That is pretty marvelous. I'd love to know how well the Nexus 7 (2013) and the latest iPad Mini do in this test; I already have a rMBP 13 so the iPad Air would be too similar in footprint for me to get.
Agreed, it'd be nice to have at least a few points of comparison--even if only one per SoC. I assume baseband power dominates a test like this and 95% of devices you'd be looking at us MDM9x15, but if it degrades into a linear test of battery capacity, that'd be good to know too.
As for better tests, why not just run one or two of your desktop battery tests while tethered? As I understand, they all hit the internet in a pseudo-realistic fashion. It would also be nice to see how the battery life varies with number of devices tethered, though I realize I'm now asking for multiple days' worth of testing. Still, one can hope!
Yup, I'd be happy to see how different phone and tablets perform compare to dedicated dongle, some stress test also can be done by sending large files between 2 devices connected to same hotspot.
I'm actually interested how some phones are with LTE Hotspot battery life, probably should be a standard test with future smartphones and tablets review?
Umm, haven't they tested phone battery life as hotspots for years? Might've left it off a few reviews due to time constraints but it's been a staple of AT. Pretty sure they've tested with LTE when available too...
You can if you have AT&T. I use my iPhone as a hotspot every week and also as a phone at the same time. No muss, no fuss. Verizon? Sprint? ...not so much
It's great to see that Apple is innovating with the product, but they dramatically limited its appeal by leaving Micro-SDXC slots off of it.
I finally have some statistics on the #1 most wanted feature that users want in a mini-tablet:
- SD card reader - 26% of users with 9042 votes
- Phone functionality - 17% of users with 5912 votes
The poll was posted by Asus. I doubt that the numbers would be much different for a full sized tablet.
Those two features are very much under-represented in the market offerings that exist today for phones, tablets, convertibles, and notebooks.
To Apple's credit they offer a 64GB option for internal storage, but they want $200 for the privilege of having it. Worse, this is essentially equivalent to a $40 Micro-SDXC storage card, so you are very much being overcharged. An extra $100 on top of that (for a total premium of $300) gets you a more reasonable, but very costly, 128GB.
Add in no WiFi-AC and an under-developed camera, and all the goodness of this idea looks far less compelling.
Probably the most impressive thing about this device is the very healthy selection of telephony bands and frequencies. I wish more manufacturers took the telephony radio side of things more seriously.
So Asus, who make an el cheap tablet/phone that nobody buys..commissioned a poll saying more people should buy it and you find this relevant how? The fact is hardly anyone uses SD cards. They are slow, unreliable, use non-contiguous memory and the manufactures know very few people use them or care about them. That is why both Apple and Google don't support them. Also device weight and thinness are factors. No ac isn't a great thing especially for people like me who have an Ac router at home but the reality it's going to be quite awhile before you see AC routers in coffee shops etc and I'd rather use LTE anyway. Plus I care a lot more about ac on my laptop than on a tablet and the iPad Airs wi-fi is improved over the iPad 4. An underdeveloped camera...this one actually made me laugh... The idea that any of these make the device less compelling is ridiculous. Nobody cares about these things.
Here I am a mac user calling out an Apple troll... Seriously, please.
Whatever the validity of an Asus survey is, an Achilles Heal of the iPads is an inability to "officially" connect to any physical device other than a PC. If not SD cards, then at least USB HDs.
Apple is pricing the iPads for what they can get away with which is the same myopic pricing strategy that led to market share collapse 20 years ago... What's worse is that there is no strategic benefit to Apple to charge so much for SSD upgrades. By the time you bump iPads to 128MB, you run into Macbook pricing and a $999 Macbook gives smaller margins than a $799 iPad. $200 more gives you 4x the RAM, a functional file system, Windows compatibility option (if you're into that), as well as Linux, better peripheral compatibility, and not to be left out, a much faster machine. So while the MBA is a much better customer value than the IPA, Apple makes less money on them and less App store revenue as well. Apple would be MUUUUCH better off lowering the 128gb price to at or below $699.
I have the Kensington MobileLite with a 128GB SD card which cost less than $120 total. Very nice device and can support connecting to three devices at the same time.
I have to agree. The prices Apple charges for Flash memory upgrades on iDevices have become indefensible. Especially charging one hundred dollars for an extra 16 Gigabytes of Flash that can't possibly cost them ten dollars in materials.
It's well past time for 32 Gigs of Flash to be the baseline.
