Huawei officially unveils the Mediapad M2 tablet, the tablet version of the Huawei P8

Earlier today at a conference at the International Art Academy in Beijing, Huawei quietly announced the MediaPad M2 tablet, a significant update over the Huawei MediaPad M1 slab that the company launched last year.

Back in May, a report revealed that the Huawei MediaPad M2 was being showcased in France, and the manufacturer also teased the tablet in a short promo launched last month, but now the tablet has been officially unveiled by Huawei, and will soon start reach the Chinese market.

The display is an 8-inch panel with a resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels at an aspect ratio of 16:10 and a PPI of 275. Under the hood, Huawei has fitted in its in-house Kirin 930 octa-core (4 Cortex A53 cores running at 2GHz and 4 Cortex A53 cores clocked at 1GHz) chipset, one that is paired with 3GB of RAM. This is the same CPU, GPU, RAM, and screen resolution setup as on the Huawei P8, meaning that the performance should be comparable. When we reviewed the Huawei P8, we found that the company's flagship is very snappy when performing basic operations, although gaming performance could have been improved.

The similarities between the Huawei M2 and the Huawei P8 extend to the storage size options. You can choose between 16GB or 64GB of internal storage size. In the camera department, the M2 comes with an 8MP primary camera and a 5MP secondary shooter.

Like its predecessor, the Huawei M2 tablet comes with a metallic body. This time around, however, Huawei went all in on the metal, claiming that the body of the M2 is 99.5% metal. The body of the tablet is just 7.8mm thick, and the thin metal bezels lend a compact look to the 8-inch tablet. We'll have to get the device our in our hands before commenting any further, but the Huawei M8 certainly looks like a compact and well-built mid-sized slab.

Other specs include a 4800mAh battery, optional LTE connectivity, as well as dual 1W speakers and Harman Kardon's Clari-Fi sound technology. On the software side, the Huawei M2 runs EMUI 3.0, Huawei's proprietary implementation of Android 5.0 Lollipop.

In China, the tablet will go on sale in just a couple of days, on July 16. Prices stand at 1588 Yuan for 16GB Wi-Fi version, 1888 for the 64GB Wi-Fi version, 1888 Yuan for the 16GB LTE version, and 2288 Yuan for the 64GB LTE version. Chances are that the tablet will be sold in most of Huawei's traditional markets around Asia and Europe, but no further information is available at the moment.