Apple iPad mini: hands-on
On its launch day of 2nd November 2012, we spent just a brief time handling the Apple iPad mini. You can also read our review, which includes our lab tests and more extensive subjective handling.
The iPad mini could just prove to be Apple’s most popular portable device yet. By bringing the size, and the price, down below the usual entry point set by the 9.7in iPad, many stockings are likely to be filled this christmas by this little sliver of powerful tablet computing.
It has competition from the maker-subsidised tablets from Amazon and Google, but Apple has carefully positioned its new mini away from these budget Android-based devices.
And thin it most certainly is, at just 7.4mm. Combine that with the 135mm width, and this is a tablet that you can – with a little stretch – support between the fingers and thumb of one hand.
At 307g in weight, it has wafer-like lightness. This puts it in excellent stead as an eBook reader, since it must weigh less than most paperbacks.
It’s about the same size, fractionally smaller in fact, than an A5 sheet of paper.
Apple iPad mini: Build and finish
Build quality is outstanding. Perhaps because it’s like a scaled down iPad, the attention to manufacturing quality is even more evident around its diminuitive frame. For a start, it feels absolutely rigid – that all aluminium backplate and frame melds into the front glass to make an unyielding featherlight slice.
The back presents as smooth satin aluminium, Apple logo centred, and with a few essential buttons on one rounded edge, two for volume and a power key on top. Unlike some buttons we see on phones and tablets, these are positive and assured to the touch.
There’s a headset jack on top, and a new tiny Lightning port at the bottom. Either side of that new baby port are perforations for two speakers. Yes, the Apple iPad mini is the company’s first stereo speaker tablet.
In other respects the iPad mini can clearly trace its lineage to the iPad 2 - using the same Apple A5 processor as last year’s Apple tablet, and with the same 1024 x 768-pixel screen specification.
But those 1024 x 768 pixels are condensed into a smaller space than the 9.7in of the iPad 2. So where both the original iPad and iPad 2 had a resolution of 132 pixels per inch (ppi), the iPad mini raises its pixel density to 163ppi. No amount of marketing spin is going to allow that to be called ‘Retina’; and sure enough the display is not as sharp as the swelling catalogue of hardware that Apple now sells with a Retina specification.
In our limited use of the iPad mini, we did find on-screen text at small font sizes was a little furry. On a few popular websites we visited and viewed in Safari, it was still possible to read any of the smallest default type. But not as effortless as Retina-type screens make the experience for tired eyes.
The display is still IPS, with all the rich colours and spectacularly wide viewing angles we’ve come to expect from the screen technology, once the preserve of high-end graphic design monitors.
With its 4:3 aspect ratio, the iPad mini also looks more ‘right’, closer to the golden ratio that is so much more pleasing to the eye than the stretched 16:9 used by almost every other tablet maker.
Apple iPad mini: Connectivity
Like all recent Apple iPads, the iPad mini has dual-band Wi-Fi, allowing it to roam across the less crowded 5GHz radio band. Apple also lists channel bonding in its spec, where two adjacent 20MHz channels are combined to make a 40Hz channel for potentially greater throughput. We haven’t been able to test what real-world difference this may bring, especially in the 2.4GHz band where such bonding is very difficult to achieve due to crowded airwaves.
The cellular option for the iPad mini should allow it to use EE’s 1800MHz LTE ‘4G’ service, but this variant of iPad mini with 3G/4G modem will not be available in the UK for about two weeks.
Given the iPad mini’s more pocketable form factor, we’d expect this version to prove even more popular than it was with the full-size iPad.
