Is Apple's new iPad Mini an iPhone?
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
2,073 words · ~10 min read
0:00
- Oh, my goodness, can you believe that a package this small has an iPad in it?
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You probably can, yeah, you probably don't have a problem believing that because the iPad mini was a thing long before
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the most recent apple event, during which apple announced the iPhone 13,
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the iPhone 13 Pros, another little iPad, $329, whatever.
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It's ninth gen of the vanilla, original iPad.
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But the most important thing was the iPad mini.
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And that is a subjective judgment. I'm saying that this was the most important thing,
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but I will back it up. But first off, this is a fun, little writing doohickey, right?
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Like at first I thought it spelled the same thing if you flip it upside down, it kind of has that look.
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But it does not. Real quick, the reason why this was the most exciting announcement during the event
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was because it's got USB freakin' C on it.
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An apple for whatever reason is holding on to this lightening port,
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this USB 2.0 speeds, capable lightning port.
1:03
But for some reason, they put the USBC port on the iPads,
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they put it on the Mac books and they just did not, they're refusing to put it on the iPhones,
1:12
which is why this is exciting because look at it, it's basically a big phone.
1:15
First of all, it's got a fun dbrand skin on it,
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thanks dbrand. Whoa, what do we got here?
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These little guys, they're like ghosts. This looks like a black and white Dante's version of hell.
1:30
But for transformers. the really cool thing about this iPad is that they've done the same thing to it
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that they did to the iPad Air. So like, you know, Apple announced the iPad Pro
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many years ago, I forget what year they first did it. But it looked like a regular iPad.
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And then at some point, they did this squared off design thing for the iPad Pros.
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And then did that same thing to the iPad Air and the most recent, I think it's the fourth gen iPad Air
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now it looks like this, except bigger. And they haven't updated the iPad mini.
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I think they did a processor refresh, but they didn't do anything to the design
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for like five years. I might be wrong on that, Google it.
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But now this is why I actually am a big fan. As much as I make fun of Apple,
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I'm actually a pretty big fan of what they're doing with their iPads.
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Kind of taking what was essentially just like a mobile only device
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and giving it the capabilities of a,
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you know, more advanced device. More like a desktop operating system with iPadOS
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and all that stuff. Okay, so to give a little bit more context,
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one of the other reasons why I'm really excited for this iPad mini is because unlike other iPads,
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minis or the vanilla iPads, the base level iPads,
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that have gotten like the much weaker processor, this one comes with the same A15 Bionic chip
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that is in the iPhone 13's and 13 Pros and it actually has the same 5-Core GPU
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as the iPhone 13 Pros, instead of the 4-Core GPU that is in the iPhone 13.
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However, some people have done some testing since they got their hands on the iPad minis
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and they've discovered that the clock speed of, I believe the GPU is a little bit lower
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than the iPhone 13 Pros. So you're not gonna get the exact same performance
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as an iPhone 13 Pro, but it's going to be pretty close, okay?
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Maybe I'll just use this as a phone, hello? The downside of trying to use this thing as a phone
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is that it does have a 5G version, so it starts at $499 for the Wi-Fi six only version.
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You can get a 5G version, which means you have internet access wherever you are
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just like a phone, except you can't do phone calls.
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And this has been a thing with iPads since they started adding 5G connectivity to it.
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However, you could just use internet calls, just use WhatsApp, FaceTime, all of these things, you know.
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Also I didn't even look what's in the box. We got a USB, that beautiful, beautiful USBC cord.
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And a USBC, you know, charging brick. 9 volt at 2.22 amps, yeah that's about 20 Watts.
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Andy was saying that, if you're not using a larger iPad for drawing,
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it's kind of annoying to watch videos on.
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Speaking of drawing, that's another thing that this iPad is capable of doing
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that the previous one was not, or the previous iPad mini was not,
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is working with the second gen Apple Pencil
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that charges with this magnetic connector. It's the same thing.
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It's almost the length of the iPad itself.
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Welcome to Apple Pencil. Should try out like the cameras and stuff, probably,
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eh, Brandon? - Yeah. - But before we do that, I gotta tell you about our sponsor.
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Big thanks to dbrand, obviously, for sponsoring this video.
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That's why there's a dbrand skin on here. Did you put the pieces together?
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Get some dbrands. Eh, what's-a matter you, eh?
4:44
Put the skin on. Dbrand, they make some sick looking skins, buddy
4:49
and if you wanna get the best scores in Fortnite, then you're gonna put this stuff on your devices.
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Or else you're out of the App Store. Dbrand's got skins for phones,
4:59
they got some skins for tablets, laptops. I think they're working on cars.
5:03
Maybe even people. So check out dbrand at the link below.
5:07
Okay, yeah, so I've barely talked about the actual specs of this thing. So this is an 8.3 inch display.
