Android tablets may be improving and Windows 8 slates are on the horizon. But there’s still only one real game in town in the tablet computer market: Apple’s iconic iPad.
The new one — the third generation, but don’t call it the iPad 3 — again sets the standard to which Apple’s rivals are going to have to measure up.
Turned off or locked, the new iPad is virtually indistinguishable from the iPad 2. Even the packaging is almost identical, though the new iPad’s box carries a small “4G” logo on its rear if you’ve opted for the mobile broadband version. Though there’s no 4G in SA, it still works on SA’s 3G networks.
The two biggest changes from the iPad 2 to the new iPad are this move to an LTE radio and its new “resolutionary” — Apple’s unfortunate choice of word, not ours — 2 048×1 536-pixel screen. That’s up four-fold on the 1 024×768 screen on earlier versions of the Apple tablet.
The new screen is undeniably impressive. At first, the huge increase in resolution isn’t that noticeable on the home screen, but a close look at the text of icon labels reveals a level of detail hitherto only seen on Apple’s fourth-generation iPhones.
With a pixel density of 264 pixels per inch, the new iPad is actually less sharp than the 326ppi display of the iPhone 4 and 4S but Apple argues you’ll be holding the iPad further away and it’s therefore no less impressive in use. We’re willing to give the company the benefit of the doubt on this one — the screen is simply the best on any tablet on the market today. It is extraordinary.
Open an application like iBooks — Apple’s e-book reader — or zoom in on a detailed Web page or a high-resolution image and the screen upgrade really becomes evident.
In order to power the 3,1m pixels on the new screen, Apple’s boosted the new iPad’s memory and given its processor more grunt. It now offers a snappier A5X quad-core processor and doubled RAM to 1GB. The result is a seamless experience — multiple-tab browsing is a pleasure and applications load almost instantly. Of course, the iPad 2 was not exactly sluggish either.
Another bit of the hardware that’s received an upgrade is the rear camera. It now offers a 5-megapixel iSight camera that shoots 1080p video at 30 frames per second. Although the images and video quality are impressive, it still feels like a peculiar tool for shooting images. We can’t quite imagine people holding them up at concerts or weddings.
Sadly, the front-facing camera remains an uninspiring VGA-capable model as found on the iPad 2. As this is the camera more people are likely to use — be it for FaceTime, Skype or to check if they’ve got spinach in their teeth – we’d really rather have seen it be the one to get the update in megapixels.
Apple has kept the volume rocker, orientation lock switch, micro-Sim tray, 3,5mm audio jack, speaker and 30-pin dock connector ports in the same place as the iPad 2, which is a good thing for those that have forked out for leather cases and are looking to upgrade. At only 0,6mm thicker, it will fit most iPad 2 cases, aside from those designed to fit the older tablet’s form precisely.
The extra thickness is due to a larger battery — a necessary evil where higher screen resolution and LTE are concerned. It also means the new iPad weighs 652g compared to the 601g of the iPad 2. But as it should mean more battery life for South Africans confined to older 3G networks.
The downside of the bigger battery is that the new iPad takes even longer than its forerunners to charge. A full charge can take as long as nine hours.
Ultimately, for those who own a first- or second-generation iPad, the new iPad feels like an incremental upgrade. The screen is spectacular, but unless you’re the sort who reads or plays games prolifically, it’s not going to create the terrible envy Apple would like us to believe we should feel for those who invest in Cupertino’s latest and greatest.
If you’re new in the market for a tablet, however, the new iPad might be the best choice, assuming you’re willing to spend the same sort of money required to get an iPad 2 when it launched. If not, the iPad 2 suddenly becomes terribly compelling at its new, lower price point.
Apple has undoubtedly raised the bar, again, but it won’t be long before the competition responds with similarly high-resolution and high-megapixel offerings of their own. And Windows 8, possibly a game-changer, is just around the corner. — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media