Ipad mini 3 review

The iPad Air 2 may have stolen all the spotlight, but that's not because of poor marketing planning. Apple did little to change the third generation of the iPad mini so it got little stage time. But it's not our job to decide which product gets the most fanfare. Our job is to see whether it's worth your money.


Apple iPad mini 3 official pictures

The list of the new features of the new iPad mini 3 is one really short list. The Home button now doubles as a Touch ID fingerprint sensor. There is also a new golden paintjob available along with the usual Space Gray and Silver. Oh, and the 32GB model is now axed - you only get to pick from 16, 64 and 128GB options.

Everything else is completely identical to the iPad mini 2 - the 7.9" Retina display, the Apple A7 chipset, the 5MP rear camera, and the thin and light aluminum unibody. No matter how small the hardware bump however the Apple iPad mini 3 remains one really powerful slate, positioned near the top of the food chain as far as tablets go. Let's explore it in detail.

Key features:

Metal unibody, 7.5mm slim, 331g of weight
Optional LTE connectivity (Cat. 4, 150Mbps downlink)
7.9" 1,536 x 2,048 LED-backlit IPS LCD with 324 ppi pixel density
Apple iOS 8
Dual-core 1.3 GHz Apple A7 chipset, M7 motion co-processor, PowerVR GX6430 GPU, 1GB of RAM
5MP autofocus camera, 1080p@30fps, 1.2MP front-facing camera
16/64/128GB of built-in storage
Touch ID fingerprint sensor built into the Home button
6,471 mAh battery
Main disadvantages:

No microSD slot
Pricey memory upgrades, 32GB version should have been standard
No NFC connectivity, Apple Pay has limited functionality
Apple iOS 8 still relies on iTunes for music and file transfers
The Apple iPad mini 3 is a pricey little tablet, but it has powerful hardware and a beautiful screen. It probably isn't worth the upgrade if you are coming from the iPad mini 2, but as a standalone purchase it sure looks attractive.


Apple iPad mini 3 live pictures

Quite expectedly, the iPad mini 3 inherits all limitations the previous generation suffered from, but Apple made it clear throughout the years some things will probably never change. So the lack of memory expansion and the non-users replaceable battery shouldn't be a surprise by now.

I phone 6 v/s Samsung galaxy Note 4

Introduction

Apple did what was once the unthinkable while predictable Samsung delivers again. Right or wrong, this is a fight of old versus new, the Galaxy Note is in its fourth generation while the iPhone 6 Plus is Apple's first phablet ever.



Samsung's release cadence dictates that the Galaxy Note is the H2 flagship, keen to assert its superiority over an already feature-rich Galaxy S. iPhones come once a year, even the first-time iPhone 6 Plus phablet. The situation is similar though, the Plus is better equipped than the vanilla iPhone 6.

Apple iPhone 6 Plus over Galaxy Note 4:

Thinner - 7.1mm vs. 8.5mm
Phase-detection autofocus
Slo-mo video - 240fps mode vs. 120fps mode
64GB and 128GB versions
Tap-to-scan (no swipe) fingerprint sensor
Dual-LED flash vs. single LED
Samsung Galaxy Note 4 over iPhone 6 Plus:

Bigger, sharper display - 5.7" QHD vs. 5.5" 1080p
Higher resolution still camera - 16MP vs. 8MP
Better video recording - 2160p (stereo sound) vs. 1080p (mono)
Expandable storage
General-purpose NFC
Heart rate and blood oxygen saturation sensors
Better front-facing camera - 3.7MP/1440p vs. 1.2MP/720p
Bigger, user-replaceable battery
Faster LTE (on Snapdragon version only)
Optional dual-SIM
Samsung is known for its feature-rich (some would say "overflowing"), utilitarian designs but it's slowly coming around to metal designs with the Alpha and now the Galaxy Note 4. It's just a metal rim, so the user-replaceable battery and microSD card slot are intact.

The screen size also remained unchanged (5.7") to keep the device manageable single-handedly, but resolution increased to QHD. The defining feature of the Note series, the S Pen, was also improved and Samsung included optical image stabilization (OIS) to the list of camera specs.


Apple iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung Galaxy Note 4 getting ready for a fight

The biggest change for Apple is the screen - after years of keeping just about the same size and sharpness, the company took the plunge. The design language changed more than it did for the Galaxy and is now smooth and rounded like an iPod Touch, it's impressively slim too. It's the OIS-enabled camera that is the other advantage over the vanilla iPhone 6.

With bigger screens, both phones and their respective platforms (iOS and Android + TouchWiz) have their ways of boosting usability.