iPad Mini May Hurt Android Tablet Vendors

[Djanarak]

[citation][nom]watcha[/nom]Given the proliferation of cloud based storage eg iCloud or Dropbox, this is a non issue.20% of apps are games. Not 'most' at all.1 - Playing games in moving vehicles doesn't make normal people motion sick.2 - Who says that you have to be in a moving vehicle to benefit from an iPad? You could be in a field enjoying a BBQ, at a friends or families house, in bed, sat on the sofa, walking around town? Thousands of scenarios.So if I sit on a park table outside I'll just whip out my desktop PC?This isn't evidence, this is a misinformed opinion, especially given the number of new creative apps which have come out with the new iPad.You can play back full HD video on your iPad. You can also wirelessly stream it to a television, something no Android tablet can do. You can get HDMI leads very cheaply for the iPad.There are thousands, but here's one:Sky Sports. You can watch on Android smartphones (only recently) but not Android tablets. Sky sports have the exclusive rights to many games in the English Premier League, the biggest and most watched sporting league in the world. If you have an Android tablet, you can't watch it. You can with the iPad.http/www.sky.com/products/ways-to-watch/sky-go/Another example, Formula 1 coverage:http/www.gizmodo.co.uk/2012/03/s [...] o-android/Here's an article on 'why Android is always second':http/www.gottabemobile.com/2012/ [...] ssing-app/There are also several games which only the iPad is powerful enough to run. You may not see that as 'useful' but people who enjoy gaming disagree. And that's a lot of people.Oh, and finally, many people find it useful to have battery life which actually lasts when they use their tablet ;-)[/citation]

Wow that's certainly a lot of Apple propaganda that you're pushing. If we're talking about the first and second generation iPad, decoding HD video was limited (only 1280x720p max). And again, playing multiple video formats was a HUGE issue.

I can hardly call the Sky Sports app useful, can you give us a concrete example from your supposed "thousands" that might be more convincing? Because I imagine that the world's most watched sporting league would be watched live on a much bigger screen.

Also, can you give a few more details about your claim of wirelessly streaming video to an HDTV? Assuming the HDTV has built-in wifi connectivity, you would still need an Apple TV hooked up to the HDTV, isn't it? And that would mean that it will be limited to 720p video on the HDTV. To get 1080p video, you'd have to buy the latest Apple TV. Boo.

And by the way, cloud storage is only practical for small files. It isn't even practical for storing music, unless you like hearing your songs streamed back to you at a lower bitrate than it originally was.

And regarding your misinformed opinion about "Playing games in moving vehicles doesn't make normal people motion sick", you're wrong. Try using google to get an idea of what percentage of the human population is susceptible to motion sickness. Reading books makes normal people get motion sickness, and gaming on portable devices is even worse.

 

[watcha]

The Tegra 3 CPU is marginally faster than the A5 in the iPad 2 when the Tegra 3 is clocked at a much higher frequency. At the same frequency, the A5 performs better. Depending on the clock speed of the A5 in the iPad 3 this may or may not level the playing field in CPU terms, it wouldn't surprise me if the A5 has been overclocked in the iPad 3.

What is certain though is that the GPU in the iPad 2 (PowerVR SGX543MP2) is up to 2x faster than Tegra 3, and the GPU in the A5X (PowerVR SGX543MP2) is 2x faster than that (a switch from dual core to quad core). Which means that overall the GPU in the A5X should be 4x faster than Tegra 3 in terms of GPU.

The marginal deficit in CPU performance which may or may not remain in the A5X, is more than made up for with the GPU performance which is up to 4x faster, and since iOS is hardware accelerated, you'll notice it.

I agree with everything you said in your 3rd, 4th and 5th paragraphs, Darth415.

 

[nisallik]

I couldn't ever see Apple selling their mini IPad anywhere close to $200. Have you ever seen Apple sell any of their products at a loss?

Bring it on Apple! I'm rooting for Amazon. ;p

 

[beayn]

watcha: just because Apple advertised the iPad 3 as being 4x faster than Tegra 3, doesn't mean it's true. There you go again believing everything that is advertised... (by Apple).

