BARCELONA -- In the weeks leading to the Mobile World Congress -- which officially kicks off Monday, Feb. 22 -- Huawei teased a stylus-themed announcement.
Turns out, the company brought one of the most versatile styli we've seen, together with a gorgeous, ultra-thin 12-inch Windows tablet, the largest Huawei has ever launched.
The Huawei MateBook is a tablet with a detachable, faux-leather cover/keyboard hybrid, which positions it as a direct Surface/Surface Pro competitor. But, at 6.9mm, it's so incredibly thin that it's much more a tablet than any of the Surfaces we've seen.
It has a gorgeous, 2K screen that takes up 84% of the device's front side. It's made of aluminum, weighs 640 grams, and has a battery that provides up to 9 hours of full HD playback, according to Huawei. There's a fingerprint scanner on the device's side; I haven't had a chance to test it out myself, but Huawei claims it's very fast and reliable.
The detachable cover has huge keyboard keys -- much bigger than the ones on my MacBook air -- and a glass trackpad. It bends a little when you type, but Huawei claims they'll iron that issue out before the device hits the market.
Now, about that stylus, called the MatePen. Besides operating as a regular stylus, it also has a built-in laser pointer for presentations on the rear side, and two additional buttons on the front, which can be used to perform additional operations, such as launching a particular application. Thanks to built-in sensors, you don't even have to touch the screen to do stuff -- just bring it close to the screen, and the pointer will show up, and you can then use the button to perform tasks. Finally, it senses 2,048 levels of pressure, meaning you'll get different results in certain apps depending on how hard you press.
The MateBook will come in a variety of configurations, starting with a $699 variant, which has an Intel Core m3 processor, 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. The top configuration will have an Intel Core m7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, but it will cost a far more prohibitive $1,599.
The Huawei MateBook will be available in Asia, Europe, and North America in the "coming months," in two colors: grey and gold.
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Topics Huawei Mobile World Congress