Asus makes cheap tablets that nobody buys? You mean like the Nexus 7 line? Where the card slot was only left out at Google's request since every other Asus tablet has one... SD cards aren't any slower or less reliable than internal storage, they're practically the same thing and work in much the same way (sadly, tablet/phone storage controllers haven't evolved much).
The reasons to leave removable storage out are anything but technical... They're political and practical. The policy angle is obvious, pushing cloud services or enjoying high profit upsells on larger capacity SKU. The practical angle has more to due with the move away from file managers in mobile OS (because the general public never cared for the concept and just made a mess of file organization) and the way applications are written/loaded.
I'm not saying that poll carries much stock, it was run by Asus to a very specific demographic I imagine... I do think it would be pretty inconsequential to include card slots in the iPad/Nexus line, design-wise anyway, it'd obviously hurt the OEM's bottom line since anyone with a need for 64GB+ of storage is smart enough to shop for a $30 card.
At the same time, since I'm an Android user I actually think it matters very little as far as tablets are concerned. If I'm running out the door and wanna grab some movies or whatever I can just put them on a faster USB 3.0 stick and then access it later via USB OTG, or I can use Meenova's micro USB OTG / microSD reader.
Removable storage on a phone where something dangling around is more precarious is a far bigger concern and yet everyone's following Apple's lead there too, blah. (except Samsung anyway, but that alone isn't enough for me to opt for their devices)
802.11ac hasn't finished group approval, and radios that satisfy the battery efficiency requirements of Apple probably don't exist yet. I think it's better not to go there yet. Innovation doesn't mean stupidly be first. Only a very extreme minority of customers would be able to benefit from it anyway.
Having a new Nexus 7 2013, I can assure the the camera on the iPad is fine.
IMO The most impressive thing about the iPad Air is the chip speed per core and the power efficiency, which is basically what this article is about.
SD Cards are slow, even class 10 ones, even the SDXC ones. IMO they shouldn't be used outside of cameras and single-board computers IMO. There's no use explaining this to the average consumer who wants them, and no use explaining to the average consumer who has them that they are slow not to install things on them. Google and Apple agree, it's just easier not to give it to people.
That being said, it would be cool on the phones at least if they would allow for an SD card to save camera images only, although that would make iPhoto and other I/O heavy apps slower. I know my Galaxy S4 photo gallery app speed went way down after storing things on micro SD instead of the internal memory.
$100 price points for more NAND memory are getting tiresome. I think it could change on the 6.
yeah...no offense dude, but sd cards are used for shit like cameras...including HD VIDEO cameras. You know the stuff that ACTUALLY stresses Input/Output...unlike the tiny little bit of flash inside your tablet. In short, SD cards (the well built, faster ones, not the budget versions) are FASTER, not SLOWER than the flash memory in your tablet. Oh and one other thing...a full blown SSD which blows away both that SD card as well as the eMMC in your tablet costs less than apple's storage upgrades. Disclaimer: not blaming apple since all tablet manufacturers do the same exact thing.
Actually, most HD video only requires about a class 4 card or so... Unless you're shooting high Mbit rates on a DSLR or something. Dunno what decided video cameras require, haven't kept up with that world, I'm guessing around 6-10MB/s sequential speeds if they're closer in bitrate to high end stills cameras (obviously talking about consumer stuff here, not a RED, which definitely don't use SD cards).
Burst shooting is usually more demanding than video, since a DSLR can be firing up to 10 RAW + JPEG images in one second (so close to 300MB/s); that's usually done to a buffer of course but the quicker the card the quicker the buffer clears and you can start shooting again. These are all very sequential operations tho...
Internal storage has an advantage in that it can be optimized for random I/O which is far more common on a mobile device, was removable media is usually poorly optimized for it. That hardly justifies some of the premiums on cheap flash hooked up to an even cheaper eMMC tho.
Sequential read and write is basically the easiest task you can ask of a storage device, which is all anyone tells consumers when they buy things.
I wanted to be clear that I'm not saying you can't use SD cards as primary storage. I have a few Raspberry Pis, BeagleBones, and a Udoo, which all use SD or Micro SD as primary storage. I'm just saying the user experience is going to be poor unless the the speed bottleneck isn't the SD card or users / apps are smart enough to only use them only in appropriate tasks.
Google tends not to mention any speed issues and instead describes complicated user edge cases that involve removing the card while an app is running, or while editing a photo, or other things.
