What is that?
It's a duck pond.
Why aren't there any ducks?
I don't know. There's never any ducks.
Then how do you know it's a duck pond?
It's a duck pond.
Why aren't there any ducks?
I don't know. There's never any ducks.
Then how do you know it's a duck pond?
Tuesday, May 23
The Other Akko
The other Akko arrived - my shiny new Huawei Mediapad M3. Two weeks in transit, two weeks sitting on my desk at the office because my office days got rescheduled, then a week when I was too busy to do much with it.
Artist's impression of Pixy's week.
It feels quite noticeably zippier than my Nexus 7 (as you'd expect when comparing with a device from 2013); the various minor delays and UX hiccups of that tablet are nowhere to be seen.
The other Akko arrived - my shiny new Huawei Mediapad M3. Two weeks in transit, two weeks sitting on my desk at the office because my office days got rescheduled, then a week when I was too busy to do much with it.
I'm planning to do a full review, but first some quick reactions and test results:
It's basically the same size as my Sony Z3 Tablet, which I would have been happy with except for the constant irritation of only having 16GB of storage. The Mediapad has 64GB of storage (52GB free out of the box), a 2560x1600 screen (vs. 1920x1200), and 4GB RAM (vs 3GB).
I added a 200GB Sandisk SD card for $70; larger cards are available but at a significant premium; the 256GB model is $150. Huawei only advertise support for 128GB cards, but the 200GB card works perfectly.
I added a 200GB Sandisk SD card for $70; larger cards are available but at a significant premium; the 256GB model is $150. Huawei only advertise support for 128GB cards, but the 200GB card works perfectly.
Like Sony and Samsung, they've disabled Android 6's adoptable storage, which is a jerk move, but doesn't cause too much harm when the device itself has so much space. I installed everything, and I still have 26GB free.
The screen is excellent. It comes set to "vivid" mode, with over-saturated colours, but you can easily disable that, as well as setting the colour temperature to one of three pre-sets or use a colour wheel to adjust it to anything you want.
The fingerprint scanner takes a little while to set up, but once that's done it's fast and accurate. It also has some clever tricks that I'll discuss in the review.
Performance is very good - not astounding, but very good. I'm running Antutu and Geekbench on all my devices and I'll fill in the scores as I go.
Antutu*
| Device | Total | 3D | UX | CPU | RAM |
| Mediapad M3 | 83,894 | 15,731 | 30,387 | 30,549 | 7,227 |
| Xperia Z3 Tablet | 63,379 | 9,911 | 22,255 | 21,952 | 9,261 |
| Xperia Z Ultra | 55,815 | 8,833 | 19,521 | 19,635 | 7,776 |
| Nexus 7 | 40,583 | 4,453 | 15,189 | 14,785 | 6,156 |
It feels quite noticeably zippier than my Nexus 7 (as you'd expect when comparing with a device from 2013); the various minor delays and UX hiccups of that tablet are nowhere to be seen.
Huawei's EMUI Android skin is... Not all bad. I installed Nova Launcher, of course, so the only changes I still see are the notifications and the settings panel. The changes to the settings panel are kind of dumb; storage and battery-related settings are hidden away under "Advanced", for example, and it's hard to find things generally. The changes to the notifications panel are mixed, though I'll be happier if I can find a way to use a light background.
Overall I'm quite happy with it, and would likely recommend it to anyone looking for a small 16:10 tablet. It is still running Android 6.0, and the oft-rumoured Android 7 update is nowhere to be found, so if that's an issue for you you'd best look elsewhere.
Full review will probably land next weekend, as I expect another busy week before then.
Full review will probably land next weekend, as I expect another busy week before then.
* I tested all devices with the latest version of Antutu. If you look up the score for the Nexus 7 online, you will likely find a much lower number - around 20,000 - because the Antutu benchmark has changed since 2013.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:32 PM
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