Huawei Ideos S7 Slim Review – Budget Tablet

During Safaricom data upgrade launch, i tweeted that  “Whatever people say about Huawei, they are slowly penetrating Kenyan market through safaricom” The reactions from some of the people who follow me on twitter suggested that Huawei is already a big player in Kenyan market and it is just a matter of time before the big boys and girls got overthrown.. yeah not Gadaffi’s style but..

Huawei and Safaricom will be launching the 7-inch Ideos S7 Slim to local consumers in the  next coming days. I have had the previledge to play around with the gadget in the last one week or so courtersy of Safaricom.

The S7 slim tablet 7-inch screen has a capacitive touch screen resolution of 480×800. That sounds very low compared with the rivals but i like the display and its 16:9 aspect ratio is great. By the way such a resolution is now found on many high-end smartphones which adds more doubts on my mind when comes to tablets. Are they a passing cloud and the world will move towards more capable smartphones?

Design

They call it slim and true to the word the device is sleek, 12mm thick and very light at 400g. You can pocket the device and easily control it with one hand.  From the front, there are three touch sensitive keys, back, menu and home buttons. Apart from that the remaining is about the shiny screen. On the side of the device there is a microSD card slot and HDMI connection port although i have not seen the cable to support this, may be it is just for the show. There are power button and volume controller on the side, easily noticeable

Operating System

When i tweeted about my fisrt impression of the Idoes s7 slim, everybody came back with the message “check out devices running on honeycomb” . Yes, i have done that but first let talk about  Android version 2.2 Froyo.  The S7 runs Android 2.2 Froyo and comes in with a number of  applications like Gtalk, Gmail from Android market.

Processor

It has  1Ghz single core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.  Just by the way,  at the begining August Qualcomm announced plan to use simple names (S1, S2, S3 and S4) for Snapdragon processors so that the public can better understand the products. The bigger the number is, the more advanced functions that the processor has, which means S4 can perform better than S3.

Data

For the internet the tablet  provides  all of the usual connectivity options, 3G (yes through Safaricom 3G network) , WiFi (great connection at iHub, Nailab and m:Lab), and those in the network still using GPRS and EDGE like Yu and Airtel, you are covered too. . The S7 accept a Sim card for 3G purposes but at the same time can be used as phone. That means you have  7-inch phone. But on serious note, it is too cumbersome to be used as a phone .

Camera

It has 3.2 MP camera on the back with WVGA video capture capability and a 0.3MP VGA front-facing camera.  The video formats is limited to H.264 and Mpeg4 (720p). Disappointing for such shining device  aimed at media consumption.

Music

Great sound quality although with only 4GB internal storage capacity, one has to invest on the memory card.  When comes to music it supports MP3, AAC, PCM and AMR audio files

Storage capacity

The onboard storage is only about 5Gb, actually it is 4.67 GB. The great thing is you can expand that through microSD slot provide to 32GB. Be ready to buy the memory card.

Price

This is my favorite part.  S7 is a budget tablet, and that budget is Ksh.39,999 ($.430) from Safaricom shops.