Go read this article:
http/www.tomshardware.com/news/Nvidia-Tegra-3-Apple-A5X-iPad-3-Asus,14950.html

 

[obsama1]

[citation][nom]halcyon[/nom]Having had 5 (yes FIVE) Transformer Primes before I threw in the towel I can speak with authority when I say that the Transformer Prime does not match the quality of the iPad. All 5 of mine had screen defects (dead or stuck pixels) and Android (even ICS) is still not as easy to synch as iOS.Its funny how people who've never had the Transformer Prime KNOW its better than the iPad. Funny...I must've just got 5 lemons eh?[/citation]

From the one with a Mac Pro as an avatar. Hmm. But, please, continue.

You might just have gotten unlucky. All the reviews on Engadget, CNET, and YouTube reviews all say that the Prime is on par or better than the iPad. I believe that you are either unlucky, or just trolling.

 

[beayn]

[citation][nom]obsama1[/nom]From the one with a Mac Pro as an avatar. Hmm. But, please, continue.You might just have gotten unlucky. All the reviews on Engadget, CNET, and YouTube reviews all say that the Prime is on par or better than the iPad. I believe that you are either unlucky, or just trolling.[/citation]

I believe he had 5 bad screens. I've had the same issue buying monitors... I once went through 4 Acer monitors that had bad pixels out of the box and the 5th one has worked fine for years now. Shit happens. Nobody can get away selling 100% shitty products, but they ALL have bad batches of products.

 

[beayn]

Oh forgot to add, the 5th monitor was exactly the same, but packaged differently indicating it was either made at a different time (different batch) or was made at a different factory. Either way, that one batch was bad.

 

[superdspamalot]

I think the point that everyone is missing here is that both Android and iOS are both pretty terrible. You're all fighting over which brand of scaled down, dumbed down, locked up crap you like better. Both of these operating systems are fine for a phone, since phones are still extremely limited in their function due to their size. Tablets on the other hand are large enough to be useful for the same things a desktop/laptop is useful for, and in that case they can only be justified in their price if they have a real OS on them, be it Windows, MacOS, Linux or whatever you prefer.

Stop your idiotic fanboism and start demanding useful, innovative technology instead of this dumbed down crap for crying out loud. Until tablets arrive where you can format them and install whatever software you want on them, they are useless novelty devices that should never, ever, ever have been taken seriously in the first place.

 

[omega21xx]

[citation][nom]watcha[/nom]You can play back full HD video on your iPad. You can also wirelessly stream it to a television, something no Android tablet can do. You can get HDMI leads very cheaply for the iPad.
[/citation]

Why are there so many uninformed people that think only Apple products can stream to TV's?
I have no problem streaming video, images, ect to my TV wirelessly from my HTC EVO 3D. That's without an app. Now if I were to use an app, then it increases what I can do as far as that.

 

[emjayy]

LOL. It's amazing just how much nonsense people are prepared to believe these days once the name 'Apple' is attached to a silly rumor. An iPad mini? Really? So Apple's suddenly going to sell a smaller device which will just cannibalize their larger, more profitable one? Yeah...right!

Apple's never going to win the long term market share battle, even if they push out a smaller version of the iPad. Consider this. The profit margin on all of Apple's products, whether they're the expensive macbooks or the cheapest iPod Shuffle is around 35-40%. That's 10% more than what everyone else is getting at the high end....and that's why they have over 90 billion in unused profits just sitting in the bank. That extra 10% is the Apple tax. Even if they made a mini tablet device, the hardware will have to be worth a little more than 60% of the final price tag for them to be satisfied. If they sold it for $200 to compete with the Kindle Fire and similar devices, the hardware would have to be worth little more than $120. They'd have to use most of the same chip components they already use in the full-sized iPad and iPhone to make the smaller one, and that will make it impossible to design a smaller tablet that will sell at a price that can compete with other tablets that are being subsidized by purchases made through the devices. Meanwhile, manufacturing this mini iPad would potentially hurt production of their other products by diverting manufacturing resources away from them.

Okay, let's imagine they actually managed to get a mini tablet that is priced at, say, $250, on the market. Regardless of what Apple does or doesn't do in the future, the average price of the competing tablets is going to fall even lower, eventually arriving below the $100 mark if screen costs drop significantly. Once that happens, tablets will finally become affordable enough for the masses of ordinary folks in developing countries to think about buying. That would be hugely significant because the developing world makes up about 70% of the world's entire population and they have an even greater proportion of the globe's children. Once they start buying en masse, Apple's tablet market share reign, which is derived mostly from sales in a few Western countries, would be permanently over with no hope of recovery.