I don't really see external sd-card as a replacement or proper expansion of storage. From operating systems point of view it's logically different volume. And since none of the big Mobile OS platforms offer real file management as an integrated feature, i just feel that external storage is a hassle and hindrance to average user.
I agree that 16->32 storage upgrade @ apple is expensive, but otoh it provides huge value for customer (expands usable space almost threefold). Similar value of storage space could never be achieved with a mere uSD, as it would mean that all software would need to be rewritten to handle multiple storages or OS would need to be able to move stuff between storages.
Currently there are no elegant ways of handling multiple storage paths in mobile os'es an i think it's not going to change.
Being a nerd i can find my way trough androids convoluted linux paths, but for average folks its a real horror.
Anyone who wants to access and manage files should consider moving towards ubuntu...
If I recall correctly, and let me know if I’m just suffering from a faulty memory, I believe the lack of SD slots and USB ports goes back to Apple’s iPod days.
Since they were the only company building music players and selling music (now DRM free), I believe part of the agreement with the music publishers was to make pirating music as difficult as possible and this precluded the addition of memory slots or USB ports to their devices.
I’ve heard nothing more since pre-iPhone days, so I don't know if they're still bound by the same restrictions.
One element not discussed is by making it so thin, the iPad Air can now be bent. Played with on in the store and while not trying to break it, noticed by twisting it got the screen to flicker. This was not possible with even the iPad 2, 3, or 4. Time will tell if this will become a bigger issue in the future.
Heh, well I can confirm it needs more force than I'm willing to apply to it to test your theory. It's like saying spiking your Note III into the ground may cause it to break.
Have you held an iPad Air even? Doubtful. Go to the store and you can see for yourself. Or Anand can confirm that the torsion rigidity is no where what it used to be.
Better yet, send me $500 and I will video myself folding it in half while wearing gloves.
So you buy the tablet so you can bend it? Ok. That's right. That's the first thing I do, .... try to bend the thing and see if it pass the "bend test".
Why don't we focus on something more useful, like would it crack more often if it's dropped .... compared to the old iPads? .... You know, something more realistic.
BTW, send me $1000 and I can do the test for you and video tape it. ;-D Fool.
While I don't like the idea of a monthly bill for an accessory computing device, the problem with wireless tethering is that you can drain a phone battery extremely quickly. And the phone is a more necessary device for me when on the road, than the tablet (for communication, GPS navigation, etc).
Another option would be to tether via USB, but that's a hassle to setup and leaves you with clunky wired connection... Not ideal while on a crowded subway.
I must live in the dark ages but I could never get reception in the subway when I lived in a town with one... If battery life is your main problem, some emergency phone chargers claim they can help get you through another few hours of data use. I have one but have never had to use it.
Or how about pay extra $130 for iPad with Cellular and suck it instead of buying mobile charger? In fact turn it the other way around. Make the iPad as access point for your phone and as in this test, you'll get a mobile router with 24hours of battery life. Problem. Solved. :)
2 - The iPad Air supports any USA telecom sim on an easy swap switch. Can't find Tmobile? Just swap in your ATT, VERIZON, or SPRINT Sim, whatever works at the moment.
Heh...we android users don't need no stinkin extra 'monthly bill'. Just install this fabulous 'cyanogenmod' and save yourself $40/mo for the rest of your life. Loved the fact i was seeing 40 megs down, 10 megs up on a verizon LTE network in Ogunquit ME on my laptop last summer. Wish my cable internet were that fast.
Hey Anand, thanks for doing this test. As a hotspot, does the iPad also have the capability to act as a router? Specifically I want to be able to send low-latency MIDI messages between the hotspot device and other iPads connected to it. This is a music making function that works great on my home wifi but I would love to know if I could go completely mobile by making a cellular iPad serve as my router.
I haven't tried your particular scenario but I can confirm the "hotspot" iPad can communicate directly with the devices tethered to it (naturally, I mean why wouldn't it)? I've used it with one of those "remote camera" apps to connect an iPhone to an LTE iPad without needing an external wifi network.
thanks, that is good to know. But does the data go thru the cell tower? That would use up data limits; and more importantly take longer than is acceptable for my music production apps.
No, your iPad (or whichever tethering device) acts as a wi-fi router, so every device sends messages through it like they would a normal wi-fi router. Just like your home router, the wi-fi is combined with a modem so that outside calls can be made to the internet.
