Fixing the 2013 iPad mini price problem

Those who have read about my reaction to the higher than expected price for the 2013 iPad mini, or those who have talked to me about it, may be able to sense how ridiculous I felt for waiting for the updated tablet as I saw the announcement.  While the display density increased greatly and the performance is much, much, much better, the display quality is lacking, and the price is rather high when you consider the size and the display quality.

As an alternative, I thought about waiting for a refurbished unit or buying a refurbished iPad Air or 4th generation full sized iPad.

Last week, I looked a bit and thought about every opportunity to make the wrong decision.  This week, I went out to take a look at several tablets, including the following:

• Amazon Fire HDX
• Barnes & Noble Nook HD+
• EVGA Tegra Note 7
• 2013 Google Nexus 7
• Lenovo IdeaTab/IdeaPad
• Samsung Galaxy Tab 7

First, Windows RT was low on my list.  I have a good feeling about Android and iOS.  There may come a day when I warm to Windows RT but that was not today.  Being comfortable is a great thing, and knowing that Google and Apple are willing to update their products within a certain range of time gives me a good feeling.  I'm still uncomfortable with all of the WP7 phones that were pushed to extinction by Microsoft.

Second, the display had to be better than average.  You can have a high density display that looks terrible, just ask 2013 iPad mini (Retina) owners.  That display covers only something like 66% of the sRGB gamut, which is quite low, especially when the cost of the whole product jumped US$70.  I need to be able to read Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and legal-ese--that fine print you can't normally see clearly.  Western languages are fairly easy to read on most displays.  We used to use a 7x9 print matrix to printer western characters in the 1980s.  If not for Japanese and Chinese, we may never have pushed past that "spray painting" type of printing.

Amazon has done a great job with their tablets in order to sell media.  Each tablet is a winner.  I'm even thrilled with their execution of the walled garden to take care of the customer experience.  I could live with it, much the way I live with Apple's way.  No fuss, no muss.

Barnes & Noble is leaving the hardware business.  They have exceptional prices on their equipment.  Their largest tablet was US$179, which had an 8 inch display.  However, while I was listening to the Barnes & Noble people having trouble with the tablet they were using to show someone, I was concerned that there were issues other than the speed of the internet connection.  1 + 1 = 2, does it not?  Being twice as nervous is not good.

EVGA Tegra Note 7 looks like a good tablet at a good price.  However, I can't get the notion out of my head that an nVidia Tegra processor is going to be a problem again, as it was with the 2012 Google Nexus 7.

Once bitten, twice shy?  Given that I had two of the 2012 Google Nexus 7 models, and wasn't happy with either, I had cause to be concerned.  However, a lot of the same concerns were boldly announced in reviews for the 2012 model and were not to be found in the 2013 models.  I tried the 2013 model at a couple of stores and found it to be strong and quick with a better than average display.  The number one item to Google's favor was that they would provide system updates faithfully where the others might not, especially for the bargain tablets.

Speaking of bargain tablets, I saw a couple of Lenovo IdeaTab (Android, right?) tablets at discount at Best Buy.  One was US$119, like one of those cheapo tablets that never gets an update and you wonder where the company went with your money three months later.  Lenovo does a great job with premium products, but I rarely hear great things about their bargains.

Samsung, oh, Samsung, how you make me wish you'd stayed just a component supplier.  You provided everyone with great components and let them do the user experience work and it was a great combination.  Then, you decided that you could make more money by competing with them, and you developed the whole product, except that you always shortchange on the development.  You leave bugs in the software, and the user experience is less than ideal.  Your checklist formula is great for you but it's not great for the consumer.

After all that, I ended up with a 16 GB 2013 Google Nexus 7 at a US$30 discount.  I bought a US$20 travel case and the US$30 protection plan that was reduced in price because of the discount on the tablet.  It still came to quite a bit but the difference between everything I bought and the price of an Apple iPad mini was still over US$125.

I hope my experience is good.  Android 4.3 is on the device (and supposedly 4.4 is getting to everyone slowly).  It's been doing a lot of updates, as you could expect from a new product.  It's still amazing to me how many things are not really good on a tablet.  It's been 3 years since my Android-based phone and Android 2.2, so what's the problem?  Why are they having to code individual fixes for several devices instead of providing one application for tablets and another for phones?  Google has recently implemented "Designed for phones" to let tablet owners know that an application won't utilize the extra space so well.  Wasn't it CEO Eric Schmidt who said that they didn't need separate layouts for tablets and phones?

I look forward to finding what works well.  As I use a certain filling station chain for diesel fuel, I've accumulated quite a few points and used 10,000 of those points to buy a US$10 Google Play gift card.  It's not a lot but it should get me started without emptying my wallet of real money.

I wonder how many others are thinking similarly.  Apple have opened a huge hole between them and the less expensive competition.  Will people buy the iPad mini?  Undoubtedly, there will be many buying it.  The iOS ecosystem is wonderful.  The Android ecosystem is coming along, but I'm still seeing far too many copyright violations where people use well-known characters in copies of their games.  However, they are fewer than in 2011.  If Google can abstract the hardware well enough that a developer can develop for two layouts, instead of focusing on hundreds of individual devices, the software problem will vanish.  Since Ubuntu and Firefox are new names to mobile devices, it gives Google incentive to fix their problems NOW.  Oh well, my tablet is working well, so far.  Hopefully, it stays that way.

