"New iPad" (iPad 3) reviews are in

[smartpatrol]

tl;dr: Top Android phones have been faster than the newest iPhone at any given time for about two years now.. Only in select GPU tests does the iPhone pull ahead. UI smoothness and actual performance in loading and running applications are two different things.

Are they? I would argue UI smoothness and especially responsiveness absolutely do fall under the "performance" category, albeit one that is much harder to measure. IMO that is a lot more relevant to how fast a device feels rather than a ~5% difference in SunSpider scores.

 

[Mopetar]

That said, Asus is barking up the right tree with the 249 or 200 priced pads. That's where the opportunity lies to move big volumes of ICS. Also,ICS is so good,it would be a huge mistake to muck with it.

I disagree. The margins at $200 are going to be poor and they'll have to compete with both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, two companies that can subsidize their hardware and outdo ASUS's offerings if they want to. The Infinity is where the money is going to be at and even if their sales volume goes down, they'll make a much larger profit per device. Also, as far as Android tablets go, there's far less competition in that space.

ASUS really doesn't care about moving big volumes of ICS, they just want to sell hardware at a profit and make money. As far as most companies are concerned, Android is just a vehicle to sell hardware, but beyond that they don't care about it, any more than they cared about Windows when they were selling PCs a decade ago.

 

[theeedude]

I disagree. The margins at $200 are going to be poor and they'll have to compete with both Amazon and Barnes & Noble, two companies that can subsidize their hardware and outdo ASUS's offerings if they want to. The Infinity is where the money is going to be at and even if their sales volume goes down, they'll make a much larger profit per device. Also, as far as Android tablets go, there's far less competition in that space.

ASUS really doesn't care about moving big volumes of ICS, they just want to sell hardware at a profit and make money. As far as most companies are concerned, Android is just a vehicle to sell hardware, but beyond that they don't care about it, any more than they cared about Windows when they were selling PCs a decade ago.

Asus is not Apple. It's an OEM using someone else's OS and someone else's SOC. It's doing commodity work and will get commodity margins.

 

[Red Storm]

Rumor has it Asus canceled their ~$200 ICS tablet and instead that's going to become the Google Nexus tablet. I don't remember where I read that though, but I think somebody else has also mentioned it on this forum.

 

[Mopetar]

Asus is not Apple. It's an OEM using someone else's OS and someone else's SOC. It's doing commodity work and will get commodity margins.

None of those companies want to be a commodity. That's why so many of them make their own customizations to Android. If ASUS primarily targets the $200 market, they're going to become just another company slingly low margin products. It's possible that they might not be able to make any profit in that segment if Amazon or B&N are willing to subsidize the hardware to the point that no one else can compete.

That they've been making the best high-end Android tablets and going after that market segment shows that someone there has some business sense. I'm guessing it's because they learned first hand from selling cheap netbooks that eventually your margins are so thin that you need to sell ten times as many units just to get the same amount of profit. Eventually compromises have to be made and the sacrifices made to the products start to tarnish the brand of the company making them.

I think that ASUS would be much better served by staying above that and letting other companies shovel out craplets that people get sick of buying and eventually go to ASUS because they still have a good reputation for quality products. Red Storm's rumor about a Nexus tablet is intriguing, because Google could subsidize some of the tablet cost (after all, they generate revenue from Android after the device sale, so they can use that to help reduce the cost) and allow ASUS to compete against Amazon and B&N.

 

[dagamer34]

You're probably referring strictly to other tablet makers, but how about Intel?

Intel is incompetent when it comes to mobile, plus they are too used to being top dog in their own market to care. The last time they faced real competition was back in 2003-2004 when the AMD Athlon 64 came out. Since the Core 2 Duo came out in 2006, they've practically been resting on their laurels, thinking that they got power consumption low enough for laptops, when they really should have been thinking about tablets and lower.

Case in point: Intel's been promising their SoC in a mobile phone for 4 years now and they probably just paid Lenovo and Motorola a sweetheart deal to say they are finally shipping in a product.

 

[MrX8503]

Case in point: Intel's been promising their SoC in a mobile phone for 4 years now and they probably just paid Lenovo and Motorola a sweetheart deal to say they are finally shipping in a product.

Intel Medfield (single core cpu) benchmarks have shown to be faster than dual core ARM processors while working within the same power draw envelope.

when they really should have been thinking about tablets and lower.

The tablet market didn't boom until recently.

 

[dlock13]

The tablet market didn't boom until recently.

Even though that's true, they should have been prepared and working on it to be the one a company turns to when it's trying to get a competitor out ASAP to rival the iPad.

 

[QueBert]

Nexus One, Droid Incredible, Droid X, Evo 4G blah blah all say hi to iPhone 4. All of them very consistently beat the 4 in just about every non GPU benchmark and they all have the same amount of RAM.

As far as devices with more ram; phones like the Droid Bionic, Droid Razr, Rezound, Galaxy S2, Galaxy Note, and Galaxy Nexus outperform the iPhone 4S consistently, they don't merely match it.

tl;dr: Top Android phones have been faster than the newest iPhone at any given time for about two years now.. Only in select GPU tests does the iPhone pull ahead. UI smoothness and actual performance in loading and running applications are two different things.

So if you do nothing but launch apps an Android phone will be faster, but if you actually use the phone an iPhone will be faster. I have a EVO 4G and tweaked to it's limits it was plain slower than an iPhone. Specs don't make a phone better or faster.

 

[theeedude]

None of those companies want to be a commodity. That's why so many of them make their own customizations to Android. If ASUS primarily targets the $200 market, they're going to become just another company slingly low margin products. It's possible that they might not be able to make any profit in that segment if Amazon or B&N are willing to subsidize the hardware to the point that no one else can compete.

