"New iPad", iPad 3, iPadHD or perhaps iPad 4G are the names of the new iPad tablets launched by the Apple company, the tablet that last week it also arrived at iDevice.ro. The new device was presented by Tim Cook in a conference that took place on March 7 and this time everyone's expectations turned into reality because Apple has finally implemented a Retina Display in its famous tablet. From the conference until today, the tablet was launched in 25 countries, it was sold in several million copies and for the first time it is available in Romania just a week after the official launch in the USA.
Apple was careful not to call its tablet revolutionary this year, but "resolution" because the big change is represented by the 2048 x 1536 resolution of its new Retina Display. In the following I will detail all the aspects you need to know about the new iPad tablet and of course I will give an answer to the question that is on everyone's lips: is the new iPad tablet worth buying?
Design
The first thing you see as soon as you open the box the tablet came in is the design. To the disappointment of many, the new iPad tablet keeps the design of its predecessor, the only notable changes being made by Apple to the cameras and the edges of the case. The camera location is larger in the new tablet because the camera has a better image sensor and the physical difference between the size of these two components is the first thing that will help you distinguish them. Moving on to the case, I will tell you that you will not notice the difference in design unless you have the tablets next to each other and study them carefully, but if you put your hands on the new iPad tablet for the first time or buy it after selling the iPad 2, then you will not notice any notable changes .
Even if the design has remained largely unchanged, the tablet is now 51g heavier and 0.6mm thicker, but it is unlikely that you will feel any difference compared to the iPad 2. Some say that the difference in weight is noticeable, for me it is not and I'm probably not the only one who has this opinion and I keep my opinion regarding the difference in thickness. Apple made subtle changes to its tablet in order not to worsen the user experience, but unfortunately it did not improve it either, so we continue to work with what we already have for more than a year.
Retina Display
The most important novelty of the iPad tablet is the Retina screen or Retina Display, which has a double resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels, has four times more pixels and twice as many LEDs as the iPad 2 tablet. In a word screen is extraordinary. Images and writing are much clearer, the screen displays colors at a 44% higher saturation and this is extremely important for a tablet that is mainly used to view multimedia content. You will notice the first differences in Springboard, then in the menus and later in Safari, and the pixels of the iPad 2 screen will become a sad and distant memory as soon as you look at the Internet, pictures, movies and applications through the new Retina Display. One of the big "defects" of the iPad 2 was and will remain the resolution of 1024 x 768 pixels, and ever since I first put my hands on the tablet I have supported this, but with the new iPad tablet Apple has solved the main dissatisfaction of the majority of users.
Returning to the revolutionary screen of the new iPad tablet, it is responsible for approximately 65% of the total consumption of the device and it is normal to be so considering that it displays 3.1 million pixels, but I can say that I would have given up without objection in 1/2 hours of autonomy to have it since last year in the iPad 2. Pictures and movies cannot really reproduce the quality of the images displayed by this screen and I for one recommend you to go and test the new iPad tablet in a store to convince yourself how it's good As soon as you do this, you will notice that the internet is not yet ready for Retina Display, that many sites have poor quality graphics, that many applications are not yet ready to run properly on it, and here we see how much technologically evolved the iPad tablet.
Although the screen of the iPad tablet is able to offer us a sublime experience, unfortunately the game developers have not yet managed to develop titles that benefit from everything that the new screen and its graphics processor have to offer. At the moment in the games you will not see significant differences between the graphics displayed on the iPad 2 or on the new iPad tablet, but I am convinced that in the next month we will have titles in the App Store that will convince users that the new product of the Apple company is worth buying.
The new screen with its 3.1 million pixels displays the images at a higher resolution than that of your Full HD TV at home because that product has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels and the new iPad tablet has a resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels and the image below puts things into perspective a little. I can say that on very few TV screens I have seen images of such good quality and on no tablet have I seen what I see on the iPad and with the help of this screen Apple has once again won the battle with Android tablets.
If you are a fan of books, then I can tell you that the experience of using the iBooks application has become almost perfect when you are at home. The texts are much clearer, the images are much more real, but if you go out with the tablet in the open air, you will have problems reading if you use it in direct sunlight. Unfortunately, the iPad tablet is not the ideal product for reading outdoors when the sun is shining brightly, but the images displayed by its screen are much clearer than those displayed by a Super AMOLED screen.
The Retina screen of the new iPad tablet must be seen and touched because images and movies will not reveal all that it has to offer.
Internal and performing components
In the new iPad tablet, Apple chose to implement the same processor from the iPad 2, i.e. a 9GHz dual-core Cortex A1, but doubled the RAM memory from 512 MB to 1 GB and implemented a ProwerVR SGX543MP4 quad-core graphics processor. What does all this mean for users? Well, the performance of the new iPad tablet is almost identical to that of the iPad 2 in terms of: opening web pages, displaying images, opening and running applications, recording photos and videos, in short in almost everything you can do with such a device. Now you're probably wondering why we have 1 GB of RAM and a quad-core graphics processor since the performance hasn't changed, right?