Nice little test. But why don't you guys ever complain about data caps... you mention it in this article yet you say nothing of the moral negligence of implementing it or the corruption it's indicative in the ISP industry.
I think the constant harping on about shitty screen, from this site, is at least partially to thank for the recent increase in screen quality. You should try and do the same thing with the evil the ISP's are getting away with. Not to mention network specific phones. We all know we SHOULD be able to buy a phone and take it to any network, but no one ever even talks about it.
It's still marked up an unforgivable amount over the WiFi version. They add $30 worth of cellular modem hardware for $220. Cheaper to buy a standalone hotspot to go with your iPad.
I don't get it Anand. With the screen and processor (mostly) turned-off, it's just a big battery attached to a modem. So obviously it would get more battery life than a Mi-fi considering it has a much bigger battery.
What's so surprising about this? You can probably achieve roughly the same amount of time with any ARM-based tablet.
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djscrew - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
thanks for giving me one more reason to hate the big 3 carriersHrel - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
Who do you consider the big 3? ATT Verizon and Sprint or ATT verizon and Tmobile?Amkitsaw - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
That is pretty marvelous. I'd love to know how well the Nexus 7 (2013) and the latest iPad Mini do in this test; I already have a rMBP 13 so the iPad Air would be too similar in footprint for me to get.teiglin - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
Agreed, it'd be nice to have at least a few points of comparison--even if only one per SoC. I assume baseband power dominates a test like this and 95% of devices you'd be looking at us MDM9x15, but if it degrades into a linear test of battery capacity, that'd be good to know too.As for better tests, why not just run one or two of your desktop battery tests while tethered? As I understand, they all hit the internet in a pseudo-realistic fashion. It would also be nice to see how the battery life varies with number of devices tethered, though I realize I'm now asking for multiple days' worth of testing. Still, one can hope!
ananduser - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
Don't forget to add the Nokia 2520 LTE tablet, currently the only Windows(RT) tablet with LTE capability.bountygiver - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
Yup, I'd be happy to see how different phone and tablets perform compare to dedicated dongle, some stress test also can be done by sending large files between 2 devices connected to same hotspot.Malih - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
I'm actually interested how some phones are with LTE Hotspot battery life, probably should be a standard test with future smartphones and tablets review?djscrew - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
I agree, LTE hotspot battery life test for smartphones would be nice. Get on it Anandtech!Impulses - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Umm, haven't they tested phone battery life as hotspots for years? Might've left it off a few reviews due to time constraints but it's been a staple of AT. Pretty sure they've tested with LTE when available too...jeffkibuule - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Yeah, the problem with doing any kind of battery life testing is you can't effectively use the phone during that time. It kinda sucks.tjolley - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
You can if you have AT&T. I use my iPhone as a hotspot every week and also as a phone at the same time. No muss, no fuss. Verizon? Sprint? ...not so muchChris_80 - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
How long would the iPhone 5s last as a personal hotspot? 4 hours?Have you tested this? That would be interesting, too.
hrrmph - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
It's great to see that Apple is innovating with the product, but they dramatically limited its appeal by leaving Micro-SDXC slots off of it.I finally have some statistics on the #1 most wanted feature that users want in a mini-tablet:
- SD card reader - 26% of users with 9042 votes
- Phone functionality - 17% of users with 5912 votes
The poll was posted by Asus. I doubt that the numbers would be much different for a full sized tablet.
Those two features are very much under-represented in the market offerings that exist today for phones, tablets, convertibles, and notebooks.
To Apple's credit they offer a 64GB option for internal storage, but they want $200 for the privilege of having it. Worse, this is essentially equivalent to a $40 Micro-SDXC storage card, so you are very much being overcharged. An extra $100 on top of that (for a total premium of $300) gets you a more reasonable, but very costly, 128GB.
Add in no WiFi-AC and an under-developed camera, and all the goodness of this idea looks far less compelling.
Probably the most impressive thing about this device is the very healthy selection of telephony bands and frequencies. I wish more manufacturers took the telephony radio side of things more seriously.
darwinosx - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
So Asus, who make an el cheap tablet/phone that nobody buys..commissioned a poll saying more people should buy it and you find this relevant how?The fact is hardly anyone uses SD cards. They are slow, unreliable, use non-contiguous memory and the manufactures know very few people use them or care about them. That is why both Apple and Google don't support them. Also device weight and thinness are factors.