That they've been making the best high-end Android tablets and going after that market segment shows that someone there has some business sense. I'm guessing it's because they learned first hand from selling cheap netbooks that eventually your margins are so thin that you need to sell ten times as many units just to get the same amount of profit. Eventually compromises have to be made and the sacrifices made to the products start to tarnish the brand of the company making them.

I think that ASUS would be much better served by staying above that and letting other companies shovel out craplets that people get sick of buying and eventually go to ASUS because they still have a good reputation for quality products. Red Storm's rumor about a Nexus tablet is intriguing, because Google could subsidize some of the tablet cost (after all, they generate revenue from Android after the device sale, so they can use that to help reduce the cost) and allow ASUS to compete against Amazon and B&N.

Asus is just another company selling low margin Androids. They were low margin in Windows PCs because they were selling someone else's OS with someone else's chip. They are selling someone else's OS with someone else's chips in Android, so they will be low margin again. Regardless of how good they make the device itself, if they decide they want to make 30% margin, another player can buy same components and make a device just as good and accept 20% margin on it, and so on. Point is Asus may not want to be a commodity producer, but that's what it is, and it needs to live in the real world.

 

[Aikouka]

Intel is incompetent when it comes to mobile, plus they are too used to being top dog in their own market to care. The last time they faced real competition was back in 2003-2004 when the AMD Athlon 64 came out. Since the Core 2 Duo came out in 2006, they've practically been resting on their laurels, thinking that they got power consumption low enough for laptops, when they really should have been thinking about tablets and lower.

Case in point: Intel's been promising their SoC in a mobile phone for 4 years now and they probably just paid Lenovo and Motorola a sweetheart deal to say they are finally shipping in a product.

When I mentioned Intel, I was going off the business capabilities that you mentioned in your post in regard to any electronic sector... not just mobile devices. While we're obviously in a mobile devices sub-forum, they are a semiconductor company that seems to meet Samsung in regard to manufacturing/supply capability.

Thinking about it... aren't Samsung and Intel the only two large companies that have their own fabs? Everyone else seems to rely on TSMC and possibly Globalfoundries (not too sure on the latter).

 

[Piano Man]

This will be the first Apple device I've ever bought.

 

[Fingolfin269]

So if you do nothing but launch apps an Android phone will be faster, but if you actually use the phone an iPhone will be faster. I have a EVO 4G and tweaked to it's limits it was plain slower than an iPhone. Specs don't make a phone better or faster.

Yeah EVO 4G was my first (and possibly only) foray into Android. It was ok but sucked mainly because it was always plugged in to something so it didn't become a brick after 45 minutes of use.

 

[XJustMeX21]

Standing in "line" at walmart now. They have five.

 

[SAWYER]

Im about to head to WM, they have 30 and no line as of 45 min ago

 

[Aikouka]

Is there any report that they have LTE models?

 

[XJustMeX21]

got mine!

 

[XJustMeX21]

When they say the screen is awesome, believe them.

 

[Steelbom]

I'm so jelly right now

 

[dlock13]

When they say the screen is awesome, believe them.

Can you do us all a favour and turn up your screen brightness to 100% and then toss on a black backdrop and tell us if you're receiving any, and I mean ANY, light bleeding? Please!

 

[XJustMeX21]

I have none on mine. It is unbelievably bright when turned up though.

 

[buckshot24]

My Walmart had 5 64 gig LTE and 5 16 gig wifi. I was planning on getting 64 gig wifi but they didn't have any so I splurged on the 64 gig LTE AT&T. There was only one other guy waiting for one and we weren't sure if the 4g model was Verizon or AT&T because it isn't clear from the packaging.

Anyway, the screen is great I noticed it right away. Great colors and you really can't see the pixels. One thing is when I loaded True Grit on net flix it was very noticeable that you lose the pixel density. Thats more a testament to the crispness of the screen than a problem. I'm already spoiled. Lol I'll mess around with my iPad 2 and see how much I notice the difference later.

 

[Oyeve]

My Walmart had 5 64 gig LTE and 5 16 gig wifi. I was planning on getting 64 gig wifi but they didn't have any so I splurged on the 64 gig LTE AT&T. There was only one other guy waiting for one and we weren't sure if the 4g model was Verizon or AT&T because it isn't clear from the packaging.

Anyway, the screen is great I noticed it right away. Great colors and you really can't see the pixels. One thing is when I loaded True Grit on net flix it was very noticeable that you lose the pixel density. Thats more a testament to the crispness of the screen than a problem. I'm already spoiled. Lol I'll mess around with my iPad 2 and see how much I notice the difference later.

No HD in netflix? Bummer, my droid razr does netflix in hd, I was hoping the new ipad would play netflix in hd.

 

[Super56K]

I have a little bleed on the bottom right edge, but it disappears outside of max brightness on black background. I will investigate further with some movies but I had not noticed anything until I tried the above.

This resolution is ridiculous though. Browsing the web in portrait mode, with no zooming, has perfectly readable text. I'm still a little googly eyed at how crisp webpages are. Using it as I post this and it's honestly a bigger jump in quality than I had hoped. Next I'm loading some PDF docs onto my kindle app to try those in portrait mode.

Edit - I've made a huge mistake. Got on my laptop and the screen makes me want to puke. It's almost fuzzy looking.

 

[Anubis]

Damn. I can't wait to get mine tomorrow!

how close to your face do you have to hold your tablet to be able to see the ipad 2 like that? im cuious, it looks abnormally bad in the picture i think