Next page: our reactions to the iPad mini on the night it launched
Comments
Buckus Toothnail said: This is in response to a reply to my post that seems to have been deletedFirst of all where did I claim that Apple was SOLELY responsible for child labor and worker exploitation issuesNowhere so your point is invalid to being with However its sad that Apple apologists have resorted to the everyone does it line of defense with regards to these appalling human rights abuses rather than calling out Apple as their customers to address these issues and to improve the poor working and living conditions of their factory employeesThis isnt about supporting Apple over Google or preferring the iPhone over the Galaxy or whatever sad trivial concerns Apple apologists have devoted their lives to No this is about ethical business practices and corporate responsibility and with Apple now the worlds biggest and most profitable company they have the potential to also become the worlds biggest offender of child slave labor and worker exploitation as well as being the world leader in employee suicidesNot exactly the distinctions that Apple built its cool reputation on which was my entire point and which you entirely missed As for your second argument the issue isnt whether Apple has a right to protect ther IP which of course they do but the fact that Apple has shifted its focus away from innovation and competing in the marketplace to now behaving basically like a patent troll and competing in the court roomApple built its reputation and became the market leader by offering the best and most technologically innovative consumer electronics products on the market It did so by committing massive resources to research and development and making it the companys priority to innovating and devising new products that would enrich and improve the lives of its usersRecently however Apple has been losing much of that focus on product innovation and customer satisfaction and has instead turned its attention toward litigation against its competitors and seeking injunctions on their products Instead of offering superior products to compete with its competitors in the marketplace Apples strategy is now trying to BAN its competitors from the marketplace Whether these lawsuits have any merit is up for the courts to decide but Apple has mostly been LOSING their courtroom battles around the world including a rather humiliating defeat in the UK where the court ordered Apple to post a humbling apology to Samsung on its website and in newspaper ads acknowledging Samsung didnt copy their designsThe one major exception is Apples victory in a California court in which a jury awarded them 1 billion in damages against Samsung However that verdict is now being thrown into doubt because the US Patent Office recently invalidated 20 of Apples patents including ones that were determined by the jury to be infringed upon by Samsung and which formed much of the basis for the verdictPerhaps more important however is that all of these smartphone-related patent lawsuits that Apple and its competitors have been involved in the past two years has generated over 20 BILLION in COSTS for legal fees and related expenditures for all parties involvedIn contrast Apple spent JUST 34 billion on RampD during the 2012 fiscal year LESS that Microsoft Nokia Amazon Hewlett-Packard Samsung AND Google and ranks at the BOTTOM of all major tech firms in terms of RampD spent compared to overall salesAs a result Apples product innovations have noticeably taken a hit with the recent announcements of iPhone 5 iPad Mini and iPad 4 generating FAR less excitement and anticipation than previous versions and with Apple receiving some of their worst press in the last 15 years namely criticism of their decision to replace Google Maps in IOS 6 with their own Maps app that was deemed far inferior and borderline unusable and which prompted a rare public apology by Apple CEO Tim Cook and lead to the firing of IOS chief Scott ForstallAll these factors have contributed to an erosion in the publics perception of Apple leading to a decline in investor confidence which has resulted in a nosedive in Apples share price from a high of 705 on September 21 the day of the iPhone 5 launch to closing at 54706 today for a drop of around 158 points and wiping 141 BILLION off the companys market cap So the question isnt whether Apple has a right to protect ther IP and spending BILLIONS on patent lawsuits where the potential rewards are DWARFED by the costs and at the expense of taking focus away from their core strength which is product innovation but whether they SHOULD
Buckus Toothnail said: Wow what a total rubbish reviewThe TRUTH is the iPad Mini is a far inferior device compared to its competitors and yet costs 130 or 65 MOREHow is the iPad Mini inferior First off its display is only 1024x768 resolution which isnt even high-definition and only 163 pixels per inchThe Nook HD is 1440x900 resolution and 243 PPI while both the Kindle Fire HD 7 and Nexus 7 are 1280x800 resolution and 216 PPIThat means all of these competitors offer AT LEAST 30 higher resolution than the iPad Mini with the Nook HD even higherSecondly the iPad Mini uses the nearly two-years old 1GHz dual-core A5 CPU found in the iPad 2 iPhone 4S and iPod Touch 5 This chip is currently THREE generations behind the 14GHz dual-core A6X chip found in the iPad 4In comparison the Kindle Fire HD 7 uses a 12GHz dual-core OMAP 4460 CPU the Nexus 7 