Huawei Ideos S7 Slim goes on sale

CHINESE NETWORKING GIANT Huawei has launched its Ideos S7 Slim tablet with prices starting at £238.

The tablet comes in two models, WiFi and WiFi+3G, with the price jumping to £276 for the privilege of 3G. It runs Android 2.2 Froyo and has a 7in screen and a Qualcomm 1GHz processor.

Online retailer Clove said, "Huawei has released the new IDEOS S7 Slim tablet. It features a vivid 7 inch display and is compact enough to take anywhere with you."

It has the name 'Slim' because it is 3mm thinner than the original Ideos S7 at 12.5mm. Ironically, the older model costs more at £286. Other features include a 3.2MP camera, a HDMI port, Bluetooth and GPS.

If you're thinking that the Ideos S7 Slim is a bit pricey for a tablet running a pretty old version of Android then you might want to wait for Huawei's Mediapad to arrive. The firm claims it is the "world's first 7in Android 3.2 Honeycomb tablet".

Neither Clove nor Huawei has been able to give us a date when the Mediapad will be available but we expect that it will tip up before Christmas. When it does appear it will come with a 7in IPS LCD screen in a 10.5mm thick body.

It will come with a HDMI port, a 5MP rear facing camera and a 1.3MP front facing camera in WiFi or WiFi+3G models. It's bound to be more expensive than the Ideos S7 Slim but we think it will be worth the wait and extra pennies. µ