Honor T1 is a cheap Android tablet with 8-inch screen and Qualcomm processor Quad Core. Has a list price of records: 129 euro, combined with a bright display and a large battery for 2/3 days of walking autonomy. But it is also scarce in the photographic industry and not at all suitable for playback of Full HD video. After trying for two weeks, consider Honor T1 a tablet better than other low-cost Android on the market, but there are some details to be done.
The strengths of Honor T1
Honor (division of Huawei) has staked everything on three key factors: the display, the build quality and autonomy. T1 uses an IPS panel, 1280 x 800 pixels with a ratio of 16: 9 and a density of 189 PPI, combined with a light sensor that does its job well. It is probably the screen with the best brightness of the low-cost category, exaggerated when set to maximum and balanced even in color reproduction. Has no problem lighting at the edges, and perhaps the only visible flaw in the installation do not perfectly flush with the frame (there are 2 mm black outline), but is it really a surprise in this price range.
Same for the robustness of the whole frame. With 360 grams is the lightest in the industry, and it must be said that the thickness of said 7.9 mm tends to be misleading given the forms "chubby" of the edges, but the build quality is not discussed.
Honor T1 is stable and solid, the rear panel has a nice aluminum anti-fingerprint and good ergonomics. My taste is not "nice" with the chrome border boundary and the white plastic untreated easy to get dirty, but if the gain is to have a sturdy product, so be it looks inelegant. The side buttons and flap coverage microSD are leggerini, but their pressure / closing is not a problem - and this is what really counts.
Third factor: the autonomy. Honor T1 bases its Description on an "old" Qualcomm processor with low consumption. It is one of 200 MSM8212 Snapdragon Quad Core 1200 MHz and manufactured in 28nm, not a sample of power but with a wattage ridiculous when using every day and consumes almost zero when in standby. Here are used academics Cortex-A7 instead of the more powerful Snapdragon Krait of others, but fortunately there's a big sacrifice for the user experience. We'll talk later.
Snapdragon 200 coupled with a huge 4800 mAh battery door Honor T1 to have a battery life of 3 days in average use, ie with web browsing, some videos, a few minutes of play, Wifi constantly active and brightness to auto.
It is the use that is usually done with these compact Android tablet: are held at home or office and are used when needed for those minutes of entertainment daily, maybe in bed before sleep or on the sofa before dinner, or just wake up the Sunday morning to check the news without getting out of bed. But they can also be the unique device for certain types of people, who do not need a real computer but only one way to check facebook, twitter and some recipes online. In a context like this, Honor T1 must be loaded every 3 days, and not bad at all. The tablet has 3 modes of energy management; in 90% of cases you can just leave it on Auto.
The weaknesses of Honor T1
So if the screen, autonomy and construction are ok, where are the tradeoffs of Honor T1? The two cameras, mainly, are of low quality. The front is a VGA resolution of 800 x 480 pixels webcam style of old PC, which needs a perfect light to be just acceptable. The back is a 5 megapixel superior quality, but with fixed focus, LED flash and without with slow shutter speeds. This means that most of the videos and photos are blurry and unclear, so that it will be almost useless to try to capture them. Too bad, because the app is pretty integrated and curated.
Still, the mono sound system is assigned to only one front speaker. He has a good volume, because there directs the sound straight in the face, but the quality is another thing, and in these cases it is always better to install rear, makes it softer frequencies. Among the defects also insert the GPS reception, slow most rival products, a shame because the tablet, given the opportunity to upgrade the memory with microSD and good display, it might be a comfortable car navigator. Finally, it lacks is support USB OTG is root access, and that means not being able to connect a pen or a hard drive to read content, video or photos.
But compromise main Honor T1 is to have a firmware based on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. It is not a matter of performance - we'll talk about in a moment - but the software functionality. One of the most annoying is the black stripe (or light gray) with the buttons of Android always present on the screen. You can not hide it, put Honor T1 in what we have learned to call "Immersive Mode", typical of Android 4.4 Kitkat and still absent on this release. Losing all those pixels on a tablet of this size / resolution is something that we would not like to see at the beginning of 2015. Luckily there is the Emotion UI to make the look more modern system.
User experience and performance
In the video review I paused several minutes in what is the user experience of Honor T1. Web browsing, Youtube playback, use of the main apps and 3D games are also modern contexts that are within the capabilities of the tablet. The limit of 1 GB of RAM is felt in the multi-tasking, but does not compromise the smoothness of the interface and, after all, is tolerable at these prices.
