For the first time in a very long while, there’s a new device announcement from Huawei Mobile Kenya.
Rocked by the limitations imposed on its global operations by the United States government, Huawei has gone slow on new device releases around the world with Kenya not being spared. This has been especially so for its smartphone segment since the brand has been actively releasing new wearable devices to the local market.
Even this new device we are getting is not a smartphone. It’s a tablet, the Huawei MatePad 11.
The tablet was announced 3 months ago.
In Kenya, the Huawei MatePad 11 is going for Kshs 60,000 at Huawei Experience Stores and for around the same price at a host of other local outlets both online and offline.
The tablet features an 11-inch (they prefer to say 10.95″) WQXGA display with an 87% screen-to-body ratio (bezels on the lower side, there’s just enough for you to comfortably hold the device). The display has the distinction of being the very first from Huawei on a tablet to feature a 120Hz refresh tablet.
The device is powered by a Snapdragon 865 chipset from Qualcomm, an 8-megapixel front-facing camera for selfies and video calls, a 13-megapixel sensor for those not ashamed of taking photos on a tablet, and, for its specific use case that we approve of, can come in handy for document scanning.
There’s 6 gigabytes of memory and base storage starts at 64GB. We are not sure what memory configuration one is getting at Kshs 60,000.
A 7,250mAh battery takes care of the expansive display and firepower under the hood.
The MatePad 11 runs on Harmony OS. Specifically, Harmony OS 2. Harmony OS is Huawei’s own operating system – still based on Android.
As such, it has a couple of customizations made possible with the use of Harmony OS. Like the ability to run two instances of the same app as well as features that we can find elsewhere like multi-window. These customizations are also how the tablet gets to play nice with the M-Pencil, Huawei’s own stylus that, when paired with the already iPad-looking MatePad 11 and keyboard, makes visible Huawei’s intentions with the device.
Other features include the audio from the device’s quad-speaker setup tuned by Harman/Kardon (what Huawei calls Histen Audio) and a similar number of microphones to continue the Zoom world we are living in.
