Honor, the sub-brand of Huawei today unveiled a duo of tabs under the moniker, the Play Tab 2. One is an 8-inch and the other is a 9.6-inch. The devices boast high-quality metal builds and come in grey and silver colors, available in China, from June 1.
The internals of the tablet are quite modest, with each coming with a quad-core Snapdragon 425 SoC and Adreno 308 GPU. There are two variants for each of the sizes available – one with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of internal storage while there is also the 3GB/32GB configuration as well. One of the saving graces for the tablets are that they will be running Android Nougat 7.0. Both sizes will feature a 5MP auto-focus camera on the back and a 2MP camera on the front.
Both devices will be available in Wi-Fi-only and cellular variants. The 8-inch version’s cellular uses an ear-piece while the 9-incher uses a hands-free calling solution for its cellular connectivity. The tablets also offer 4G LTE and will both come with 4,800mAh batteries. The tablets will support expansion or storage via microSD slot up to 128GB. The cellular variants of the tablets will also come with dual-SIM slots.
The displays will have a constant 1280x800p resolution on both sizes of the tablets and will be IPS panels holding 58% of the NTSC color gamut. Prices start at $116 for the 8-inch base model and will go up to $188 for the LTE variant coupled with 3GB of RAM. The 9.6-inch model will start at $145 at the base variant and will go up to $217 for the highest-end spec. While both tablets offer promising specifications, it would have been nice to see Honor use a beefier chipset for the top-end variants at least to complement the extra RAM. Given that the tablets are aimed at the budget-oriented buyers, the performance should be good enough for the most basic of tasks, even maybe utilizing Nougat’s multi-screen apps to good use with the big screen.
The tablets will be made available in China from June 1. Whether they will be made available in other markets has not yet been confirmed. For a well-built body featuring decent specifications and software, there is very little left to ask for. There are very few budget laptops that offer reliable specs at this price-range, and even fewer that offer Nougat. If Honor could Honor an update to Android O with these tablets, there will be nothing like it.