Honor pre-install the Emotion UI 1.6 on T1. It is a user interface that does not upset but Android Remodeling here and there many aspects graphics, making it more modern. Emotion UI can like it or not (although, again, does not change the habits) but propose instead an old UI Jelly Bean has been a significant improvement to the user experience. On this there is no doubt. The themes, the colored icons, backgrounds and also the simplicity of managing apps all at home and without the collector drawer (a style already known on other interfaces for Android smartphones) make it simple and straightforward to use the tablet.
The benchmark results are almost disastrous. 3DMark ISE reaches 2164 points, Antutu X does not exceed 15350, PCMark ago 2165, GeekBench 3 stops 329/1126. Only 40.9 fps Epic Citadel are ok, demonstrating how the Adreno 302 to 400 Mhz is the best part of the components. And the 35/14 MB / s of A1SD Bench on eMMC are good. Look at the screenshots below for more details.
But if we go beyond the numbers you have a usable tablet, with a few occasional lag, with the ability to install apps on microSD (12 GB free on the first start) and a convenient tool to optimize memory and manage notifications / privileges of apps. It's a good job that makes the difference between a potential disaster and a product that looks good.
Too bad for video playback Full HD. Here everything stops at 720p (also H265, by specific Qualcomm) with my usual movies testing high and medium bit rate that can not take advantage of the hardware decoding and then fall on MXPlayer, under the weight of that software. You can see with some difficulty a 1080p mp4 from 1.2 Ghz to 24Hz, but the fluid vision of these movies is really something else.
final Thoughts
Honor T1 was not a surprise, because the company has already shown to handle it when it comes to optimizing the hardware and reduce prices (see review Honor 3C). But I did not expect a screen so bright and this care in the software. In recent months I have tried on paper much more powerful tablet (Asus ME176C Bay Trail) or even much more expensive (Alcatel Hero 8 from 379 €), but did not find this user experience.
His real weaknesses are the cameras and it is a shame because with a good rear lens (or a good front) would be ideal for youngsters or parents without smartphones. So it ends up not being recommended for these people. T1 is instead a must buy in its price range, even without offers or discounted price lists for months distribution.
It is not an upgrade for those who already have an Android tablet, but it's worth taking it into account if the idea is to have a comfortable 8-inch sub or a product to keep at home for homework not particularly challenging. Honor T1 is available on Amazon.it to 129 Euros.
The strengths of Honor T1
Honor (division of Huawei) has staked everything on three key factors: the display, the build quality and autonomy. T1 uses an IPS panel, 1280 x 800 pixels with a ratio of 16: 9 and a density of 189 PPI, combined with a light sensor that does its job well. It is probably the screen with the best brightness of the low-cost category, exaggerated when set to maximum and balanced even in color reproduction. Has no problem lighting at the edges, and perhaps the only visible flaw in the installation do not perfectly flush with the frame (there are 2 mm black outline), but is it really a surprise in this price range.
Same for the robustness of the whole frame. With 360 grams is the lightest in the industry, and it must be said that the thickness of said 7.9 mm tends to be misleading given the forms "chubby" of the edges, but the build quality is not discussed.
Honor T1 is stable and solid, the rear panel has a nice aluminum anti-fingerprint and good ergonomics. My taste is not "nice" with the chrome border boundary and the white plastic untreated easy to get dirty, but if the gain is to have a sturdy product, so be it looks inelegant. The side buttons and flap coverage microSD are leggerini, but their pressure / closing is not a problem - and this is what really counts.
Third factor: the autonomy. Honor T1 bases its Description on an "old" Qualcomm processor with low consumption. It is one of 200 MSM8212 Snapdragon Quad Core 1200 MHz and manufactured in 28nm, not a sample of power but with a wattage ridiculous when using every day and consumes almost zero when in standby. Here are used academics Cortex-A7 instead of the more powerful Snapdragon Krait of others, but fortunately there's a big sacrifice for the user experience. We'll talk later.
Snapdragon 200 coupled with a huge 4800 mAh battery door Honor T1 to have a battery life of 3 days in average use, ie with web browsing, some videos, a few minutes of play, Wifi constantly active and brightness to auto.
It is the use that is usually done with these compact Android tablet: are held at home or office and are used when needed for those minutes of entertainment daily, maybe in bed before sleep or on the sofa before dinner, or just wake up the Sunday morning to check the news without getting out of bed. But they can also be the unique device for certain types of people, who do not need a real computer but only one way to check facebook, twitter and some recipes online. In a context like this, Honor T1 must be loaded every 3 days, and not bad at all. The tablet has 3 modes of energy management; in 90% of cases you can just leave it on Auto.