I hope Apple is as happy with my solution as I am.

Update 2015.04.08: There are rumors about the iPad mini 4.  Nothing has really been said about the processor, and that is what has to be the best to generate real excitement and sales.

Now, the tablet market is fairly stagnant.  My 2013 Google Nexus 7 tablet hasn't been replaced by Google yet.  It could probably use a stronger processor, but I suspect that they're trying to make up for losses they took on the front end that made it such a great bargain.  Apple seems to be making their money all along.

I really believe that for a tablet to be portable, it needs to be 7-8 inches diagonally across the display.  I've seen plenty of people trying to take photos of video with ~10 inch tablets and it's just silly, especially when you consider the cameras are not very good.

nVidia Shield is the only really new tablet but it's rather special purpose.  Samsung continues to update their tablets and generate new model names and numbers, but is anyone buying them or do they only get them for free, as part of a data plan?

The other Microsoft/Nokia shoe has been dropped

Microsoft has completed a deal to acquire Nokia.


Who wasn't expecting this since ex-Microsoft employee Steven Elop took the reins at Nokia?


It all dates back to 2007 when people at Nokia and Research in Motion/BlackBerry laughed at Apple entering the mobile phone space, and not being prepared for something different.

Sure, Nokia had phones like the N95, but they didn't have a clue to making a smooth user experience.  All the internal elegance is lost on non-technical users.  RIM practically made the smart phone work for the business user and virtually made addicts of its users.  When services were down, CrackBerry users were lost.

Apple changed the game, putting Windows Mobile, Symbian, and BlackBerry to minimal market share.  Of course, time has passed, Windows Mobile was trashed and poor, little Zune became the base for Windows Phone.  RIM/BlackBerry has been re-invented with the injection of the QNX operating system that ran on the IBM PC in the early 1980s.  Symbian has been pushed from the high end devices to some middle ground, and Windows Phone took over at Nokia.

After the Android operating system arrived, Nokia and BlackBerry were pushed down further.

Do I feel bad for Nokia?  I suppose so.  They were a great success story, even more than Japanese companies' success.  Given that Finland is probably the least understood European nation, it makes me smile that success came from a country with a most interesting language.  Finnish, like Estonian and Hungarian are in a different world.  Finland has a Swedish population but it's not big enough to change everyone from Finnish.

Will Nokia die?

Given the odd life of Windows Mobile (Pocket PC, etc.) and what Microsoft did to Danger and its Sidekick devices and how they approached and discarded Kin devices, I have my doubts about success for Windows Phone and Nokia devices.

They have the opportunity to really integrate legally (not that they weren't doing that already with their earlier deal--it will be above boards now) and show the world how good Windows Phone can be.  However, this deal should kill any remaining devices from HTC et al.  They weren't too happy to do them anyway, but at this point, the lack of sales will translate to Microsoft/Nokia devices only.

The good thing about this is that Nokia employees will be more secure.  Microsoft has deep pockets and can lose money and not care.

I recently noticed that Microsoft has an interest in Pandora, as well.  A "former" Microsoft executive is taking the CEO position at Pandora now.  Microsoft has a deal to provide radio services to Windows Phone, but I wonder if they're being groomed for integration with Microsoft.

Update 2013.12.06: It looks as though the authorities in the U.S.A. are okay with Nokia becoming part of Microsoft.

Update 2014.10.28: The other day I saw a photo of a Nokia phone with Microsoft branding, instead of Nokia.  I'm sure the people in Finland (half-)expected this but it is tough pill to swallow.

I'm still wondering if Pandora, the music service, is going this way since they signed a big deal with Microsoft a while back.  It seems to me that a Microsoft executive hired on there, as similarly as Steven Elop did at Nokia, to bring them into the fold.

Are $200 (subsidised) phones worth it?

There are a lot of people who go through smart phones quickly and fewer who have more than one.

I'm still of the opinion that whether the phone is $200 on contract or $600 free of contract, it's too expensive.  It's a huge investment to me, and I would want to part with it after 2 years, but some say that they'll keep them a few months and get rid of them.  Hopefully, someone is buying them.

Maybe, the thing is that I've got a house and a car and bills.  Maybe, these guys don't have those things, so they just have phones and phone bills?  I guess you could handle more than one or pay full price, if you didn't have other commitments and were making loads of money.

It's a bit shocking every time I go for a new phone because there is a huge cash outlay and then, I get some of it back in rebates, but then the carrier wants to charge me for the switch and all the wonderful things they do--like increasing my plan.

New technology is great, but eventually, I see all the smart phones being commodities, as the feature phones are now.  The technology won't matter as much and people will be more concerned about brand and colour and size.

Speaking of which, why do I need a 4.7 inch display?  Are people getting personal with their phones?  Geez.  Anyone need a 400 cubic inch (6.6 litres to the rest of you) V-8 engine today?  It seems like there are a lot of 25-35 year olds who think bigger is always better...like 12 year olds.  Oh, well.  "Everybody has one."  Yep, and thankfully, you can turn off my opinion too.