The Tecno PhonePad 3 is the successor to last year’s PhonePad 7II(yeah, death to the number sequence), and it was launched into the Kenyan market just the other day. The tablet cum smartphone, or vice versa, is built around “Do Business stay mobile” philosophy.
The 7 inch device, comes with a good enough spec sheet, and an outdated* android version (*it runs Marshmallow yet we’re in 2017). But that is not the focus. The focus is how well it “can do business”. We have received our review unit, and before I let you in on my thoughts, here’s a breakdown of the specifications:
Tecno PhonePad 3 Specifications
| Display | Type | IPS LCD Capacitive |
| Size | 7.0" | |
| Resolution | 1280 * 720 | |
| Protection | None | |
| Platform | Operating System | HiOS on top of Android 6.0 Marshmallow |
| Chipset | Mediatek MT8735W | |
| CPU | Cortex A53 Quad-Core,1.3GHz | |
| GPU | Mali T720 | |
| Memory | RAM | 2GB |
| Internal | 16GB | |
| External | microSD, up to 256 GB | |
| Network | Technology | 4G LTE |
| SIM | Dual SIM | |
| Camera | Main | 13MP with Dual True-Tone Flash, f2.0 aperture, PDAF+CAF, 85 degree wide-angle |
| Front | 5MP, 85 degrees wide-angle with front flash | |
| Battery | Size | 4100 mAh |
| Type | Li-ion | |
| Colors | champagne gold, White and Matte Black | |
| Features | Side-Mounted fingerprint reader with scrolling gestures | |
| Price | Kshs 22,199 |
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Initial impressions are good, the PhonePad 3 does feel slightly heavy compared to other devices with the same screen size but this could be attributed to the metallic unibody. We have the Champagne Gold color variant, that does stand out and screams for attention, if you’re into that kind of thing.
Turning on the device, you’re greeted with a heavily skinned android experience, under the moniker of HiOS. The device does not fall short of bloatware as well, but at least a good number of them are here to fulfill that business philosophy, all bundled up in one folder under the name “Biz Assistant”.
The one thing I really wanted to try, was the side-mounted fingerprint reader, which has gestures functionality allowing you to scroll through documents or websites by simply swiping up or down on the reader. Eureka! It works.
Initial impressions of the camera, are meeh. The images produced aren’t bad, trust me, I have seen worse but I expected better, seeing that it is a 13MP shooter. The images look fine, good enough to share on social media, just don’t try and zoom in.
I will be using the Tecno PhonePad 3 over the coming weeks, and I will periodically share snippets of my thoughts on the device on my twitter account. I welcome any questions that you may have about the device, anything that you’d like me to highlight in the review.
Oh, the device is quite compact and one can manage to use it in one hand, if need be. Below is a gallery of a couple of images we took of the Tecno PhonePad 3
