Ipad Mini-Review

The iPad Mini is a design shift from the iPad, and perhaps the biggest one in the iPad's entire history. Despite how popular the iPad's been, it's not really a device that's very comfortable to use when you're not sitting down or at a desk. It's a use-when-you-get-there device, or use-when-comfortably-seated. An iPhone or iPod Touch is truly mobile, and the iPad is only halfway there.

In fact, the iPad Mini feels very much like the new Touch, even down to the curved wraparound aluminum shell and flat back. It lies down far more flatly than the fourth-gen iPad, more like a wafer. The headphone jack at the top and Lightning connector and speakers at the bottom are carved into less tapered, more curved side edges. Around the front glass is an angled aluminum bezel like on the iPhone 5.
The white model, which I reviewed, has a standard aluminum back. The black model has a slate-colored anodized aluminum, giving it that same "stealth" look as the iPod Touch.

The iPad Mini's extremely whittled-down side bezels are much less conspicuous than the larger iPad's bezels, which always made it resemble a MacBook screen that had floated away from its keyboard. The Mini truly feels like a large iPod Touch, which is exactly what we used to call the iPad back in 2010. It's far more apt now.

This 7.9-inch display isn't 16:9 like the iPhone 5 or most Android tablets. That means the screen width is wider, more like a page of a book. It's the same as on the iPad, but on this smaller screen, with the iPad Mini's shrunken-down side bezels like an iPod Touch, it feels extra-wide. Web pages fit more across the screen, allowing the text to be bigger. More importantly, digital magazines and illustrated books can be rendered without squishing down too much.

Apple's made a big deal of this, but let me tell you the real killer apps here: the future of digital publications. Textbooks. Basically, any layout-sensitive graphically intensive e-books. The iPad Mini doesn't squish that content down like what often happens to it on 16:10 7-inch screens.

Posted in: Apple,apps,camera,gadget,games,I phone 5,i sight camera,Ipad,Ipad 3,ipad mini,ipad-mini,laptop,mini ipad,mini-ipad,new technology,newlaptop,portable,Steve Jobs,tablet,touchscreen