Is Huawei working on a Microsoft Surface Pro competitor?

By Brad Bourque February 15, 2016

what to expect at mwc 2017

Check out our complete coverage of MWC 2023

huawei mwc matebook rumors mediapad m2 0085 — Malarie Gokey/Digital Trends

Update: Yep. Huawei unveiled the MateBook on Sunday. Here’s our complete hands-on review.

What does Huawei have up its sleeve for the upcoming Mobile World Congress? It’s hard to say exactly, but chances are it has something to do with a stylus. That’s what the latest invite to the Sunday, February 21 event is suggesting.

The invitation, which was shared on Weibo (a Chinese competitor to Twitter) by Huawei CEO Richard Yu, shares the tagline “The new style of business” as written by a stylus. While that doesn’t officially confirm anything, the two elements together indicate some sort of business-minded detachable, likely a Surface Pro 4 competitor.

So what exactly might Huawei’s newest product look like? Well, we know it’s likely to opt for Windows 10 instead of Android, considering the Chinese brand added the Mate 8, a large smartphone/phablet, to its lineup very recently. That means a larger device, likely in the 12-13 inch range, will surface from the brand before MWC this year. Huawei-Styleofbusiness

Importantly, Huawei trademarked the name “Matebook” back in October of 2015. While that isn’t a lot to go off, trademarking a name is often a very early step in revealing product details. In this case, it’s just tipping us off to the fact that there’s likely a laptop or detachable of some sort in pre-production, but that’s about it.

It’s not all that surprising more manufacturers are making moves into the detachable/convertible market. Samsung was one of the first, unveiling the Tab Pro S at CES 2016 with a full version of Windows 10 and detachable keyboard. The 12-inch form factor, paired up with a Core M, is an increasingly appealing option with the improvement of the low power chips and rise of higher-resolution displays.

Whatever it is Huawei plans to unveil, we’ll know soon enough. The company’s Mobile World Congress press event is scheduled for 14:00 Central European Time on Sunday, February 21st, just before the convention’s official launch. If you’re curious about the gritty details of that press conference, make sure to stay tuned to Digital Trends for all your Mobile World Congress coverage.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Brad Bourque is a native Portlander, devout nerd, and craft beer enthusiast. He studied creative writing at Willamette…

Mobile

Does the Huawei P50 Pro take better pics than the Pixel 6 Pro?

Huawei P50 Pro and Pixel 6 Pro cameras seen from the back.

It wasn’t that long ago that the camera on a Huawei smartphone was considered one of the best in the business. Its most recent release is the Huawei P50 Pro, and while the camera looks impressive again, the device itself has been overshadowed by the lack of 5G and the continued inability to use Google Mobile Services.

However, if the camera remains one of the very best there is, you could feasibly work your way around the lack of Google Play, and arguably, do you really even need 5G yet? To see if the camera on the P50 Pro is worth making a few changes to your mobile lifestyle, we put it up against the Google Pixel 6 Pro. It’s a serious challenge, as the Pixel’s camera is superb. Here’s how it fared.
The cameras
Let’s deal with the specification before looking at the photos. The Huawei P50 Pro has a 50-megapixel main camera with optical image stabilization (OIS) and an f/1/8 aperture, joined by a 64MP periscope zoom also with OIS and a 3.5x optical zoom. There’s also a 13MP wide-angle camera and a 40MP monochrome camera. The Pixel 6 Pro also has a 50MP main camera with optical image stabilization, plus a 48MP telephoto camera for a 4x optical zoom and a 12MP wide-angle camera.

Computing

Is the Microsoft Surface Pro 8 for Business good for business?

Surface Pro 8 tablet view with Windows 11 screen.

There's no doubt that Microsoft's premier detachable tablet, the Surface Pro 8, is an excellent 2-in-1 for consumers. It's fast, has a spectacular 120Hz display, supports inking with haptic feedback, and functions as both a competent clamshell laptop and a phenomenal Windows 11 tablet.

But how well does it work for business users? The short answer is "very well," but read on for some important considerations when using the Surface Pro 8 as a business machine.
Surface Pro 8 for Business

Mobile

Testing Super Device, Huawei’s ‘pain-free’ multidevice link

Huawei MateBook E connections.

Wirelessly connecting different devices that you own together, whether it’s for collaboration or to simply transfer files between them, should be quite simple, but often it’s the opposite. Huawei announced its Super Device wireless connection system during Mobile World Congress 2022, which aims to solve the problems many of us have with cross-device syncing, and I’ve given it a try.

After a few hours, I was left asking myself the question, why can’t there just be one way to reliably connect things together without a cable?
What is Super Device?
Get past all the buzzwords in the promotional material, and you’ll eventually find out Super Device is, at its most basic, a way to connect multiple devices together without resorting to a cable. It’s part of Huawei’s ecosystem, and, therefore only applies to Huawei products, so you can’t use Super Device if you own a smartphone or computer from a different brand. You need to be fully on board with Huawei devices and own a Huawei smartphone, computer, tablet, true wireless headphones, and so on, but this isn’t anything new: Apple’s AirDrop only works with Apple hardware, for example.