Huawei MediaPad 7 Vogue is a vast low-res phone, UK-bound
Huawei's invading the UK with a gigantic 7-inch 'phone' -- really a tablet with a huge battery that you can make calls on.
Having dialled back the mahoosive on its slinky Ascend P6 -- freshly reviewed here -- Huawei is sending another phone to the UK. I say 'phone': the MediaPad 7 Vogue is a 7-inch monster.
But it is technically a phone because it can make calls, although like the Asus Fonepad, you'll look like a Lilliputian if you use it that way. Huawei reckons the Vogue is for "fashionistas, technology seekers and entertainment junkies" but you can hardly see someone fishing this out of their Fendi bag at the Ivy, can you?
Never mind the marketing tosh though -- if it's cheap, and you want a tablet you can make the occasional emergency call on, job's a good'un. The Vogue's chief attribute is a huge 4,100mAh battery, which should keep even that colossal screen going for hours -- or 20 hours of calling, Huawei boasts.
The major drawback is the screen itself, a dreary 1,024x600-pixel affair, offering a scant 170 pixels per inch -- barely more than the original 6-year-old iPhone, although it's better than the non-retina iPads.
It does have a quad-core processor, running at a fairly sedate 1.2GHz, but it doesn't offer 4G. It's not staggeringly thin at 9.5mm and it's reasonably light at 335g. That doesn't compare too favourably with the 7.9-inch iPad mini, which is 7.2mm thick and 308g, despite its bigger screen.
Nevertheless, it should be cheap when it hits the UK, which Huawei assures me it will, although not for a while. For comparison, the Fonepad is only £180.
What do you make of this bombastic blower? Do you love giant-sized versions of things that make you look small? I like holding those tiny bottles of wine you get on aeroplanes and pretending I'm a jetsetting giant. But never mind me, the comments are down there and the standard-sized Facebook page is over here.