The Huawei Mediapad X2 is a device that looks very much like a small tablet with a 7.0-inch screen, but strays into phablet territory by being voice-capable. As such, it is perhaps easier to imagine as a tablet with voice functionality rather than a phablet simply because of the concept of putting a device with a 7.0-inch screen up to your face, although Huawei have been marketing the device as a smartphone.
The Mediapad X2 uses a 1,920 by 1,200 pixel, 7.0-inch display. Under the skin, it’s based around Huawei’s own Kirin 930 System-on-Chip, SoC. This is a 64-bit, eight core processor clocked at up to 2.0 GHz paired up with the Mali-T628 GPU. The Mediapad X2 is available in two colors (silver and rose gold) and versions: one with 2 GB of RAM and 16 GB of local storage and the second comes with 3 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. Both variants come with a MicroSD slot that can take cards of up to 128 GB in capacity. There’s a rear-mounted 13MP camera and a front facing 5MP unit. It has LTE Category 6 wireless connectivity, and is just 7.3mm thin complete with a 5,000 mAh battery, which Huawei claims will give 60 hours of music playback, 12 hours of watching videos or 15 hours of Internet browsing. The Mediapad X2 runs Android 5.0 Lollipop under Huawei’s Emotion UI, version 3.0, which is cleaner and simpler compared with previous iterations.
The Mediapad X2 has now been priced in a couple of European countries, Italy and Germany. Prices appear to be a little keener in Germany with the 2 GB model coming in at €349, the equivalent of £370. The more expensive 3 GB / 32 GB model is another €50, at €399 or $420 equivalent. In Italy, the 16 GB model is also available at €399. We believe the Mediapad X2 will make its way across Europe but at this moment in time, it’s unclear if it will make it across to the United States of America.
If it were, would you be tempted by the Mediapad X2? Would you use it as a smartphone and get used to the large size of the device? Do you so rarely make calls that this would not bother you? Or would you instead use the Mediapad X2 as a connected tablet and use a data SIM in the phablet? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
