To be honest... not much. Yeah, I know. What a let down. How could you do this to us, Erwin? But I have to admit. The iPad Mini is without a doubt the best tablet I've ever used and/or owned. I've gone through all iterations of the iPad except the 4th one, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab Plus, Note 10, and even the Nexus 7.
Frankly, the Mini blows them all away. It's just about the right size for a tablet, yet unlike the Nexus 7 or the smaller Galaxy Tabs, the screen is larger and thus feels more usable when in the hand, without those ugly bezels.
It's fast enough to do anything you would want to do on an iPad, unlike say the original iPad which really began to show its age sometime last year. It still works more smoothly than any Android tablet, even though its specs seem measly weak, and more importantly it has all the right apps I want on it that often have no decent counterpart on Android.
Apps like Converter+, Manga Storm, Awesome Note and Pip just don't have any equivalents on Android. Sure, we have lots of unit converters on Android, but none of them are as elegant as Converter+, with the very, very useful simultaneous-units-converted-in-real-time-alongside-each-other display of Converter+. Manga Storm (and even other apps like Manga Rock 2) simply run circles around the best Android manga-reading apps like Mango or Manga Watcher, it's so bad it's not even a contest. And dice rollings apps just haven't hit their stride on Android, something important to people like me playing tabletop RPGs or the odd game of Arkham Horror in a pinch.
I'm no Apple fanboy but I have to give credit where credit is due. The Galaxy Note II is still the smartphone of choice, to be honest, but the iPad Mini is just such a nice, nice tablet that it's really become my go-to device for most of my internet, reading and social networking needs.
But hey, this wouldn't be WhatsWrongWith.co if I didn't bash the thing a little, right?
Oh yeah baby! Come on Apple, what the hell is up with not giving us a "Retina" display on the Mini? I mean you were making such a big deal about how Retina made your iPhones, iPod Touches and MacBooks so much better than the competition, and viola! Here we are with a piddly 160 PPI on the Mini. It wouldn't be such a big deal, were I not using a Galaxy Note side by side the Mini and seeing that ooh so crisp sharp display everytime I glance from tablet to smart phone/phablet.
It's not a dealbreaker, but ohhh when I see the iPad Mini 2 later this year with Retina on it I am so going to stab a voodoo doll of Tim Cook in the groin with a very, very fat needle.
The other main issue I am docking the Mini for is its freakin' price. When tablets like the Nexus 7 are coming out for about 11,000php, the Mini at its cheapest is around 16,000php. A difference of 5k pesos comes out as a little shy more than $100US... and I know online the price differentials are similar. So as usual, while the Mini is overall the superior tablet on my scoreboard, its ability to kill my wallet is also similarly far above the competition.
We still have other intrinsic iOS weaknesses, such as how the iPad sucks for viewing movies with its too fat and not wide-enough screen, the need to convert videos into icky formats suitable for iPad viewing, the need to use iTunes to sync instead of just drag-and-dropping the video onto the tablet. Or how we have no expandable data storage, the annoying proprietary dock and cable, or the boring as hell home screen that hasn't evolved since the original iPhone.
Apple wouldn't be Apple without these stupid limitations, but screw that.
Frankly, the Mini blows them all away. It's just about the right size for a tablet, yet unlike the Nexus 7 or the smaller Galaxy Tabs, the screen is larger and thus feels more usable when in the hand, without those ugly bezels.
It's fast enough to do anything you would want to do on an iPad, unlike say the original iPad which really began to show its age sometime last year. It still works more smoothly than any Android tablet, even though its specs seem measly weak, and more importantly it has all the right apps I want on it that often have no decent counterpart on Android.
Apps like Converter+, Manga Storm, Awesome Note and Pip just don't have any equivalents on Android. Sure, we have lots of unit converters on Android, but none of them are as elegant as Converter+, with the very, very useful simultaneous-units-converted-in-real-time-alongside-each-other display of Converter+. Manga Storm (and even other apps like Manga Rock 2) simply run circles around the best Android manga-reading apps like Mango or Manga Watcher, it's so bad it's not even a contest. And dice rollings apps just haven't hit their stride on Android, something important to people like me playing tabletop RPGs or the odd game of Arkham Horror in a pinch.
I'm no Apple fanboy but I have to give credit where credit is due. The Galaxy Note II is still the smartphone of choice, to be honest, but the iPad Mini is just such a nice, nice tablet that it's really become my go-to device for most of my internet, reading and social networking needs.
But hey, this wouldn't be WhatsWrongWith.co if I didn't bash the thing a little, right?
Oh yeah baby! Come on Apple, what the hell is up with not giving us a "Retina" display on the Mini? I mean you were making such a big deal about how Retina made your iPhones, iPod Touches and MacBooks so much better than the competition, and viola! Here we are with a piddly 160 PPI on the Mini. It wouldn't be such a big deal, were I not using a Galaxy Note side by side the Mini and seeing that ooh so crisp sharp display everytime I glance from tablet to smart phone/phablet.
It's not a dealbreaker, but ohhh when I see the iPad Mini 2 later this year with Retina on it I am so going to stab a voodoo doll of Tim Cook in the groin with a very, very fat needle.
The other main issue I am docking the Mini for is its freakin' price. When tablets like the Nexus 7 are coming out for about 11,000php, the Mini at its cheapest is around 16,000php. A difference of 5k pesos comes out as a little shy more than $100US... and I know online the price differentials are similar. So as usual, while the Mini is overall the superior tablet on my scoreboard, its ability to kill my wallet is also similarly far above the competition.
We still have other intrinsic iOS weaknesses, such as how the iPad sucks for viewing movies with its too fat and not wide-enough screen, the need to convert videos into icky formats suitable for iPad viewing, the need to use iTunes to sync instead of just drag-and-dropping the video onto the tablet. Or how we have no expandable data storage, the annoying proprietary dock and cable, or the boring as hell home screen that hasn't evolved since the original iPhone.
Apple wouldn't be Apple without these stupid limitations, but screw that.
"Give me my perfect tablet, goddamn Apple!" -- frowning and extremely irate consumer with an unrealistic sense of entitlement
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