The answer is simple: the double resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels needed a powerful graphics processor to be supported and that is exactly why Apple chose to implement this PowerVR quad-core. The iOS on the iPad tablet runs almost as well as on the iPad 2 thanks to this processor and it will be used to its maximum potential by future games that will have graphic elements and complex effects that will require a lot of processing power, power on which new tablet has it. Doubling the RAM memory was most likely done with the idea of giving iOS more freedom in organizing applications open in the background, but also to support the graphics chip in future games.
At the moment, you will not notice many differences between the performances of the new iPad tablet and those of the iPad 2 in the performance of iOS tasks, but unfortunately I had the displeasure of finding certain limitations of the recently launched product. When using iOS, I noticed short blockages and delays in the execution of some commands, and I attribute this problem to the high resolution of the screen. The iPhone 4 has similar performance to the iPhone 3GS and the double resolution is "to blame" for this, and with the new iPad tablet I noticed that the performance is affected by running games such as Infinity Blade II or Sky Gamblers: Air Supremacy. Trying to take the screenshots above, I realized that a command I gave was recorded a few seconds after pressing the buttons, a sign that the processor is, perhaps, being used at the upper limit of its performance. I don't know how this resolution will affect the performance of the tablet in the future, but what I have observed now makes me believe that a quad-core processor would have been much more suitable.
Battery and overheating
The iPad tablet released this year has a battery that stores almost 70% more energy than the battery in the iPad 2. The new Retina Display needs more energy to work and Apple has taken care to give it everything it needs to maintain the 10-hour autonomy of the iPad 2 tablet. Practically nothing has changed from the point of view of autonomy, the tablet works for the same periods of time as the iPad 2, but it is more difficult to charge due to the larger battery and practically you have to wait between 6-7 hours for a full charge. Unfortunately, iOS seems to have some problems with the correct display of the battery status, but more you can read here.
Let's move on from the battery to a "problem" that some consider somewhat important: overheating of the internal components. Considering that the iPad tablet has a larger capacity battery, it was normal for it to heat up more, and besides that, the A5X chip and the Retina Display must be taken into account, which unfortunately generate quite a lot of heat. I will tell you that if you have a laptop then you are already used to the level of heat released by the new tablet during use, you can expect to feel a temperature of about 35 degrees if you play Infinity Blade II for long periods of time or surf the Internet but the heat is bearable. I would not consider this "problem" as a reason to give up the purchase of the new tablet, but the device heats up a bit more "harder" than its predecessor.
iSight camera
Yes, the new iPad tablet has a 5 megapixel iSight camera capable of shooting Full HD and the image sensor from the iPhone 4 terminal was implemented in it. Having a camera with 5 times more megapixels, you would have expected that the pictures and movies to be 5 times better, right? Well, the truth is that the difference in terms of the quality of pictures and movies is big, but not because of the resolution of the pictures, but thanks to the image sensor. Apple has equipped its new product with an image sensor worthy of the best-selling tablet on the market, but don't expect miracles from it. Because the tablet has a better camera, Apple decided to call it the iSight camera, a name it has used in the past for its other products and which should give users the understanding that they will have a higher quality part in terms of regarding the recording of pictures and movies.
The camera takes mediocre photos in normal conditions and mediocre to poor photos in low light conditions because it does not have an LED flash, but its inclusion was too little necessary. The photos taken by you will have a resolution of 2580 x 2048 pixels, 5 times higher than the photos taken using the iPad 2 tablet released last year. As for the movies, they will have Full HD 1080p resolution, that is 1920 x 1080 pixels compared to 1280 x 720 pixels as recorded using the iPad 2 tablet. The numbers matter less and I recommend that you don't wait to take pictures/films extremely good with this camera because you will be disappointed.
Conectivitate
The iPad tablet launched this year is the first compatible with 4G LTE networks, but unfortunately this compatibility is limited only to the American territory because in Europe different frequencies are used than those supported by the baseband chip of the tablet. Practically, the new device works on 4G LTE networks with the frequencies 700, 2100 MHz and works on the GSM/UMTS/HSPA/HSPA/DC-HSDPA networks on the frequencies 850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz. In Romania you can forget about 4G with speeds of up to 72 Mbits, but we stick to GSM/UMTS/HSPA/HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA which offer speeds of up to 43 Mbits. In our country, only Orange Romania offers the possibility to surf the Internet at speeds up to 43 Mbits, the rest of the operators offer a maximum of 21.6 Mbits in their own networks.