No ac isn't a great thing especially for people like me who have an Ac router at home but the reality it's going to be quite awhile before you see AC routers in coffee shops etc and I'd rather use LTE anyway. Plus I care a lot more about ac on my laptop than on a tablet and the iPad Airs wi-fi is improved over the iPad 4.
An underdeveloped camera...this one actually made me laugh...
The idea that any of these make the device less compelling is ridiculous. Nobody cares about these things.
purerice - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
Here I am a mac user calling out an Apple troll... Seriously, please.Whatever the validity of an Asus survey is, an Achilles Heal of the iPads is an inability to "officially" connect to any physical device other than a PC. If not SD cards, then at least USB HDs.
Apple is pricing the iPads for what they can get away with which is the same myopic pricing strategy that led to market share collapse 20 years ago... What's worse is that there is no strategic benefit to Apple to charge so much for SSD upgrades. By the time you bump iPads to 128MB, you run into Macbook pricing and a $999 Macbook gives smaller margins than a $799 iPad. $200 more gives you 4x the RAM, a functional file system, Windows compatibility option (if you're into that), as well as Linux, better peripheral compatibility, and not to be left out, a much faster machine. So while the MBA is a much better customer value than the IPA, Apple makes less money on them and less App store revenue as well. Apple would be MUUUUCH better off lowering the 128gb price to at or below $699.
dokujaryu - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
You can connect an iPad to a Wifi HDD, which probably is more power efficient than a cabled connection.http://www.anandtech.com/show/4706/understanding-w...
mark3785 - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
I have the Kensington MobileLite with a 128GB SD card which cost less than $120 total. Very nice device and can support connecting to three devices at the same time.MarkWebb - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Bravo, my sentiments exactly, memory to the people! The cost for the steps up in storage are a real gouge ....BillBear - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
I have to agree. The prices Apple charges for Flash memory upgrades on iDevices have become indefensible. Especially charging one hundred dollars for an extra 16 Gigabytes of Flash that can't possibly cost them ten dollars in materials.It's well past time for 32 Gigs of Flash to be the baseline.
Impulses - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Asus makes cheap tablets that nobody buys? You mean like the Nexus 7 line? Where the card slot was only left out at Google's request since every other Asus tablet has one... SD cards aren't any slower or less reliable than internal storage, they're practically the same thing and work in much the same way (sadly, tablet/phone storage controllers haven't evolved much).The reasons to leave removable storage out are anything but technical... They're political and practical. The policy angle is obvious, pushing cloud services or enjoying high profit upsells on larger capacity SKU. The practical angle has more to due with the move away from file managers in mobile OS (because the general public never cared for the concept and just made a mess of file organization) and the way applications are written/loaded.
I'm not saying that poll carries much stock, it was run by Asus to a very specific demographic I imagine... I do think it would be pretty inconsequential to include card slots in the iPad/Nexus line, design-wise anyway, it'd obviously hurt the OEM's bottom line since anyone with a need for 64GB+ of storage is smart enough to shop for a $30 card.
At the same time, since I'm an Android user I actually think it matters very little as far as tablets are concerned. If I'm running out the door and wanna grab some movies or whatever I can just put them on a faster USB 3.0 stick and then access it later via USB OTG, or I can use Meenova's micro USB OTG / microSD reader.
Removable storage on a phone where something dangling around is more precarious is a far bigger concern and yet everyone's following Apple's lead there too, blah. (except Samsung anyway, but that alone isn't enough for me to opt for their devices)
dokujaryu - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
802.11ac hasn't finished group approval, and radios that satisfy the battery efficiency requirements of Apple probably don't exist yet. I think it's better not to go there yet. Innovation doesn't mean stupidly be first. Only a very extreme minority of customers would be able to benefit from it anyway.Having a new Nexus 7 2013, I can assure the the camera on the iPad is fine.
IMO The most impressive thing about the iPad Air is the chip speed per core and the power efficiency, which is basically what this article is about.
SD Cards are slow, even class 10 ones, even the SDXC ones. IMO they shouldn't be used outside of cameras and single-board computers IMO. There's no use explaining this to the average consumer who wants them, and no use explaining to the average consumer who has them that they are slow not to install things on them. Google and Apple agree, it's just easier not to give it to people.
That being said, it would be cool on the phones at least if they would allow for an SD card to save camera images only, although that would make iPhoto and other I/O heavy apps slower. I know my Galaxy S4 photo gallery app speed went way down after storing things on micro SD instead of the internal memory.
