Hands On: Budget Android Tablet, Huawei S7 Slim

24.03.2011

The S7 tablet runs Android 2.2, but you won't guess that solely from looking at it. That's because Huawei has designed a custom skin it dubs the Emotion interface. While the moniker and concept emulates what HTC has done with its Sense interface, Huawei's ambitions seem a bit less complex. The S7's interface tweaks are designed to add useful widgets and make the home screen easier to navigate by clumping like apps into a tabbed organization. For example, the home screen has a pretty display of the weather, integrated into the clock area. Along the bottom of the screen are a row of tabs, one each for content like Entertainment (which contains widgets for music and videos) and communications (which includes an e-mail widget, and app shortcuts for contacts, a dialer (which may not be on the U.S. version), and a call log).

Some other miscellaneous notes about the S7 Slim: It has a rear-facing 2-megapixel camera, and a front-facing 1.03 megapixel camera. This model has a slimmer, lighter design than the company's first tablet, available since last November at Best Buy Mobile; it also has a bigger battery with a longer-life battery.

Huawei says it will have a 10-inch Honeycomb tablet later this year.