Read on to know how the Apple iPad fared on the whole in our fresh review of it. There’s hardly any need for an introduction since we didn’t have any corporate advertisement to be up on YouTube to twist our arms and put us in the saddle to lay the groundwork for what goes inside Apple’s over emphasized iPad tablet. Though the revolutionary tablet has almost every spice rested on its taste bud, reasons to scrutinize it cannot ever fall short. We still remember how the world of technology underwent a significant change when Apple just woke up one morning and gave eavesdroppers a clue of what it was up to. The rest is definitely history, but an interesting one. Thus, we couldn’t hold back when an opportunity to review the innovative iPad 3G + Wi-Fi model knocked our doors.
Holding the huge white box already had our excitement soaring for ‘how’d it be like,’ while unboxing literally bulldozed us, we couldn’t find any better word to illustrate the first look. As someone said ‘first impression is the last impression,’ we must say it was a strong one in the form of a big ‘iPhone’ or ‘iPod’ for that matter. Yes, the older sibling of Apple’s super portable iPhone is what the attractive iPad looks like. We genuinely appreciate the exquisite appearance as well as how innovatively the world of advanced technologies is being plopped down in a size that couldn’t be larger than a magazine.
The Apple iPad is indeed incredibly light and thin, which ultimately stamps on Apple’s claims for devising the thinnest tablet around. We found the model super portable and quite a lot lighter than any notebook. If makers from the portable computing sphere lay claims to having the ‘lightest one’ in their trunk, we know whom to believe now. We could very conveniently roam around with its enclosure that weighs just 1.5 pounds and measures at 0.5-inch thin. A slight curve to the back, like the iPhone and iPod, was observed adding grip. The rear portion of the device is crafted of anodized aluminum which makes the device look sturdy yet elegant. Apple’s habitude of executing graceful pieces once again emblematizes that ‘sleekness and exquisite can go hand in hand.’
We liked the reposing and symmetrical appearance which not only makes it neat, but also resembles to a delicate showpiece kept around the corner. Like any model of the iPhone or iPod, this i-tablet also sports a Home button in the front, just below the massive screen that steals the attention. Corners have been given a scanty arch to sidestep from being mistakenly dumped as a book. The topmost edge features an On/Off button on the right hand side, a 3.5mm audio jack connector for headphones and a microphone on the left side. The right edge adroitly accommodates a slide-out button to directly mute and unmute the device, while a considerably long button to increase and decrease the volume snoozes just below it.
A port for SIM lies contemptuously on the left edge whereas the bottom circumference is occupied by the proprietary Apple connector and the speaker which precisely takes charge of the device. Back side of the tablet reveals a bit about Apple’s jump from a pure white apple to a black Apple logo this time. The company gets thumbs up for neatly fitting a high-resolution 9.7-inch LED-backlit IPS display in a compact form factor. ‘Wow’ was definitely the first word that caged out from our mouth on setting the display into action. As far as the display’s clarity is concerned, we’re in love. The display could conveniently adjust its mood and showed us our content in portrait and landscape orientation with every single turn.
Its wide 178 degree viewing angle could easily influence us too, probably Apple would’ve liked the idea of integrating in-plane switching display technology here. Holding the device almost anyway we wanted and still getting an exceptionally vivid, crisp picture was experienced as well. Excellent color and contrast go without saying. The liquid crystal display (1024 x 768 pixels) gets some points for being scratch-resistant but gets the same deducted for letting us leave our fingerprints all across the screen. We could see the display responding to an ambient light sensor which somehow adjusted the screen brightness and a 3-axis accelerometer to sense iPad orientation and switch between portrait and landscape modes. The touchscreen nowhere lags behind what we’ve seen in the company’s previous innovations, delivering a true touch experience. Moreover, smoothly scrolling and swiping through the device’s super sensitive touchscreen is at its best.
The massive display has no intrinsic ‘native’ resolution, only the relative position of the home button changes. Its built-in applications do lend support to screen rotation in portrait, landscape-left, landscape-right, and upside-down. Coming to the audio section, the tablet sports two internal speakers that push mono sound through two small sealed channels to three audio ports carved into the bottom-right of the unit. The audio quality is quite decent but not great enough to make those around you take steps forward. We enjoyed listening to our favorite tunes with good clarity through external speakers.
Audio formats that are supported by the unit include HE-AAC (V1), AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, and others. There’s a user-configurable maximum volume limit as well. In order to try out its internal audio strength, we used a pair of Bose headphones and could listen to songs with good quality (our unit didn’t walk in with a pair of Apple earphones). If you ask us to throw a comparison between internal and external one, we will be favoring the former. The device’s virtual QWERTY keyboard comes as an add-on which let us type facilely and quickly without erring.
The Apple iPad also lends support to Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR technology which indeed let us share our pictures with mobile devices. The hardware specs include 1GHz Apple A4 custom-designed, high-performance, low power system-on-a-chip which keeps the device running pronto. The combination of ARM Cortex-A8 and a PowerVR1 SGX 535 graphics processor built on Samsung’s 45nm process does a great job. Though Apple’s this move steamed the competition with Google who had also powered its Nexus One with 1GHz chip, we could see the web page loading impressively smooth and speedy.
Using the Safari web browser gave us a smooth internet journey. Navigating the web was intuitive while scrolling through a page just by flicking up or down on the screen was feasible as well. There’s also a handy thumbnail view that shows all your open pages in a grid, letting you quickly move from one page to the next. Apart from this good point, we liked the new feature of ‘creating folders’ which let us put all our games in one folder and utility apps in another. We could also assign a name to the same.
Unfortunately, the iPad tablet’s missing support for flash based apps didn’t let us clearly dig into flash-based content on websites. But watching videos on YouTube, which comes already resting, was somewhat a decent experience. Some of the videos were regrettably attacked by blurriness and some were pulled down by time lags. Adding to the pain was its inability to multitask. Listening to music and trying out some app simultaneously looked difficult to us. Now here we can compare Apple’s invention and laptops or netbooks. We are sure many would like to incline towards the latter one. Though the device lends support to high-quality pictures and videos, we couldn’t capture the same due a ‘nowhere to be found’ camera.
There’s a built-in 25-watt hour rechargeable lithium-polymer battery to keep the device conscious and us in play. With the Wi-Fi turned on, we could extend our analysis for up to 10 hours which also included watching videos and listening to music. The structure of Apple iPad leaves us with no support for SD memory slots and no built-in USB slots. Not to slip by, the only way to download applications in the form of ‘iTunes’ is another major disappointment. Like we just said, you cannot download apps and your cool games unless a visit is paid to Apple’s store.
In a nutshell, the Apple iPad quite a lot illustrates the main reason behind gaining nearly 95 percent of share of tablet PC sales. Though in the same queue as customary notebooks and laptops, there are certain loopholes to make it slide back. We liked almost everything about the device except how Apple tripped up a couple of important features. But as the saying goes ‘there’s always room for improvement,’ we just hope Apple will overcome the pitfalls in the form of the iPad 2. For keeping us literally hooked for hours, we assign it a rating of 9 out of 10. The 64GB 3G + Wi-Fi model we received is priced at Rs. 44,990. The device can be snapped up in Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi + 3G variants in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB storage capacities, with a starting price of Rs. 27,900.