$100 price points for more NAND memory are getting tiresome. I think it could change on the 6.
eek2121 - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
yeah...no offense dude, but sd cards are used for shit like cameras...including HD VIDEO cameras. You know the stuff that ACTUALLY stresses Input/Output...unlike the tiny little bit of flash inside your tablet. In short, SD cards (the well built, faster ones, not the budget versions) are FASTER, not SLOWER than the flash memory in your tablet. Oh and one other thing...a full blown SSD which blows away both that SD card as well as the eMMC in your tablet costs less than apple's storage upgrades. Disclaimer: not blaming apple since all tablet manufacturers do the same exact thing.Impulses - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Actually, most HD video only requires about a class 4 card or so... Unless you're shooting high Mbit rates on a DSLR or something. Dunno what decided video cameras require, haven't kept up with that world, I'm guessing around 6-10MB/s sequential speeds if they're closer in bitrate to high end stills cameras (obviously talking about consumer stuff here, not a RED, which definitely don't use SD cards).Burst shooting is usually more demanding than video, since a DSLR can be firing up to 10 RAW + JPEG images in one second (so close to 300MB/s); that's usually done to a buffer of course but the quicker the card the quicker the buffer clears and you can start shooting again. These are all very sequential operations tho...
Internal storage has an advantage in that it can be optimized for random I/O which is far more common on a mobile device, was removable media is usually poorly optimized for it. That hardly justifies some of the premiums on cheap flash hooked up to an even cheaper eMMC tho.
dokujaryu - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Sequential read and write is basically the easiest task you can ask of a storage device, which is all anyone tells consumers when they buy things.I wanted to be clear that I'm not saying you can't use SD cards as primary storage. I have a few Raspberry Pis, BeagleBones, and a Udoo, which all use SD or Micro SD as primary storage. I'm just saying the user experience is going to be poor unless the the speed bottleneck isn't the SD card or users / apps are smart enough to only use them only in appropriate tasks.
Google tends not to mention any speed issues and instead describes complicated user edge cases that involve removing the card while an app is running, or while editing a photo, or other things.
zepi - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
I don't really see external sd-card as a replacement or proper expansion of storage. From operating systems point of view it's logically different volume. And since none of the big Mobile OS platforms offer real file management as an integrated feature, i just feel that external storage is a hassle and hindrance to average user.I agree that 16->32 storage upgrade @ apple is expensive, but otoh it provides huge value for customer (expands usable space almost threefold). Similar value of storage space could never be achieved with a mere uSD, as it would mean that all software would need to be rewritten to handle multiple storages or OS would need to be able to move stuff between storages.
Currently there are no elegant ways of handling multiple storage paths in mobile os'es an i think it's not going to change.
Being a nerd i can find my way trough androids convoluted linux paths, but for average folks its a real horror.
Anyone who wants to access and manage files should consider moving towards ubuntu...
mark3785 - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
If I recall correctly, and let me know if I’m just suffering from a faulty memory, I believe the lack of SD slots and USB ports goes back to Apple’s iPod days.Since they were the only company building music players and selling music (now DRM free), I believe part of the agreement with the music publishers was to make pirating music as difficult as possible and this precluded the addition of memory slots or USB ports to their devices.
I’ve heard nothing more since pre-iPhone days, so I don't know if they're still bound by the same restrictions.
Lord 666 - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
One element not discussed is by making it so thin, the iPad Air can now be bent. Played with on in the store and while not trying to break it, noticed by twisting it got the screen to flicker. This was not possible with even the iPad 2, 3, or 4. Time will tell if this will become a bigger issue in the future.darwinosx - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
Oh please..Phynaz - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
BullshitNCM - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
Cue the new 'You bend it, you buy it' store policy.KoolAidMan1 - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
Are you for real? I got one yesterday and it is just as rigid as the 3, there are no problems with twisting or strength.Lord 666 - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
Place one hand on top and one on the bottom. Now twist and watch the screen flicker.darkcrayon - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
Heh, well I can confirm it needs more force than I'm willing to apply to it to test your theory. It's like saying spiking your Note III into the ground may cause it to break.ciparis - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
"Hey doc, it hurts when I do this!""Then don't do that."