uses a 13GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core chip and the Nook HD uses a dual-core 13-GHz TI OMAP 4470 processorAll three of these CPUs are current generation and FAR more powerful than the iPad Minis A5In addition all three come with 1GB of RAM compared to the iPad Minis 512MB which is half the amount making the iPad Mini a far SLOWER and LESS POWERFUL machine that its competitorsAnd because all iPad apps since the introduction of the iPad 3 have been optimized for Retina Display the iPad Mini lacking a Retina Display was rendered OBSOLETE before it was even releasedThe crazy thing about all this however is that the iPad Mini costs 329 Its competitors Despite being far more powerful and advanced machines the Kindle Fire HD 7 Nexus 7 and Nook HD all cost just 199 or 130 LESS than the iPad MiniUnfortunately for Apple unlike the iPod Mini which created a new market for the company with lower-priced MP3 players the iPad Mini doesnt even qualify as a lower-priced tablet With a 130 price premium while offering less features than its rivals Apple with the iPad Mini has basically ceded the entry-level market to its competitors Worse because its 329 price tag is so close to the 399 price of the iPad 2 and just 170 less than the iPad 4 it will undoubtedly cannibalize the market of its full-sized siblings which is bad news for Apple given the far lower profit margins of the iPad MiniAnd with the Nexus 10 full-sized tablet coming out at US399 the same price as iPad 2 but far more powerful than the iPad 4 which costs 100 more the introduction of the 32GB Nexus 7 tablet at US249 bumping the 16GB model to US199 the launch of the Nexus 4 smartphone at 299 full price without a carrier contract and more powerful than iPhone 5 and the new Kindle Fire HDs and Nook HD and HD tablets as well as the Samsung Galaxy S3 Note 2 and S3 Mini smartphones Apple is facing attack on its ENTIRE LINE-UP of IOS productsGiven EVERY competitor model mentioned offers SUPERIOR hardware specs than its Apple counter-part at a LOWER cost and given that the Google Play store now has MORE Android apps available than Apples App Store for IOS Apple has now found itself on the losing side in both hardware AND softwareWith Googles Android now on 75 of all smartphones compared to 15 for Apples IOS Samsungs Galaxy S3 smartphone ALONE selling more units than the iPhone 4S in August and Apples tablet market share dropping from 95 in the third quarter of 2010 to now just 50 in the third quarter of 2012 Apples dominance in the mobile device market is coming to a quick endThe good news for Apple is that there are still sizeable segments of the population that are relatively uninformed about technology or uninterested in hardware specs or actual product performance and purchase electronic devices based solely on product image andor brand recognitionFor these consumers Apple undoubtedly has the advantage over its competitors and will continue dominating this sub-section of the market for the time being Whether these consumers who generally view Apple products more as status symbols than productivity devices can support Apples growth and share price remains to be seenAlso remains to be seen is whether Apple can hold onto its cool factor undoubtably one of Apples biggest assets and reasons for the companys success There are already cracks appearing on Apples cool facade from the child slave labor exploitation and worker suicides at its China factories the IOS 6 Apple Maps fiasco the unpopular and mostly losing patent trolling lawsuits waged on its competitors the negative public response to Apple patenting ideas and concepts like rectagular devices with rounded corners and home button the generally lackluster new features and improvements of iPhone 5 the introduction of iPad 4 just seven months after iPad 3 and now the disappointing specs and features of the iPad Mini while being priced far above its competitors superior offeringsAnd with reports coming out that Apple has spent BILLIONS on lawyers and litigation with its patent trolling lawsuits this year and MORE than it has on research and development spending less on RampD than Microsoft Nokia Amazon Hewlett-Packard Samsung and Google its now apparent that Apple has now lost its focus and ability to introduce the most innovative and cutting-edge products on the marketCoupled with Apples admission that it has spent over 1 billion in advertising and marketing campaigns for the iPhone and iPad it seems Apple now believes that ADVERTISING rather than INNOVATION is the key selling-point driving sales for its productsAnd with the initial sales success of the iPhone 5 and the iPad Mini both products which are measurably inferior to its competiton and yet more expensive Apple may be right
Spartina3 said: 1 You had some good arguments but then lost credibility by suggesting that somehow Apple is solely responsible for child labor and worker exploitation issues as if the other manufacturers you mentioned devices are being made by happy singing elves in the North Pole2 So tired of people acting like Apple is the only Company that has litigation lawyers at their disposal you would think no one ever sued anyone before They have the right to protect ther IP as much as anyone else it just so happens that like it or not that they are a leader in the field
