Finally, we have the M-Pencil. The Huawei MatePad 11 ships with the M-Pencil and we do appreciate what Huawei is trying to achieve with this accessory, it still has a long way to go in order to get even close to the almighty Apple Pencil. Sure, basic interactions with the UI elements work great, but when we tried to use the pencil with some graphics apps, the pencil felt out of its depth and it makes us feel that we are still maybe a few M-Pencil iterations away from seeing an actual competitive stylus for the MatePad series. That said, Huawei has a great platform to build around and we will be monitoring the progress of the M-Pencil with keen interest.
In Conclusion
If you want to do some quick browsing and social media work on the Huawei MatePad 11, you’ll be most happy with the hardware in this tablet, which is very good. It’s hard to do anything else with this device. Yes, you do get some of the popular apps like TikTok and Snapchat vi from the Huawei App Store, but the overall situation is still not the most elegant and user-friendly.
APK sideloading to add certain programs and then manually maintaining them isn’t something that most Android users would rush to embrace, and it’s not something that most developers would either. Though the number of HarmonyOS devices continues to grow, the dearth of mainstream applications available on the Huawei AppGallery remains a challenge that will take time to resolve.
If only it had been possible to get the Huawei MatePad 11 to run Android 11 or 12 on it, it would have been a fantastic option for those who prefer the tablet form factor. However, with HarmonyOS 2.0 running on it, this device isn’t yet a significant alternative to the massive Google infrastructure that already exists.
Those who dislike Google are likely to already own iPads, and only a small number of people in the Western world would prefer Huawei over Google or Apple. HarmonyOS may possibly have a bright future in China, but it needs an absolute miracle to cause waves in any other market.
