Got a NEW Tab-3 out of the box last October.

[Quick-Chipmunk-9227]

I got the Tab-3 P5210 back in October for free, new out of the original shipping box, never used.
For a nice large clear screen with great colors, this 2014 technology isn't bad.

Trying to get the Kies software to work with it from the PC USB cable. The Kies version on the USA site is 2.6.0. It is buggy. The Australian site is 2.6.4 found here, and it is stable on Win10 64bit.

Kies - Synchronize Data between Devices | Samsung Support Australia

Download Kies for Windows to connect your Samsung mobile phone to your PC. Easily synchronise data between devices and find new apps.

www.samsung.com

The Device(Install),USB Driver ver. 1.5.65.0 for the PC to the Tab-3 is found here. Takes it a long time to install. In Win10, install/run as admin. This is their business version for the Tab 3. Free download. https://www.samsung.com/us/business/support/owners/product/galaxy-tab-3-10-1-wi-fi
Kies so far hasn't talked via USB cable to the Tab-3 yet. I reinstalled twice. Maybe it's a Win10 problem. Not sure.

I've been very disappointed with Samsung. All of the Samsung links on the device to reach are dead as of 2024. So much of the Samsung stuff is useless.

Oh, and try to remove all the bloatware. After I clean some it bloatware out, it was faster than my sisters new Samsung tablet.
Some people have upgraded the OS from dumb Jellybean to the KitKat. This allows more things to work on it. I'm still trying to figure out how to do this too.

I have WhatWeather, GMail and OfflineMaps working really well on it. Chrome needs to be in Desktop mode in its setting. Still working the kinks out, but I can get to a few sites already.

As for the Google Play Store. It is quirky. If the App is listed or you navigate via the menus, it can be found and loaded. If you type to use the keypad to type, the Play Store crashes and vanishes off the screen. I did find the (*) looking icon in the search bar. Pick that, then speak the name of the app to install. The Play Store then finds it for you to read, pick and install.

Anyone else know what other apps or items to make work on the device. I would like it to do more.

 

[B. Diddy]

I moved this from the Tab S3 forum to the Tab 3 forum (the Tab 3 is 4 years older).

 

[Quick-Chipmunk-9227]

Someone posted this on YT.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 Install Rom Lineage OS 14.1 | Nougat 7.1.2 on GT-P5200

I have a P-5210

Would I need to see what the difference are between the two slightly different numbers?

... you have a Tab 3 (which is 4 years older than the Tab S3). The Tab 3 only got as high as Android 4.4.2, I believe, which probably won't be able to do too much with modern apps or the modern web. If you wanted a higher Android version, you'd have to consider installing a custom ROM like Lineage.

Ha, I'm getting dizzy from reading the XDA site with the very long thread for the P-52XX.

Member Chris pointed to this site for the latest and UNSUPPORTED Tab 3 10" wifi device,
https://androidfilehost.com/?a=show&w=files&flid=300991

I will still need to evaluate if this is the best approach or the other one someone else listed. pros/cons to everything.

Sorry, I have zero experience with this kind of thing, so I'll be of no help. @mustang7757 might know a little more.

What I'm afraid of doing is making the tablet into a brick. From the posts on the web, there are chances of it happening. It is a gamble.

This is the reason why I'm moving slowly on this. There are clues out there, yet people don't come back saying they had success, only they did it. And the way people have do it is with various tools. Some the Odin, some say Magisk Swap, and you offered the LineageOS. So I have to sort thru all of the methods to see what one gives the best success for install, uses the least drain on the device for space and memory and has the most working features of the device.

I recall years ago how I was given a Blackberry when those became expensive useless devices. Not bad for a simple PDA of sorts. The Tab 3 is light years ahead of it, yet the short life of being 5 years to become obsolete that it's hard to do much of anything as the apps got more involved.

I still know many people using WinXP-64. Devices should last more than 10 years before being unsupported. Tech tends to keep shortening the product user life.

 

[Quick-Chipmunk-9227]

... you have a Tab 3 (which is 4 years older than the Tab S3). The Tab 3 only got as high as Android 4.4.2,

Per the Samsung site, both Jelly Bean 4.2.2 and Kitkat 4.4.2 were both used on the Tab 3 devices. Depends on the early production vs the last year production.

Android Jelly Bean, (my device is weird. It has the English language, but the Panama firmware, even though this never left the USA new in the box. So I snagged it as the backup.)



Android KitKat


These are very large 1.3Gb files each.

After I removed much of the bloatware apps that were tied to dead links on the web or asked for updates to dead links on the Samsung site, I removed them. The device is very fast now. Still using caution not to remove things that could hamper it's functions.

