In a span of around 8 months, Huawei Philippines still gave some importance on Android tablets and it is the third one and it is now their most affordable so far.
Meet Huawei Mediapad T3 8. Unlike in the two previous releases in that white box, the Chinese tech giant did some refresh with this mild blue green-like colored box.
At the front, you can see the earpiece for calls which also acts as a speaker if you will gonna consume multimedia without earphones/headphones with it's 8 inch 800 x 1280 display, 2 MP f/2.2 front cam and Huawei branding. The display quality is a-ok for me in viewing angles and when we did some binge watching.
The back has 5 MP f/2.4 back camera with another Huawei branding. The majority of back cover was made from metal with some plastic trimming at the top and bottom which adds some grip if you will gonna use it on one hand.
The top portion has 3.5 mm audio jack while the right portion is kinda jampacked with volume rocker, power/unlock button and hybrid dual nano SIM tray (1 nano sim + micro SD or 2 nano sims)
The bottom part is the micro USB port and pin hole microphone
The package comes with user manual, 5V 1A charger and micro USB cable. No protective case and earphones which is fine for us.
We thought at first that the info online might be wrong but not as we checked that the tablet has EMUI 5.1.3 based on Android 7 Nougat which is the biggest drawback of this device in the age that we are already seeing Android 10 phones and tablets and even at least Android 9 TV boxes. The device comes with Qualcomm Snapdragon 425 SoC which we already seen years ago too. To be fair, this EMUI was decent in most of the multitasking that we did but we have to watch out as the PH verison only has 2 GB RAM and 16 GB ROM. Coz of the processor's limitations, we can only run offline videos up to Full HD. Good thing, you can also implement the app drawer mode
Connectivity was very good on this device just like in most Huawei devices that we handled from texts, calls, mobile data, WiFi, GPS, OTG and Bluetooth. LTE was stable too.
As we got a hint for it's SoC, we checked some benchmarking apps and it scored at over 63,000 on Antutu Go. Only the accelerometer and sound sensors were there inside of the device.
Aside from the connection, battery will be another thing in check for Mediapad T3 8 with 18 hours and 59 minutes in our video battery rundown test with it's 4,800 mAh battery. Using it as a daily driver (yes, having that capability to put a sim card) can last us usually in 1.25 days.
In extras, the loudspeaker when we are in binge watching mode struggled in sound quality. We also noticed in earphone/headphone mode that it's default volume was on the low level so it will be difficult to some of your audio products. Good thing that the Bluetooth audio was very good on T3 8. As Huawei only provided this device with 5V 1A charger, expect to fully charge this one for over 4 hours. We will have to verify if this one can go with a 5V 2A charger to save some downtime.
On cameras, most of the Android tablets that we know is also not that stellar on this department and T3 8 was on the same league but not that bad with the given enough aperture on both shooters. Just make sure to use it more only on social media. The front camera was even not that good in color accuracy
Huawei Mediapad T3 8 rear camera samples
Huawei Mediapad T3 8 front camera sample
Pros: Battery life, a-ok body, display, Bluetooth audio, connectivity
Cons: Old school Android version and processor, awful loudspeaker, slow charging time
So far, this is the only Android tablet release here in the country for year 2020 which we will have to look at some of the releases in later 2019 which also left us with a very few choices for under 10k or a target market that does not want to go Android slab devices from local brands. For that, Huawei Mediapad T3 8 was lucky for the battery, display, audio and LTE connectivity for Php 6,490 as long as you are a-ok for the compromises and not minding on how old is the processor. For us, it's gonna be 3.75 out of 5 for Huawei Mediapad T3 8