Below is a comparison made by me between Cosmote, Orange and RCS-RDS operators, and of course Orange offers the best speeds, but it is surprisingly followed by RCS-RDS, Cosmote ranking last.
1. Cosmote – I used the mobile hotspot for tests Connect MF60 and the maximum speed reached was 6.72 Mbits and the average speeds are between 4 - 5 Mbits.
2. Orange - the maximum speed reached is 24 Mbits and the average speeds are between 12 - 16 Mbits during the day and 15 - 20 Mbits in the evening.
3. RCS-RDS - the maximum speed reached was 10 Mbits and the average speeds are between 6 - 7 Mbits.
For now, only one mobile phone operator has a promotional subscription for the iPad tablet and you can read here more about what Orange offers for the Colibri 15. In conclusion, in Romania you will be able to benefit from very good speeds for surfing the Internet using an iPad tablet, but 4G networks are far from being launched in our country, so we would not have benefited anyway of this functionality of the iPad tablet. Finally, I will tell you that the new iPad tablet also has the Personal HotSpot function that allows you to turn the device into a Wi-Fi HotSpot and share your data connection with 5 other devices. For now, this function can only be activated on the mobile operator RCS-RDS and I explained it here how can you do this
iOS 5.1, applications and Voice Dictation
iOS 5.1 was released together with the new tablet from Apple and between it and iPad 2 there is only one difference in this version of the operating system, it is called Voice Dictation. This function was "borrowed" from the Siri assistant that runs on the iPhone 4S and it allows the owners of the new tablet to dictate texts that will be written in any application you want. The system works as well as possible, it can be activated from Settings>General>Keyboard, but everything must be recited in English, French, German or Japanese, and if you don't have a very good diction, you won't get satisfactory results. In terms of this Voice Dictation, there are no differences between the iOS installed on the iPad 2 and the new iPad tablet.
Moving on to the applications, I will tell you that approximately 1000 applications would be compatible with the Retina Display of the iPad tablet, Apple list here about 5% of them, but we are only talking about the most important ones. There is a good chance that your favorite applications are not ready for the Retina Display of the new iPad tablet, but if those applications are not universal and have a Retina version for the iPhone, then that version will look much better in 2x mode on the iPad than the version for the iPad 2. This is how Apple iOS thought and we tested the theory, so if you don't have Retina graphics in the iPad applications, then choose the Retina applications for the iPhone.
Conclusions and prices in Romania
I have almost reached the end and I have to answer the question: is the new iPad tablet worth buying? I say yes, although I wasn't "backed" by everything she has to offer. I say yes because the Retina screen convinces me to sell the iPad 2 tablet without regret, I say yes because I now have the possibility to surf the Internet at much higher speeds, I say yes for the games and applications that will follow and the reasons stop here. The iPad is an iPad 2 tablet "with glasses" and nothing more at the moment, but in the future the internal components and the Retina Display will prove their value. I would compare the transition from the iPad 2 to the iPad with the transition from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4, because then the performance of the devices did not change much, the quality of the screens increased enormously, the quality of the cameras underwent the same transformation, but in the current situation the design remained unchanged.
Having used the new iPad tablet for almost a week, I can say that I would not want to return to the iPad 2 with its pixelated screen, but I strongly recommend you to go to a store and test the new product before buying it if you are not convinced that it's worth the money. No one can show/explain to you how good the Retina Display of the iPad tablet is, you have to experience it yourself and I think there is at least one retailer in your city that has the tablet in stock and I recommend you visit it. If you buy the tablet from some retailers you will receive a free Vodafone card that offers you 500 MB of internet and if you choose Altex/Orange you can benefit from a 25 euro discount to the subscription with the fastest internet for the tablet, so the decision is yours.
Regarding the prices of the new product, notice in the table below that they are very close to those practiced in most Apple Stores in Europe, the comparison being made by me on Friday at an average rate of 4.4200 euros.
[Table id = 9 /]
At the moment you can buy the iPad tablet from one of the stores below, all with the same prices but few units in stock. I also found out that the mobile phone operators would offer the new iPad tablet at a subsidized price in the near future, but for now I cannot give you details about the date when you will be able to buy the tablet from them, but I will tell you that it could take a few months until everything is officially announced.
- Noumax – online store and showroom in Bucharest;
- Evomag - in the online store and at the showroom.
- iStyle – all physical stores in Bucharest and Cluj and in the online store;
- eMAG – all showrooms in the country and in the online store;
- Altex - in the online store and in some stores in the country;
- Media Galaxy – in the online store and in stores in the country;
- Flanco – in the online store and in stores in the country;
- Domo - in the online store and in stores in the country.
Having said that, I recommend you to buy the new iPad tablet with confidence after what do you try on in a store; I was not "turned on my back" by her, but I found in the product exactly what was needed to be satisfied with the purchase made.
