The Huawei MatePad Pro is an Android-based high-endtablet manufactured by Huawei as part of its Huawei Mate series, succeeding the Huawei MatePad. It was announced on 25 November 2019 and was released on 12 December 2019. The Huawei MatePad Pro comes with considerable improvements over its predecessor i.e. the Huawei MatePad. Improvements include a better display, faster processor and better-charging speed. The tablet was met with positive reviews from critics, with most of the praise directed towards the phones aspect ratio, vibrant display, sound and its multitasking capabilities but criticism was poured at the devices mediocre camera and lack of a wide variety of apps, the latter of which is the result of the China–United States trade war. The U.S. banned Huawei from using Google Services by putting Huawei on its "Entity List". This then prompted Huawei to start using their own in-house apps from the EMUI suite.
Specifications
Hardware
The MatePad Pro has a 10.8 inch LCDQHD display featuring 16 million colours on a 16:10 aspect ratio resulting in the screen-to-body ratio to be approximately ~86.5% with a 90 Hz refresh rate. In-house, the tablet features one of the latest Kirin SoC's, the HiSilicon Kirin 9905G octa-core processor, which is backed by a Neural Processing Unit that optimizes the devices speed and functionality using artificial intelligence. Also 6/8GBs of RAM are used to hold volatile memory. For graphic rendering, the MatePad Pro has one of the latest Mali GPU's, the Mali G76-MP16, which is powered by the non-removable Li-Polymer 7250mAh battery. Unfortunately, the device has no headphone jack but Huawei compensated for this by adding a 4 stereo audio channel. It has a glass front, aluminium back and an aluminium frame. It supports Fast Charging of up to 40W, Fast Wireless Charging of up to 15W and Reverse Wireless Charging of up to 7.5W. The Huawei MatePad Pro comes in a 128GB, 256GB and 512GB variant. Its storage can be expanded via Huawei's proprietary Nano Memory of up to 256GBs. Available colours for the tablet are, Orange, Green, Gray and White.
Camera
The main camera is 13MPs with an aperture of f/1.8. Features of the rear camera are, PDAF, an LED flash, HDR and panorama. It can video 4K@30fps and 1080p@30fps. The front camera is a miniature punch-hole on the top right corner of the device and is 8MPs with an aperture of f/2.0 featuring HDR and video recording of 1080p quality @30fps.
Software
Due to the China–United States trade war, Huawei stopped installing Google Services on their latest devices and so started promoting the use of their own software, EMUI and Huawei Mobile Services. The MatePad Pro comes with EMUI 10.1 based on the source code of Android 10 and offers a new Always On Display, a replacement assistant to the Google Assistant named Celia and a new video chat application called Huawei Meetime. The tablet also supports multitasking of up to two apps and it is capable of downloading desktop applications like FireFox which wouldn't readily be supported on a tablet or smartphone.
Reception
The MatePad Pro was generally well received by critics who praised the devices 16:10 aspect ratio, colourful display, fast wireless charging feature, its seamless multitasking capabilities and its desktop-like experience. Although, reviewers gave the camera and the devices lack of a wide variety app selection a negative welcome.