Buckus Toothnail said: Wow what a total rubbish reviewThe TRUTH is the iPad Mini is a far inferior device compared to its competitors and yet costs 130 or 65 MOREHow is the iPad Mini inferior First off its display is only 1024x768 resolution which isnt even high-definition and only 163 pixels per inchThe Nook HD is 1440x900 resolution and 243 PPI while both the Kindle Fire HD 7 and Nexus 7 are 1280x800 resolution and 216 PPIThat means all of these competitors offer AT LEAST 30 higher resolution than the iPad Mini with the Nook HD even higherSecondly the iPad Mini uses the nearly two-years old 1GHz dual-core A5 CPU found in the iPad 2 iPhone 4S and iPod Touch 5 This chip is currently THREE generations behind the 14GHz dual-core A6X chip found in the iPad 4In comparison the Kindle Fire HD 7 uses a 12GHz dual-core OMAP 4460 CPU the Nexus 7 uses a 13GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core chip and the Nook HD uses a dual-core 13-GHz TI OMAP 4470 processorAll three of these CPUs are current generation and FAR more powerful than the iPad Minis A5In addition all three come with 1GB of RAM compared to the iPad Minis 512MB which is half the amount making the iPad Mini a far SLOWER and LESS POWERFUL machine that its competitorsAnd because all iPad apps since the introduction of the iPad 3 have been optimized for Retina Display the iPad Mini lacking a Retina Display was rendered OBSOLETE before it was even releasedThe crazy thing about all this however is that the iPad Mini costs 329 Its competitors Despite being far more powerful and advanced machines the Kindle Fire HD 7 Nexus 7 and Nook HD all cost just 199 or 130 LESS than the iPad MiniUnfortunately for Apple unlike the iPod Mini which created a new market for the company with lower-priced MP3 players the iPad Mini doesnt even qualify as a lower-priced tablet With a 130 price premium while offering less features than its rivals Apple with the iPad Mini has basically ceded the entry-level market to its competitors Worse because its 329 price tag is so close to the 399 price of the iPad 2 and just 170 less than the iPad 4 it will undoubtedly cannibalize the market of its full-sized siblings which is bad news for Apple given the far lower profit margins of the iPad MiniAnd with the Nexus 10 full-sized tablet coming out at US399 the same price as iPad 2 but far more powerful than the iPad 4 which costs 100 more the introduction of the 32GB Nexus 7 tablet at US249 bumping the 16GB model to US199 the launch of the Nexus 4 smartphone at 299 full price without a carrier contract and more powerful than iPhone 5 and the new Kindle Fire HDs and Nook HD and HD tablets as well as the Samsung Galaxy S3 Note 2 and S3 Mini smartphones Apple is facing attack on its ENTIRE LINE-UP of IOS productsGiven EVERY competitor model mentioned offers SUPERIOR hardware specs than its Apple counter-part at a LOWER cost and given that the Google Play store now has MORE Android apps available than Apples App Store for IOS Apple has now found itself on the losing side in both hardware AND softwareWith Googles Android now on 75 of all smartphones compared to 15 for Apples IOS Samsungs Galaxy S3 smartphone ALONE selling more units than the iPhone 4S in August and Apples tablet market share dropping from 95 in the third quarter of 2010 to now just 50 in the third quarter of 2012 Apples dominance in the mobile device market is coming to a quick endThe good news for Apple is that there are still sizeable segments of the population that are relatively uninformed about technology or uninterested in hardware specs or actual product performance and purchase electronic devices based solely on product image andor brand recognitionFor these consumers Apple undoubtedly has the advantage over its competitors and will continue dominating this sub-section of the market for the time being Whether these consumers who generally view Apple products more as status symbols than productivity devices can support Apples growth and share price remains to be seenAlso remains to be seen is whether Apple can hold onto its cool factor undoubtably one of Apples biggest assets and reasons for the companys success There are already cracks appearing on Apples cool facade from the child slave labor exploitation and worker suicides at its China factories the IOS 6 Apple Maps fiasco the unpopular and mostly losing patent trolling lawsuits waged on its competitors the negative public response to Apple patenting ideas and concepts like rectagular devices with rounded corners and home button the generally lackluster new features and improvements of iPhone 5 the introduction of iPad 4 just seven months after iPad 3 and now the disappointing specs and features of the iPad Mini while being priced far above its competitors superior offeringsAnd with reports coming out that Apple has spent BILLIONS on lawyers and litigation with its patent trolling lawsuits this year and MORE than it has on research and development spending less on RampD than Microsoft Nokia Amazon Hewlett-Packard Samsung and Google its now apparent that Apple has now lost its focus and ability to introduce the most innovative and cutting-edge products on the marketCoupled with Apples admission that it has spent over 1 billion in advertising and marketing campaigns for the iPhone and iPad it seems Apple now believes that ADVERTISING rather than INNOVATION is the key selling-point driving sales for its productsAnd with the initial sales success of the iPhone 5 and the iPad Mini both products which are measurably inferior to its competiton and yet more expensive Apple may be right