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Huawei Borrows Heavily From iPad Pro With New 'MatePad Pro,' 'Harmony OS,' and 'M-Pencil'

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In an attempt to rival the iPad Pro and iPadOS, Huawei today launched three new tablets as part of its "MatePad" tablet lineup, including a new 10.8-inch and 12.6-inch MatePad Pro and the MatePad 11.

matepad-pro-the-verge.jpg
Image Credit: The Verge​

As The Verge reports, all three devices are the first Huawei tablets to run its own "HarmonyOS" operating system, announced earlier in 2019. In addition, the smaller 10.8-inch MatePad Pro and MatePad 11 also feature Huawei's own custom-designed Kirin processor, rather than processors made by Snapdragon.

Due to political tensions, Huawei devices are stripped of privileges usually accustomed to Android devices, such as Google apps for users. HarmonyOS includes Huawei's "AppGallery," the equivalent of Apple's App Store and Google's Play Store for finding, distributing, and downloading apps and games.

In terms of specific end-user features, HarmonyOS borrows many ideas from Apple's iPadOS. Alongside the new tablets, Huawei also offers the "M-Pencil" stylus, drawing stark similarities to the Apple Pencil. HarmonyOS and M-Pencil are integrated software side by a feature called "FreeNote," which automatically translates written text in any text filed across the system into typed text. The feature is identical to Scribble, introduced in iPadOS 14 last year.

Screenshots of HarmonyOS shared on Twitter by leaker Evan Blass also showcase visual similarities to Apple's iPadOS.


Alongside the new tablets, Huawei also updated the M-Pencil stylus with improved and lower latency of 9ms, matching improvements made to the Apple Pencil with iPadOS 13. The new tablets have yet to be given a release date in Europe, but the 12.6-inch MatePad Pro will launch in China on June 10 for around $790.

Article Link: Huawei Borrows Heavily From iPad Pro With New 'MatePad Pro,' 'Harmony OS,' and 'M-Pencil'
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/02/huawei-matepad-pro-harmony-os-m-pencil/
prombough

prombough

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Apr 29, 2014
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From past reports, there is a lot different in Harmony OS under the hood that could allow it to compete with Android. I for one would love to see it work out for them, and I never thought of the use of it in a tablet before, which is exactly where Android sucks. About whether and where it "looks" like Apple or Android, who cares. They always copy from each other, even rip off each other, that's pretty normal. An interesting experiment I say. Will be interesting to see how it plays out in China. Though I personally have no use for any non-Apple portable device, such is the advantage of being in the Apple ecosystem in the first place. (Now... let's see if Apple Music and Apple TV will also come to Harmony OS!)
 
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Chompineer

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Mutepointer said:
Will be buying 4 matpad pro’s for all my family.
Competition is good and hopefully Apple will now wake up and smell the great tasty coffee ☕️
Click to expand...
What coffee? Android tablets all fundamentally suck, because Google doesn't care about them. There's little app support. The hardware can be the best, but if there's only poor/scattered software support, it's not going to do well.

iamgalt said:
I think you mean COMPLETE disregard for all copyright laws.
Click to expand...

AFAIK there's a little. Back when I worked for BMW, we had our share of quarrels with China, and IIRC our solution was to essentially licence out rights to build to clone factories.
 
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Sasparilla

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Well, since the tablet environment in Android is one place where the app environment is not close to what its like for the phones, Huawei may be able to get some (not alot) traction in that part of the market outside of China. Seems like a long slog up a mountain though (no Google app store).
 
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MauiPa

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Apr 18, 2018
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prombough said:
From past reports, there is a lot different in Harmony OS under the hood that could allow it to compete with Android. I for one would love to see it work out for them, and I never thought of the use of it in a tablet before, which is exactly where Android sucks. About whether and where it "looks" like Apple or Android, who cares. They always copy from each other, even rip off each other, that's pretty normal. An interesting experiment I say. Will be interesting to see how it plays out in China. Though I personally have no use for any non-Apple portable device, such is the advantage of being in the Apple ecosystem in the first place. (Now... let's see if Apple Music and Apple TV will also come to Harmony OS!)
Click to expand...
you make excellent points, it's just the humor of it to not even pretend to make it look different. I wouldn't count them out. china had the world's largest economy for centuries. The Kirin processor has a lot of potential, and if they are incentivized to make it competitive-it will be.

Just a point of reference to really bad US policy, when they came up with "punishments" on trade for China, all that accomplished was to energize the world's largest country to get more competitive. so get ready for it, china will be surpassing us in technology in a few years.
 
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