Hauwei MediaPad - Why no "Smart Cover" option ??

[Soundhound123]

Will someone please put me out of my misery ?!.....

I recently aqcuired a Huawei MediaPad T3 with a smart cover (one with a magnet to wake/sleep the tablet). Unfortunately the closing/opening the cover has no effect on the screen. No problem I thought - I'll just go into the system settings and sort it out. The problem is there is no smart cover option !! I've looked everywhere. I started with the obvious....
Smart assistance / Accessories - which is where I thought it should be - but it's not. All that's listed under accessories is "Smart Headset Control".
My tablet is running EMUI version 5.1.2 and Android 7.0
This driving me nuts !!! I seriously doubt that this option is not supported on my MediaPad, but then again.... might this be the case ??

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! I moved this from the P8 forum to the General Help forum, since we don't have a specific forum for the Mediapad T3.

Is the case an official Huawei case, or 3rd party? Are you certain the T3 has a smartcover function?

 

[Soundhound123]

I'm not at all sure my new tablet has smart cover functionality, but I'd be most surprised if not. However, it's becoming clear that, in fact, it does not !!

 

[B. Diddy]

Cheaper devices tend not to have this feature -- e.g., my Lenovo Tab 4 8" and Lenovo Tab M8 FHD don't have it. The problem is that 3rd party case manufacturers will often throw in a mention of "smartcover" function for their case, even if it doesn't work for a specific device. I came across that when looking for cases for the abovementioned tablets.

One easy way to test if your device has a smartcover sensor is to slowly pass a magnet over all parts of the tablet bezel while the screen is on. If the screen consistently goes off when the magnet reaches a certain part of the bezel, then that's the location of the sensor. If the screen never goes off, then it doesn't have a magnetic smartcover sensor. (There might be some devices that use the front-facing camera or light sensor as a smartcover sensor, but I think that's pretty uncommon.)

 

[Soundhound123]

Thanks B Diddy - I think you've hit the nail on the head - my tablet simply doesn't have the feature (I did previously try the magnet trick with no effect).
I've put an app on the home screen to close the screen (one tap to close). If I could find another app that would do something like 2 taps to open that would be the next best thing ? (The button on the side is fiddly to find but not a big deal ;- )

 

[B. Diddy]

There are a number of apps in the Play Store that simulate smartcover function by using the proximity sensor, but that could be a hassle if you accidentally block the sensor in the normal usage of your tablet (since it would trigger the tablet to go to sleep). A number of the apps are also pretty old (last updated 2016, for example). You could still try them out -- just search "smart cover" in the Play Store.

There are also a bunch of double-tap to wake apps you can install (just search for that term) -- however, one thing to keep in mind is that they might contribute to battery drain while idle, since they would need to keep the device awake to a certain extent to detect the double tap.