Three geeks review Huawei’s IDEOS S7 Slim

When Huawei’s IDEOS S7 Slim arrived there was an instant cool factor to it – and competition to be the one to get to review it. Our compromise was to set three people on it – two came out with ‘boos’, and the third named it ‘Boo-boo’.

The tech geek

The S7 Slim is Hauwei’s entry level tablet – and it works as such. It is cheaper than your usual tablet and has the advantage of a removable battery.

It is 3G compatible, extremely pretty and achieves what it sets out to do – though with its low pixel count you can get some slight pixilation on web page text. The thing is I am not convinced on it as a product.

The touch screen keyboard is a bit of a mission to use – I found that half the time I ended up with duplicated letters or typos. I don’t have large hands, but  found a lot of instances of neighbouring keys found their way into my text.

The second problem is the very practical question of; “What do you do with this?”

In terms of hardware it is not the most impressive tablet on the market. It will support games but if you are a gamer, you’d already have a PC, and likely at least one console capable of doing it better.

My hope was with it being the weather for early nights; one could play games while in bed – but Facebook games proved to be just too much hassle.

I found myself constantly wiping the screen clear of finger prints as well. I know it isn’t a popular sentiment but I am one of the rare people who prefer the ability to use a stylus.

It can be used to read e-Books – and I found it worked very well for that. The trouble here is you can get e-book readers which do the same thing with e-ink, which isn’t as rough on your eyes.

Its portability is nice – but it isn’t really much of a selling point in an era in which you have a much more portable smart phone. It is nifty and cute and if you want to try a tablet it is a good introduction to them as a whole, but I personally didn’t find it all that useful.

The stealth geek

I was excited when I got the Huawei S7 Slim tablet to test drive. The thing looked cute, design-wise, until I tried to plug it onto my computer through its USB cable that comes with it. My computer couldn't locate the damn thing, and it wasn't automatically picked up like all USB thingamajigs.

I told myself that I will get content onto a memory stick and then transfer to the Huawei S7 Slim - but hey the damn thing doesn't have a USB port. Now I was seriously disappointed. So I thought if you cannot transfer content straight from your computer and there is no USB port, what does that live me with. I looked for an SD card slot and find one - but it was for a micro-SD card slot.

Okay who buys micro-SD cards?

We mostly use them on our cellular phones - and they come with the gadgets.

I took one look at this thing and thought, I can't go and buy a micro-SD card, a card reader/adaptor to get content from my computer to the micro-SD car and then to the Huawei S7 Slim. So I just didn't bother.

The phone geek

When I first saw this gadget, the only word going through my mind was ‘sexy’

Being a technophobe, I thought 'oh gosh, how do you handle this machine'.

After all, it has the ability to make calls, but at the same time, it is like a mini computer.

Well, the S7 Slim is super easy to operate!

The touch-screen makes it easy to alternate between the preloaded applications, typing messages or e-mails, making phone calls or surfing the web.

The amount of fun you can have with the S7 Slim is endless – a music player, two cameras to capture your favourite moments and a video camera. And all of these are just a click away from uploading to your favourite social networks.

The RSS feeds helped me keep up to date on what is going on in the world and the maps makes sure I don’t ever get lost.

My favourite app by far is Aldiko, an e-reader app which allows you to shop and download your favourite reads.

With the screen flips depending on the direction in which you are using the tablet, it is so easy to read you favourite book.

The only problem I did find playing with my new favourite gadget is that it's too big - a friend says it's bigger than my face.

Suppose there's always a small price to pay when playing with the new gadgets.