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Which as I said, is a little larger than most phones. But like, as you can see, well,
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with the pencil there, it's kinda annoying to grip, 'cause then it just kind of, does that.
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Without the pencil there, it's like, you know, it's like a phone, can it fit in my pocket?
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Oh, oh my gosh, it actually does.
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I did not expect that to work. 8.3 inch display, it's got a P3 wide color gamut.
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Look at that P3 wide color gamut, I see so many colors.
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It's also got a true tone display, as is like, that's the kind of standard procedure for these iPads.
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500 peak nits of brightness.
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(whistles) It's very bright on the top-down camera,
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but like in person, I would want it just this bright, normally, indoors.
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I feel like if I was outside, I'd be like. That's not so great for its phone use case,
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you wanna phone to have like decent brightness so you can use it outdoors.
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And that's, I mean, okay, so that's, I'm discovering some things that are gonna make it a little more difficult
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to use as a phone, that's fine. That's to be expected. Okay, one thing that I glossed over on the exterior design,
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I mean, it's got those flat edges I was talking about, but it also has stereo speakers in landscape.
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And the touch ID. So, you know, on their cheaper iPads,
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the non-iPad Pros, those ones have face ID.
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And on the iPad Air, this really is kind of like a mini iPad Air.
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'Cause that also has the touch ID and the power button there. (upbeat music)
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That's pretty good sound for a tiny little iPad.
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(upbeat music) What the heck?
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However, it's ruined by the fact that I just discovered that the volume rockers are on the top of the device,
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like this, what is that? Here's the iPad, the front camera's right here, 'kay?
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Power button on the top, volume rocker on the other side of the top of the device.
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And nothing on the sides here. That's so weird.
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Apple is making some weird design decisions. Okay, some of the specs I haven't really gotten to yet
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are the both cameras, so, this camera on the front here
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is an ultra wide now, which it wasn't before. Boom, I got the whole room and the neighbors.
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We got the 12 megapixel ultra wide on this tablet now.
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And on the rear as well, it's also a upgraded 12 megapixel camera
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with true tone flash or maybe that is the front.
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Okay, one of the cameras can do true tone flash, it's probably this one.
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And focus pixels, okay, Center Stage. here we go.
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This is one of the new things in iOS 15, this create link or actually, could you do that before?
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I don't use iOS normally, but I know that you will now be able to create links
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to send to Android users, so they can join your FaceTime call as well.
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So that's pretty cool, I'm not sure if that's rolled out yet, but you can create links apparently
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and have people join them that way, FaceTime.
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- Hey. - Hey, Horst. I'm using my iPad mini as a phone.
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- I was just hanging outside and- - This doesn't have the speakers,
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this doesn't have like an ear piece, so you can't use it like this. You're just getting a good shot of my ear right now.
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- But like, everyone has Airpods now, right? - Although, I'm holding it here,
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I can hear you way better because it's got stereo speakers.
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- [Johnathon] I mean, it's not a very nice to look at someone's ear in a phone.
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- Wow and I guess that proves once and for all that you can use the iPad mini as a phone.
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You probably can't. Realistically, you might be able to.
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But you're gonna depend on services like FaceTime and WhatsApp or whatever, alternative calling apps.
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So if you don't wanna use this thing as a phone, it starts at $499 US.
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Which is not so bad for like a brand new tablet with a cutting-edge chip.
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50% faster than any other mobile device ever or something.
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According to Apple's made up numbers that they don't tell anybody
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what they're actually referring to. But, it's $499 for the Wi-Fi only version.
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$649 for the 5G version. That's only what the 64 gigs of storage though.
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And then, you know, the other thing is that, most phones these days,
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people are getting more than 64 gigs of storage, so then that means that Wi-Fi only starts at $649
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and the 5G, 256 version is $800.
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So, that's still cheaper than an iPhone 13 Pro.
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But you know, there's gonna be some trade offs.
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All in all, I feel like I am still excited by this thing,
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even though, you know, I found out some deeply, deeply disappointing facts,
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like the position of the volume rocker. I will be recovering from that for some time.
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It's a supplementary device, but I mean, like, to be completely honest, I've always been kind of confused
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by the existence of the iPad mini. It seems like something that rich people would buy
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when they don't have enough, you know, things to spend money on.
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Or they think they don't have enough stuff, so they're just like, you know, "Might as well get the baby iPad."
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But this one, because it comes with the A15 Bionic
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and because it has 5G, I think LTT's doing a video about it
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or Mac Address, or someone's doing videos about trying to use this thing as a phone.
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'Cause like, that's why it's exciting to me.
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If it's not a phone, then it's just a tiny iPad.
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Anyways, that was a ShortCircuit about the iPad mini.
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Guess what? There's gonna be lots more. About products that aren't the iPad mini
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and you know what, I think you should subscribe for those.
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I feel like they're gonna be good.