News - iPad Mini coming next month uses iPad 2 guts?

[HEXUS]

October launch for smaller iPad according to Bloomberg sources.

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[Pleiades]

I'll definitely buy the Samsung version of this as it'll be cheaper and have slightly smoother corners.

[LeProberto]

its still will be big so i dont need to make it smaller

[3930k]

i'll definitely buy the samsung version of this as it'll be cheaper and have slightly smoother corners.

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

[Godric]

i think i will wait another year or two before i buy a tablet ... but it won't be from apple

[crossy]

Can you smell the desperation?

From the description given in the article, the phrase "raiding the parts bin" figures prominently.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

TBH,I will rest judgement until it is released and we know how much it is priced.

[TheAnimus]

Yeah it will be interesting how far in to the Amazon/Google price war they will go.

I will also say, I still find my iPad to be a waste of space, aside from the odd bit of testing stuff for clients, I would be rid of it.

The Nexus7 size thing fits perfectly.

A mate of mine said its obvious that the mini-tablets are the future, because microsoft are about to release a bunch of large ones.....

[jnutt]

Wife just bought the Nexus 7. Very quick, ticks all the boxes. Who needs Apple with kit like this on the market for under £200.

[cheesemp]

A mate of mine said its obvious that the mini-tablets are the future, because microsoft are about to release a bunch of large ones.....

Best quote ever!

[scaryjim]

It's interesting to see how few people actually want a 10" device of any kind. Netbooks have slowly shifted more towards the 11"+ end of the market, and tablets are steadily drifting down to 7". Having owned both 10" and 7" tablets, I can completely understand, too.

The problem with a 10" tablet is that it is neither sufficiently portable to be a genuine mobile device, nor sufficiently practical to be a portable productivity device. It falls between the two camps. Once you're carrying a 10" tablet you need a bag of some description, and at that point an 11" - 13" laptop becomes just as portable and far more practical. A 10" tablet is OK when you're sat at home or in the office as an additional connected device, but try to carry it around a lot and you'll quickly be sick of it.

A 7" tablet will drop into pretty much any bag, and most people (well, most men, anyway!) will have at least one pocket big enough for it. Screen size is good for reading and web use. And the size and weight are much better for usability - basically a 7" device becomes properly portable, which means it can afford to be a little less practical. Apple aren't daft enough to completely miss out on the market trend, so I think a smaller iPad was inevitable.

An interesting word on Microsoft though - I don't think their surface is doomed to failure by any means. A lot depends on the quality of the keyboard covers, but I can see the Surface basically wiping out netbooks as we know them. A 10" device with both touch and keyboard could be quite desirable, and if we don't see Atom Windows 8 tablets springing up very quickly I'd be amazed. If you can take a 10" tablet and make it genuinely practical (i.e. with a decent touch OS, all your legacy programs and a reasonable keyboard) then it can justify itself as a home entertainment and portable productivity device - potentially even as a replacement to a conventional laptop. I'll certainly be keeping a close eye on them given the age of my current lappy...

[cam1986]

Might look at one as we are thinking of selling our iPad 2

[martian_aphid]

7inch is my preferred tablet size as it is actually protable, unfortunately the nexus 7 didn't quite do it with the lack of SD card slot and no HDMI out. This thing is just daft though and who else is tired of the uninventive and dated iOS. I suppose it just shows once you "invent" a couple of rounded shapes you can just blow it up and shrink it down and there are enough gullible people out there to buy every marginal iteration you can churn out. And is 4:3 really what people want from a tablet? The 16:10/9 certainly looks more comfortable to me, particularly for media consumption - even if you have to sacrifice a little for viewing webpages, etc.

[brasco]

Will be interesting to see what they come up with, the Nexus is pretty much uncontested at the moment. Personally, I've no interest in these (if they exist!), I've no use for a small tab, more in the market for a tablet closer to a laptop to replace one of the desktops..

[cam1986]

Will be interesting to see what they come up with, the Nexus is pretty much uncontested at the moment. Personally, I've no interest in these (if they exist!), I've no use for a small tab, more in the market for a tablet closer to a laptop to replace one of the desktops..

That would be a better idea.

[crossy]

An interesting word on Microsoft though - I don't think their surface is doomed to failure by any means. A lot depends on the quality of the keyboard covers, but I can see the Surface basically wiping out netbooks as we know them. A 10" device with both touch and keyboard could be quite desirable, and if we don't see Atom Windows 8 tablets springing up very quickly I'd be amazed. If you can take a 10" tablet and make it genuinely practical (i.e. with a decent touch OS, all your legacy programs and a reasonable keyboard) then it can justify itself as a home entertainment and portable productivity device - potentially even as a replacement to a conventional laptop. I'll certainly be keeping a close eye on them given the age of my current lappy...

I'm going to put a qualified agreement on what you're saying above - the qualification being that like the netbooks before them, "professional" grade tablets seem to be increasing in price - keep them below £400 and you'd definitely be better off with one of those rather than a netbook. I'm speaking from experience - my Asus Transformer replaced an Acer netbook and the only advantage of the Acer was that I could put any damned OS I wanted on it. In every other respect the Transformer is a better device.

Will be interesting to see what they come up with, the Nexus is pretty much uncontested at the moment. Personally, I've no interest in these (if they exist!), I've no use for a small tab, more in the market for a tablet closer to a laptop to replace one of the desktops..

With my Asus fan hat on, if/when they start selling the Transformer form factor with Windows8RT on it, then that would be worthy of serious consideration. Personally I can quite happily live with an Android based version, but I realise that some folks need Windows.

Getting back to the article, my concern is that this new iPad isn't going to be small enough - since it's closer to the 8" size than the 7" "portable" one that everyone seems to prefer. Oh, and it's not on my list since I've already got a 7" tablet and wasn't that impressed - sure it's more portable, but wasn't appreciably easier to use than my (more portable) smartphone.