Apple's tablet market share triumph today is really just a reflection of how small the tablet market still is and the fact that tablets are still too expensive for most people to ever consider for purchase. I'm sure there are folks here who will chime in "But Apple will still make the most money!" Yes, that would most likely remain true, but they accomplish that by taking more money from you with each purchase than anyone else does while limiting the hardware options they give you so that they can be maximally profitable at your expense. What's there to celebrate about that if you're just an ordinary consumer and not a shareholder?

 

[ericburnby]

I guess teh Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 would be the ultimate upgrade from last year since they added an SD card. Oh, and they made it thicker and with a new case/externals.

Meanwhile, it has the exact same internals as last year. No processor upgrade (it was already slower than the A5), no memory upgrade, no storage upgrade. Same screen resoution to boot.

But hey, it has an SD card now so it's a "must buy". Yep, Samsung really knows how to improve a product.

 

[Guest]

7-8" tablets though are harder to push a large amount of memory in, which means apple would have to cave or get hammered by not having expandable memory. let us also not forget that amazon is a different marketplace, meaning that they are willing to lose money on hardware in order for you to buy into their ecosystem. i am not convinced that apple can compete at that sized of tablet. it will either kill off their ipod sales, or it would eat into their ipad sales. and they can't do it without making concessions. if apple releases another portable tablet or ipod without expandable memory and some sort of video out without dongles being required then i will never purchase an apple product period.

 

[watcha]

[citation][nom]beayn[/nom]watcha: just because Apple advertised the iPad 3 as being 4x faster than Tegra 3, doesn't mean it's true. There you go again believing everything that is advertised... (by Apple).Go read this article:http/www.tomshardware.com/news/N [...] 14950.html[/citation]

How is an article basically saying NVidia are crying about Apple's claims evidence that it isn't 4x faster?

Use your own logic ffs, just because NVidia claim they need evidence (not even saying Apple are wrong), doesn't mean Apple lied.

There you go again believing everything that NVidia say.

And by the way, what I very carefully stated, if you bothered to read in an educated way, was that the the SGX543MP2 has been proven by Anandtech to be up to 2x faster than Tegra. It is also obvious logically that they have doubled the performance of this by switching to the quad core, assuming they addressed any necessary bandwidth concerns.

Thus, unlike you, my point of view is based upon an educated and benchmarked approach. My original statement below for clarity:

iPad 2 (PowerVR SGX543MP2) is up to 2x faster than Tegra 3, and the GPU in the A5X (PowerVR SGX543MP2) is 2x faster than that (a switch from dual core to quad core). Which means that overall the GPU in the A5X should be 4x faster than Tegra 3 in terms of GPU.

http/images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5163/42749.png
http/images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5163/42748.png

 

[watcha]

[citation][nom]Djanarak[/nom]Wow that's certainly a lot of Apple propaganda that you're pushing. If we're talking about the first and second generation iPad, decoding HD video was limited (only 1280x720p max). And again, playing multiple video formats was a HUGE issue.I can hardly call the Sky Sports app useful, can you give us a concrete example from your supposed "thousands" that might be more convincing? Because I imagine that the world's most watched sporting league would be watched live on a much bigger screen.Also, can you give a few more details about your claim of wirelessly streaming video to an HDTV? Assuming the HDTV has built-in wifi connectivity, you would still need an Apple TV hooked up to the HDTV, isn't it? And that would mean that it will be limited to 720p video on the HDTV. To get 1080p video, you'd have to buy the latest Apple TV. Boo.And by the way, cloud storage is only practical for small files. It isn't even practical for storing music, unless you like hearing your songs streamed back to you at a lower bitrate than it originally was.And regarding your misinformed opinion about "Playing games in moving vehicles doesn't make normal people motion sick", you're wrong. Try using google to get an idea of what percentage of the human population is susceptible to motion sickness. Reading books makes normal people get motion sickness, and gaming on portable devices is even worse.[/citation]

