A couple of unreleased tablets bearing the model numbers ‘SHT-AL09’ and ‘CMR-AL09’ have been recently discovered in Huawei’s UAProf documents, suggesting that the Chinese OEM might be working on a new MediaPad M4 tablet series. Although the UAProf documents don’t outright confirm these two products as tablets, each device has a display resolution of 2560 by 1600 pixels resulting in an aspect ratio of 16:10 that’s non-existent in the world of smartphones.
In addition to the display resolution, the UAProf documents also reveal that both devices take advantage of Bluetooth 4.2 connectivity and rely on Android 8.0 Oreo, though the OS might have a custom Android skin. Having said that, there is a possibility that the SHT-AL09 and CMR-AL09 model numbers might become known as the Huawei MediaPad M4 and MediaPad M4 Lite, respectively, making them direct sequels to MediaPad M3 series featuring three models launched across a timespan of eight months. Specifically, the Huawei MediaPad M3 8.4 was released in October 2016, featuring an 8.4-inch display bearing a resolution of 2560 x 1600, same as the new units found in UAProf. This June, the company launched two MediaPad M3 Lite models, one bearing an 8-inch display with a resolution of 1920 x 1200, and the other featuring a larger 10.1-inch panel with the same pixel count. Also worth noting is that the first Huawei MediaPad M3 (8.4) ran Android 6.0 Marshmallow out of the box, whereas the two models released in 2017 featured Android 7.0 Nougat. With that in mind, it’s easy to assume that a direct sequel in the form of the Huawei MediaPad M4 or MediaPad M4 Lite will employ a newer OS version, namely Android 8.0 Oreo.
No other details have been revealed by the UAProf documents and there’s still no information to go by in regards to the availability of these two tablets. But seeing how they both offer higher-resolution displays compared to the MediaPad M3 models launched in 2017, it’s likely that the model numbers ‘SHT-AL09’ and ‘CMR-AL09’ will employ a more powerful chipset than the Snapdragon 435, or perhaps Huawei will instead rely on one of its own HiSilicon Kirin processors. The company may debut its new tablet offerings at CES 2018 in the first half of January.