 

[Quick-Chipmunk-9227]

There is a very very very very long 128-ish pages of posting on the XDA site for the upgrade of the Tab 3 10.1

[ROM][GT-P52XX][UNOFFICIAL][7.1.2] LineageOS 14.1

Unofficial LineageOS 14.1 for Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 LineageOS is a free, community built, aftermarket firmware distribution of Android 7.1 (Nougat), which is designed to increase performance and reliability over stock Android for your...

xdaforums.com

The link starts off saying it makes the Tab 3 10.1 work in Android 7.0, 7.1 or 7.1.2
I've not dug far enough to see in the many posted pages if this can get to Android Oreo 8.0 or 8.1.

So begins my quest. This would allow a project of mine to run. The Tab 3 wouldn't have games nor bloatware either.
A web browser, WhatWeather, GMail and OfflineMaps would be the other apps. I hope it will also have the basics like calculator, camera, gallery, clock, etc.

Edited post due to being half asleep with so much misspelled words here. LOL

 

[Quick-Chipmunk-9227]

The entire 128+ pages was started by member "nels83". Rather than reading all those postings, could take a year! I opted to see where he posted in all those pages. This was fast and rewarding to understand how all this worked. His postings from the start to his last posting shows his development work to get the Tab 3 10 models up to Android 7 OS.
The long thread,

[ROM][GT-P52XX][UNOFFICIAL][7.1.2] LineageOS 14.1

Unofficial LineageOS 14.1 for Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 LineageOS is a free, community built, aftermarket firmware distribution of Android 7.1 (Nougat), which is designed to increase performance and reliability over stock Android for your...

xdaforums.com

More clues from "nels83" who has an Android OpenSource site. Download the latest date files out of all the sub-folders. Some are ZIP for windoze and other files tar for Linux. One folder pay attention to the P52xx model you may have. Do not pick the wrong file in that folder, match it to your device model.
His site on cloudfair tends to TIMEOUT at times. Just hit reload the page until it comes back,

Downloads for : Samsung Galaxy Tab III 10.0 | AndroidFileHost.com | Download GApps, Roms, Kernels, Themes, Firmware and more. Free file hosting for all Android developers.

Download GApps, Roms, Kernels, Themes, Firmware, and more. Free file hosting for all Android developers.

androidfilehost.com

a shortcut posting, but the pain to get the OpenGapps to download took at least 2 dozen tries!

[ROM][GT-P52XX][UNOFFICIAL][7.1.2] LineageOS 14.1

Unofficial LineageOS 14.1 for Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 LineageOS is a free, community built, aftermarket firmware distribution of Android 7.1 (Nougat), which is designed to increase performance and reliability over stock Android for your...

xdaforums.com

ALSO, if you go thru the long posted thread on XDA, others show up with ALTERNATIVE OS ROM flashing and such.
Careful what you read and what is support for the device and not supported with those ALTERNATIVES.
Upon reading, the LineageOS is the most robust and well documented.

All this to get a TAB 3 10 closer to being inline today.

Now, there is one bottle neck. After all the upgrading, the Tab 3 10 and other Tab 3 model devices use old tech memory modules. The latency speed is not quick by any means. There is an XDA posted thread addressing this and how to fix that with some memory module management app to load. I've not dug that far down yet, I bookmarked it and then dozed off late at night. Yeah, lots of researching. All for a dumb tablet. LOL But to buy a new one with all the DRM and tracking crap that pushes ads in your face is NOT worth getting. Instead, updating the present Tab 3 is ideal. So my journey begins.
Here is the link to create a SWAP file on the device making it run faster and way smoother.

Swap for Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 (GT-P5210)

DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR DEVICE OR ANYTHING THAT MIGHT OCCUR WHILE USING THIS TUTORIAL. TRY AT YOUR OWN RISK! Credits: [mbm] for teaching me this dd terminal method. As we all know, for what ever reason, Samsung decided to...

xdaforums.com

NOTE: also found out when doing the OS upgrade and the SWAP space memory allocation, the TAB 3 will only use microSD 32Mb max. If you have a 64Gb or higher, it will not upgrade to the newer OS. Samsung for the ROM firmware only is capable of recognizing 32Mb and not 64Mb. When the Tab 3 goes into rebooting, it gets stuck in a bootloop due to the 64Mb chip timeout problem!
You hear of people BRICKING their Tab 3 with the ROM upgrade, it was found out this is the CAUSE OF IT.
The 32Mb chips don't have an issue if they are Lemark, PNY, SanDisk as V10 or V30 class cards. So, do not use generic cards when doing this OS upgrade !!! Around posted page 106 to 121, people start digging deeply into why the bootloop and bricking happens. This paragraph saves you about 4 hours of reading.
Now, AFTER the successful upgrade, you can swap in the 64Mb and even a 128Gb chip. But it goes back to being one of the same 3 brands with the certain V10 or V30 classification.

There is one other item to SET before doing the firmware OS upgrade, and that is not to have the AUTOboot feature turned on in the device. This will only get you multiple reboots and a Samsung screen, then a loop of endless reboots.

The more educated you become before just diving into this, the BETTER the results will be.