The weaknesses of Honor T1
So if the screen, autonomy and construction are ok, where are the tradeoffs of Honor T1? The two cameras, mainly, are of low quality. The front is a VGA resolution of 800 x 480 pixels webcam style of old PC, which needs a perfect light to be just acceptable. The back is a 5 megapixel superior quality, but with fixed focus, LED flash and without with slow shutter speeds. This means that most of the videos and photos are blurry and unclear, so that it will be almost useless to try to capture them. Too bad, because the app is pretty integrated and curated.
Still, the mono sound system is assigned to only one front speaker. He has a good volume, because there directs the sound straight in the face, but the quality is another thing, and in these cases it is always better to install rear, makes it softer frequencies. Among the defects also insert the GPS reception, slow most rival products, a shame because the tablet, given the opportunity to upgrade the memory with microSD and good display, it might be a comfortable car navigator. Finally, it lacks is support USB OTG is root access, and that means not being able to connect a pen or a hard drive to read content, video or photos.
But compromise main Honor T1 is to have a firmware based on Android 4.3 Jelly Bean. It is not a matter of performance - we'll talk about in a moment - but the software functionality. One of the most annoying is the black stripe (or light gray) with the buttons of Android always present on the screen. You can not hide it, put Honor T1 in what we have learned to call "Immersive Mode", typical of Android 4.4 Kitkat and still absent on this release. Losing all those pixels on a tablet of this size / resolution is something that we would not like to see at the beginning of 2015. Luckily there is the Emotion UI to make the look more modern system.
User experience and performance
In the video review I paused several minutes in what is the user experience of Honor T1. Web browsing, Youtube playback, use of the main apps and 3D games are also modern contexts that are within the capabilities of the tablet. The limit of 1 GB of RAM is felt in the multi-tasking, but does not compromise the smoothness of the interface and, after all, is tolerable at these prices.
Honor pre-install the Emotion UI 1.6 on T1. It is a user interface that does not upset but Android Remodeling here and there many aspects graphics, making it more modern. Emotion UI can like it or not (although, again, does not change the habits) but propose instead an old UI Jelly Bean has been a significant improvement to the user experience. On this there is no doubt. The themes, the colored icons, backgrounds and also the simplicity of managing apps all at home and without the collector drawer (a style already known on other interfaces for Android smartphones) make it simple and straightforward to use the tablet.
The benchmark results are almost disastrous. 3DMark ISE reaches 2164 points, Antutu X does not exceed 15350, PCMark ago 2165, GeekBench 3 stops 329/1126. Only 40.9 fps Epic Citadel are ok, demonstrating how the Adreno 302 to 400 Mhz is the best part of the components. And the 35/14 MB / s of A1SD Bench on eMMC are good. Look at the screenshots below for more details.
But if we go beyond the numbers you have a usable tablet, with a few occasional lag, with the ability to install apps on microSD (12 GB free on the first start) and a convenient tool to optimize memory and manage notifications / privileges of apps. It's a good job that makes the difference between a potential disaster and a product that looks good.
Too bad for video playback Full HD. Here everything stops at 720p (also H265, by specific Qualcomm) with my usual movies testing high and medium bit rate that can not take advantage of the hardware decoding and then fall on MXPlayer, under the weight of that software. You can see with some difficulty a 1080p mp4 from 1.2 Ghz to 24Hz, but the fluid vision of these movies is really something else.
final Thoughts
Honor T1 was not a surprise, because the company has already shown to handle it when it comes to optimizing the hardware and reduce prices (see review Honor 3C). But I did not expect a screen so bright and this care in the software. In recent months I have tried on paper much more powerful tablet (Asus ME176C Bay Trail) or even much more expensive (Alcatel Hero 8 from 379 €), but did not find this user experience.
His real weaknesses are the cameras and it is a shame because with a good rear lens (or a good front) would be ideal for youngsters or parents without smartphones. So it ends up not being recommended for these people. T1 is instead a must buy in its price range, even without offers or discounted price lists for months distribution.
It is not an upgrade for those who already have an Android tablet, but it's worth taking it into account if the idea is to have a comfortable 8-inch sub or a product to keep at home for homework not particularly challenging. Honor T1 is available on Amazon.it to 129 Euros.
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