memory pays more, a 5G version is to follow in 2020.
Germany start questionable
The Huawei Matepad Pro has only been announced for China so far. It runs there with EMUI based on Android 10 – this should be the open source version of Android. Accordingly, important Google apps such as the Play Store and Maps are also missing from the Matepad Pro. In addition, the open source version of Android comes without the important Google Mobile Services, which are used, among other things, to display app notifications.
Huawei has not yet launched a device with such restrictions in Germany. It is questionable whether cell phones and tablets would sell well in the West without Google services. Huawei has also not yet released the Mate 30 Pro in Germany. In Spain, the top mobile phone from Huawei is sold locally in limited numbers. It is not known whether this is a trial run for a larger European start.
Huawei has been blacklisted by the U.S. as part of the trade dispute with China, which prohibits U.S. companies from doing business with the telco giant. Huawei can continue to provide security and functional updates to mobile phones that were already on the market in May 2019. However, Huawei no longer gets new licenses from Google. All future cell phones and tablets can only use the limited open source version of Android.