The worldwide demand for tablets is being consumed by the ever-expanding smartphone screens. India, which is currently the only market with positive growth in terms of smartphone demand, has also seen a rise in the sales of LTE-enabled tablets. Among the leaders of this growth are Lenovo, Samsung, iBall, and Apple. Huawei is not counted among the top tablet brands in India in terms of sales but it has been to dig some space for itself in the niche with tablet launches. Today, Huawei announced the MediaPad M5 Lite in India with quad speakers, a 10.1-inch display, support for Huawei's M-Pen Lite, and more.

Huawei is billing the MediaPad M5 Lite as an all-round media consumption device. The MediaPad M6 is already available in Huawei's home turf, China, but those models are meant to cater to users looking for iPad alternatives in the flagship segment. The MediaPad M5 Lite, on the other hand, is designed for the mid-range and the "Lite" label rightly justifies so. In spite of that tag, the tablet is built solidly and uses a metal chassis for high durability.

The MediaPad M5 Lite is powered by the octa-core HiSilicon Kirin 659 chipset along with Mali T830 MP2 GPU. There's a 3GB RAM hooked with 32GB of internal storage, which can be expanded up to 256GB.

Huawei is using a 10.1-inch Full HD IPS LCD display on the MediaPad M5 Lite. This is enhanced through software with the ClariVu 5.0 technology which improves the color saturation and the contrast on the display.

The viewing experience on the Huawei tablet is complemented by the four speakers along each of the corners. These speakers have been engineered by Huawei and audio brand Harman Kardon together and the former's Histen 5.0 audio technology ensures a 3D surround sound experience. Further, the tablet features 8MP cameras on both - the front and the back of the tablet – out which the rear camera supports autofocus.

huawei mediapad m5 lite

Huawei has added a huge 7500mAh battery inside the MediaPad M5 Lite and there's an 18W charger bundled in the box and it runs on the company's QuickCharge protocol.

In terms of software, the Huawei tablet runs EMUI 8.0 which is based on Android 8.0 Oreo. With the ongoing controversy about Huawei being barred from pushing updated Google Play Services to its devices may prevent it from rolling out Android Pie to the tablet.

In India, the Huawei MediaPad M5 Lite is priced at ₹21,990 (~$310) and will be available in India exclusively via Flipkart starting September 30th. The Huawei M-Pen Lite is free with the tablet.

Note: Huawei has stopped providing official bootloader unlock codes for its devices. Therefore, the bootloaders of their devices cannot be unlocked, which means that users cannot root or install custom ROMs.