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Comment by gambiting | Hacker News Reader

The way they compared the new iPad Mini with the Nexus 7 was laughable at best.

They complain about Nexus 7 being made of plastic and having broader basel, and completely forget that Nexus 7 has a higher resolution screen and most importantly is a $199 device while the new ipad is $329. What a joke.

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Small quibble: the 16gb N7 (the most comparable in this case) is actually $250. That might change later this week... but for now - that is still the case.

Small quibble back: unless you're specifically looking for 16GB instead of the entry level, the comparison is valid. Apple doesn't let you pay any less than $329.

What good is 8GB of storage good for on a media consumption device? Even the Kindle Fire HD starts at 16GB for $199 (with ads).

Unless you are a good lad and do as Google says it's prohibitively small.

I don't think I've ever had more than that on any of my iPads. I have more on my phone because I like to store music there, but the media I consume on the iPad is streamed.

On a related note, the use of storage as the differentiating price point is also infuriating--it's so cheap (about $1 a GB). Don't get me started on the inflated cost of cellular chipsets, $130 extra for the privilege of paying for mobile data to a specific carrier is a joke.

this is no longer the case. 250 is for the 32gb version. the 16gb will drop to 199 by google's keynote next week and the 8gb will be phased out.

the price i really cant wait to find out is samsung's galaxy nexus 10... if its lower than 400 it will potentially take away some of the new ipad's sales plus some from windows rt

My favorite part was when they listed the bigger screen as an advantage.

I sold the Nexus because it was too small to read a PDF. The iPad mini may also be too small, but if I can comfortably read PDFs on it, then that's a huge advantage to me.

Remember it has a lower resolution than the Nexus 7. May still be more readable if the physical size was the issue, but chances are it's still too small.

A larger, higher res solution would probably be what you need, i would wait for google upcoming announcement.

Anecdotally, I stopped using my old 10" Android tablet in favor of my new Nexus 7 precisely because the screen resolution is just as high, but smaller and higher density, such that reading things is just as easy, but holding the device is now far easier than before. I've already used it many times for reading and even signing PDF's related to selling my old residence, and I haven't had any complaints about the process so far.

Reading and signing a short document might be okay, but I'm talking about reading a 40 page article or a full book. While it still might be doable, it's not comfortable like it is on a full-sized iPad. At least for me...maybe you have better eyes than I do.

I know the Nexus has a higher-res screen than the iPad mini, but I suspect it will still be more comfortable to read PDFs on the mini due to the physically bigger screen size.

On the other hand, text on the non-retina iPads look terrible to me now. I wonder if that's still the case on the mini, or if the reduced physical size will make the text rendering look passable.

iPad Mini has a lower resolution so you will actually see less of the PDF although the text might be slightly bigger.

Part of that's due to a physically larger screen and part of it's because apps aren't constantly letterboxed by on-screen OS buttons.

I understand the argument for Nexus 7's screen, but I think I'd still rather do web browsing on the iPad Mini. Web browsing is pretty awful on my Nexus 7. In landscape mode there may be 800px of vertical resolution but it doesn't feel like it, because there's so little physical space. At a reasonable zoom level there's just not much vertical space.

And many web sites (Facebook is an example) go into mobile mode, so the browsing experience is total garbage. As far as I can tell there's no way to force the browser to use desktop mode by default... I can go through a many-tap sequence to do it page by page, but who has the time for that?

I'm sure there are tweaks and hacks I can do to improve that stuff, but out of the box it's not a device I'd want to browse the web on. The iPad, on the other hand, was a joy (I owned the very first iPad for about two weeks and then sold it because I'm poor).

If you're rooted you can use the method oulinned here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1811101

Needless to say there should be an option to do this without having to root.

I'm not sure why people expect Apple (or any company) to simply ignore potential advantages their products have over their competitors'.

I don't see why it's an advantage. They made it smaller than gloat that it's bigger. That was a WTF moment for me.

It has a bigger screen but is thinner and lighter. You're only looking at one dimension. Also, he held it up with one hand. I'd be very interested to get one in my own hand to see how it feels. If they managed to get a bigger screen, with a sufficiently sized bezel, and still have it fit comfortably in most people's hands... then isn't that a much better design?

They were comparing it to the Nexus 7, which is the sort of tablet it's designed to compete against. I'm not saying that the larger screen would be a net advantage over a Nexus 7 for me, but I just don't see why anyone would expect Apple to ignore the screen size and not mention it at all.

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