1 - We are clearly not talking about the first generation iPad.
2 - To label the facility to watch the most watched sport in the world as 'not useful' is beyond ignorant. You can't watch it on a big screen if you're on a train. You can, however, watch it on your friends big screen via your iPad with HDMI lead or wirelessly even if they don't have Sky. Dismissing this as a benefit is simply you in denial. As you would say 'typical fanboi'.
3 - Look up the wireless streaming that both iPhone 4S and iPad 3 can do. If you don't even know the details and how it works you shouldn't really be trying to pass yourself off as anything resembling objectivity.
4 - Apple TV isn't limited to 720p - again you're out of date.
5 - Cloud storage is practical for any size file. To misunderstand the purpose and confuse it for 'streaming' is ridiculous. I have large movie and song collections synchronised by the cloud. Anything I add on any device is automatically synchronised to all others, and a local copy is thereby stored on them. Removing any need for SD cards.
6 - 33% susceptible to Motion Sickness. So a clear minority. Meaning the vast majority can play games on moving vehicles without any issues. Furthermore, as I already explained to you, at great length - you don't have to be on a moving vehicle so your whole argument is irrelevant.

What you describe as Apple propaganda is simply me explaining logical facts to you. Nothing I've stated is incorrect - whereas you have to resort to effectively claiming that nobody wants to watch sports on their tablets and that you can't manage your music or film collection via the cloud to try and hold onto any kind of dignity - clearly a nonsense. You of course have addressed none of the crashes, low battery life, fundamentally low performance, proven examples of F1 not being available either, an article explaining how there are hundreds of Apps which make it to Android later, the poor software support meaning old devices get dropped, most of which not supported by ICS.

 

[watcha]

Oh you also failed to address the fact you claimed that 'most' of the apps are games, clearly ignorant to the fact 20% is the true number (more BS from you), or the fact you claimed you can't connect the iPad to a TV via HDMI. I also proved that you can watch MKV files with subtitles, something you claimed you can't. You also failed to address the fact that a desktop PC - which you suggest as a tablet alternative, cannot be used outside in a park, so clearly isn't a replacement. Finally of course you asked for examples of Apps which can't be found on Android, I gave you two very relevant examples (being the most watched sporting league in the world), and you simply dismissed them as not useful. I also provided you an article demonstrating that they are not in the minority - you're basically in denial.

It's so ironic that you think I'm pushing Apple propaganda when my only purpose here is to correct uninformed drivel that people like you put out without having the first clue about the reality of the situation.

And here's the BOOM - I don't own any tablet.

 

[aftcomet]

[citation][nom]lesz422[/nom]Asus Transformer beats the IPADAsus Transformer Prime beats the IPAD 2Asus Transformer tf700 beats the IPAD 3These are the facts and only ISheep believe differentso ASUS make more money then the ipad? more sales?........................let me guess.............Apple may have some dodgy IP rights, but they can make a good product, i sale droid tablets, and trust me, most are sub standard, and turn the customer to a ipad....., which we dont sale[/citation]

Not in Sales and Profit it doesn't, and in the end that's all that matters.

 

[watcha]

[citation][nom]brandoncatz[/nom]So, are there just a bunch of broke apple-haters that jump on to each iDevice article and give a thumbs down to every positive comment? Man, I thought Tom's site was for techies, not always-in-second-place cry babies.[/citation]

Indeed

 

[Vladislaus]

[citation][nom]lesz422[/nom]Asus Transformer beats the IPADAsus Transformer Prime beats the IPAD 2Asus Transformer tf700 beats the IPAD 3These are the facts and only ISheep believe differentso ASUS make more money then the ipad? more sales?........................let me guess.............Apple may have some dodgy IP rights, but they can make a good product, i sale droid tablets, and trust me, most are sub standard, and turn the customer to a ipad....., which we dont sale[/citation]
The TF700T is almost identical to the TF201T. Both have the same Tegra 3 SoC, the same memory,... Basically the only difference is the screen.

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]john_4[/nom]Another Apple hater, Apple makes quality stuff and their OS is superb, if not they would not be doing as good as they are. The numbers do not lie. Overpriced, no. Look at Dell's new 13" ultra book laptop. Aluminum and such, surprisingly similar to Apple in quality and Dell has them priced in line with Apple products.[/citation]
The numbers do not lie... Does that mean Justin Bieber makes quality music?

 

[ruffopurititiwang]

watcha doesn't know what an SD card is and how to use it. Ignorant fanboy.