Lord 666 - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
Have you held an iPad Air even? Doubtful. Go to the store and you can see for yourself. Or Anand can confirm that the torsion rigidity is no where what it used to be.Better yet, send me $500 and I will video myself folding it in half while wearing gloves.
web2dot0 - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
So you buy the tablet so you can bend it? Ok. That's right. That's the first thing I do, .... try to bend the thing and see if it pass the "bend test".Why don't we focus on something more useful, like would it crack more often if it's dropped .... compared to the old iPads? .... You know, something more realistic.
BTW, send me $1000 and I can do the test for you and video tape it. ;-D Fool.
fourthletter - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
I would tend to use my phone as an access point, then connect a tablet to it.TrackSmart - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
While I don't like the idea of a monthly bill for an accessory computing device, the problem with wireless tethering is that you can drain a phone battery extremely quickly. And the phone is a more necessary device for me when on the road, than the tablet (for communication, GPS navigation, etc).Another option would be to tether via USB, but that's a hassle to setup and leaves you with clunky wired connection... Not ideal while on a crowded subway.
purerice - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
I must live in the dark ages but I could never get reception in the subway when I lived in a town with one... If battery life is your main problem, some emergency phone chargers claim they can help get you through another few hours of data use. I have one but have never had to use it.iSayuSay - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Or how about pay extra $130 for iPad with Cellular and suck it instead of buying mobile charger? In fact turn it the other way around. Make the iPad as access point for your phone and as in this test, you'll get a mobile router with 24hours of battery life. Problem. Solved. :)pk de cville - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
The $130 looks good when you consider...1 - T-mobile provides 200MB FREE data each month.
2 - The iPad Air supports any USA telecom sim on an easy swap switch. Can't find Tmobile? Just swap in your ATT, VERIZON, or SPRINT Sim, whatever works at the moment.
ivan256 - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
It doesn't look good when you consider they're adding $30 in hardware to the device and charging you $130 for it.eek2121 - Sunday, November 3, 2013 - link
Heh...we android users don't need no stinkin extra 'monthly bill'. Just install this fabulous 'cyanogenmod' and save yourself $40/mo for the rest of your life. Loved the fact i was seeing 40 megs down, 10 megs up on a verizon LTE network in Ogunquit ME on my laptop last summer. Wish my cable internet were that fast.kmmatney - Monday, November 11, 2013 - link
We iPhone users (well, those of us who had Jailbroken devices) have been using the fabulous MyWi. But it does drain battery fairly quickly.dokujaryu - Saturday, November 2, 2013 - link
Can you run this again with bluetooth turned off?Hymnotix - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
Hey Anand, thanks for doing this test. As a hotspot, does the iPad also have the capability to act as a router? Specifically I want to be able to send low-latency MIDI messages between the hotspot device and other iPads connected to it. This is a music making function that works great on my home wifi but I would love to know if I could go completely mobile by making a cellular iPad serve as my router.darkcrayon - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
I haven't tried your particular scenario but I can confirm the "hotspot" iPad can communicate directly with the devices tethered to it (naturally, I mean why wouldn't it)? I've used it with one of those "remote camera" apps to connect an iPhone to an LTE iPad without needing an external wifi network.Hymnotix - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
thanks, that is good to know. But does the data go thru the cell tower? That would use up data limits; and more importantly take longer than is acceptable for my music production apps.mkozakewich - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
No, your iPad (or whichever tethering device) acts as a wi-fi router, so every device sends messages through it like they would a normal wi-fi router. Just like your home router, the wi-fi is combined with a modem so that outside calls can be made to the internet.Hrel - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
Nice little test. But why don't you guys ever complain about data caps... you mention it in this article yet you say nothing of the moral negligence of implementing it or the corruption it's indicative in the ISP industry.I think the constant harping on about shitty screen, from this site, is at least partially to thank for the recent increase in screen quality. You should try and do the same thing with the evil the ISP's are getting away with. Not to mention network specific phones. We all know we SHOULD be able to buy a phone and take it to any network, but no one ever even talks about it.
ivan256 - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
It's still marked up an unforgivable amount over the WiFi version. They add $30 worth of cellular modem hardware for $220. Cheaper to buy a standalone hotspot to go with your iPad.ivan256 - Monday, November 4, 2013 - link
Typo - Of course I meant $130.Krysto - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
I don't get it Anand. With the screen and processor (mostly) turned-off, it's just a big battery attached to a modem. So obviously it would get more battery life than a Mi-fi considering it has a much bigger battery.What's so surprising about this? You can probably achieve roughly the same amount of time with any ARM-based tablet.