How Apple can make the iPad Mini 3 awesome
Our recent review of the iPad mini 2, or to stick with Apple's naming strategy, the iPad mini with Retina Display, found it to be a really capable little device.
Somewhat surprisingly it shares most of the cutting edge technology of its bigger brother, the iPad Air, and finally adds the Retina display which it had been lacking so sorely.
But it's not perfect. It's still too expensive, has no Touch ID sensor and the base 16GB capacity is rapidly becoming too small for many users. So what do we want to see in the next model? Touch ID
You end up entering passwords just as much on an iPad as you do on an iPhone, so it's surprising that the newest iPads didn't get the same Touch ID fingerprint sensor as the iPhone 5S got.
We'd really like to see these included in the iPad mini 3, not least because they would allow multiuser interaction - just touch to switch to your personal iPad account. Of course Apple would also have to build multi user support into iOS first, and it's arguable they'd rather sell you two iPads instead. More storage in the base model
16GB of storage in the cheapest iPad used to sound like a lot but now it's really starting to look a bit stingy, with apps like GarageBand and iMovie going free, some iOS games starting to take up over a gigabyte of space and Retina screens making high resolution movies worth loading onto your iPad.
The steep price jumps for the higher capacity models look cynical, especially when flash memory itself is not expensive and Apple offers no way to add storage via card slots. Starting the new models at 32GB would be more reasonable. Cheaper cellular option
Adding a cellular option to an iPad mini currently adds £100/$130/AU$150 to the price, and of course you have to pay for data on top of that.
Given that the only difference between the innards of a wi-fi only and a cellular iPad is the addition of some mass-produced radio circuitry, it would be nice to bring the additional cost premium down a bit so that more people would opt for the cellular option and be able to use their iPads on the move. This is especially true of the supremely portable mini. Wireless charging
A bit of a pipe dream perhaps, but wireless charging technology already exists and is used by some phone and tablet manufacturers, such as in the Google Nexus 7.
Being able to place your device on a charging slab rather than having to plug it in might sound like only a small timesaver but just think about how many times over the life of a device you have to recharge it.
It also reduces the possibility of wear and tear or damage resulting from physically plugging cables in over and over again. Pressure sensitive screen
The addition of the M7 motion co-processor to the iPad mini 2 was somewhat unexpected but will be handy as more apps start to make use of it.
Haptic or pressure sensitive screens already exist, and make for more accurate and flexible interaction with your device, especially for games, music or art apps where you want your finger to do more than just register a touch.
Apple might not think the technology is up to it yet, but this could be one to watch for the future. A memory card slot
We really won't hold our breath for this one because Apple famously uses as few ports as possible. In fact only one on most of its devices, the Lightning connector.
Nevertheless many competing tablets do support card slots for adding your own memory cards and this can be a massively useful thing to be able to do.
Need to take 64GB of movies on holiday with you but only have a 16GB device? Just buy an inexpensive card and whack it in. You can see how handy this would be.
More iCloud storage with every account
OK so this isn't iPad-specific but it's becoming a real issue. Apple gives every Apple ID a free 5GB of iCloud storage which is great, but it's no longer enough.
Imagine you have an iPhone and an iPad and maybe a Mac too. Each one is backing up to iCloud and you are also saving files into iCloud, as Apple encourages you to do. That 5GB doesn't last long and you can find yourself having to buy more. For a company with Apple's resources that seems a bit mean. Longer battery life
The battery life of the iPad mini 2 is actually very good, but with portable devices like these there's no real upper limit on how good people would ideally like it to be.
Since Apple seems for the most part to be able to make each new generation of devices smaller or lighter while maintaining or even improving battery life, we'd hope to see this continue with the next generation of iPads.
As well as improving battery technology it can tweak iOS to make the best possible use of the battery, since it designs both the software and hardware.
A smaller bezel
There's no doubt that iPads have been getting better in this respect, as have iPhones. But from the user's point of view the space around the edges of the screen on a touchscreen device is largely wasted space.
You do need some non-touch sensitive space in order to be able to hold a device without triggering it accidentally, but not much. So if Apple were able to keep shrinking the size of the bezel around the edges of the touch screen area, that would be pretty cool. A better camera
iPads have become very popular for taking pictures and video, especially the more portable mini.
The iPad mini 2 has a 5MP camera with 1080p HD video support and that's good, but it lacks the slo-mo support of the iPhone 5S and also the filters for image editing although you can obviously perform some edits and use HDR mode, and use third-party photo or camera apps.
Apple could conceivably add features via software updates, but a higher resolution stills camera would be nice to see in future.
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