Ipad 2 Review

It may be a little smaller, a fair amount lighter and a whole lot thinner, but the iPad 2 is still unmistakably an iPad. The original, bow-backed model measured in at 246 x 190 x 13 mm and 680g (for the WiFi-only version); the new iPad 2 slims that down to 241 x 186 x 8.8 mm and 601g. Since the display is still 9.7-inches, that means a slightly narrower bezel as well, though the difference is minor. Like the latest iPod touch, the edges of the iPad 2 taper neatly: the slate sits flat on a table, not rocking like its predecessor, and feels even thinner in the hand thanks to the narrowing sides. That makes one-handed use – such as when reading ebooks in iBooks or the Kindle app – more practical. Two color options are on offer, white or black, though both have a brushed aluminum back panel.

The display is the same 9.7-inch, 1024 x 768 panel as on the first iPad, with an oleophobic coating for easier fingerprint removal, and 132ppi resolution. An IPS display with LED backlighting, it’s still among the best on current tablets, though the resolution falls short of the 1280 x 800 panels we’re seeing on Android Honeycomb tablets like Motorola’s XOOM. Still, viewing angles are very broad, and no matter whether you’re viewing in landscape or portrait orientation, or even completely upside-down, there’s no discoloration or ghosting as can be the case with cheaper screens.

Hardware controls are much as before, with a power/sleep button on the top edge along with the headphone socket, and a volume rocker and mute switch that, thanks to iOS 4.3, can be restored to its original screen-rotation-lock functionality. On the front is the usual Home button, while a larger speaker grille is on the lower back of the slate, though still only offering mono sound rather than stereo. An integrated microphone is also present.

Inside, there’s Apple’s latest processor, the dual-core Apple A5. Pairing two 1GHz cores, the custom SoC promises significantly higher performance than its single-core A4 predecessor. It’s paired with an unspecified amount of memory, which according to our Geekbench testing is around 512MB (double the original iPad), and either 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of flash storage.
Physical connectivity is limited to Apple’s 30-pin Dock Connector and a 3.5mm headphone socket; no SD card slot, USB port or Thunderbolt port as the rumors suggested. Wireless is more flexible, with WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR as standard and a choice of AT&T or Verizon 3G models. The AT&T iPad 2 gets a quadband UMTS/HSPA and quadband GSM/EDGE modem which will work in North America and internationally, while the Verizon iPad 2 has a CDMA/EVDO Rev.A modem but no global-roaming support. Each is data-only, so you can’t use the iPad 2 to make voice calls. A hybrid GSM/CDMA radio would’ve been ideal, but instead Apple insists you choose between AT&T or Verizon from the outset.

Both WiFi and WiFi + 3G models get a three-axis gyroscope, accelerometer, digital compass and ambient light sensor, though only the 3G-enabled iPad 2 gets A-GPS. We’d have liked to see a GPS chip on the WiFi-only version, though perhaps Apple believes it’s less likely to be taken out of the home or office. Still, the WiFi positioning system works reasonably well, as long as you’re in a fairly metropolitan area.

A common point of complaint about the first-gen iPad was the absence of any sort of camera, especially since subsequent teardowns suggested a space for a front-facing webcam had been made in the bezel. The iPad 2 addresses that omission, with not one but two cameras. Up front is a VGA-resolution 640 x 480 webcam capable of recording 30fps video and shooting stills, but really intended for Apple’s FaceTime video calls. On the back, meanwhile, is a 720p HD 30fps video camera also capable of stills, and with a 5x digital zooms. More on the iPad 2 cameras later in the review.
New hardware is only half of the iPad 2 story. The updated Apple slate also debuts iOS 4.3, the latest iteration of Apple’s mobile platform. iOS 4.3′s headline change is the introduction of the Nitro JavaScript engine first developed for Safari on the desktop, and now packaged into the WebKit heart of Safari mobile. It promises more than double the JavaScript performance, adding up to significantly boosted browsing and rendering speeds.

Meanwhile, there’s also support for iTunes home sharing, pulling iTunes content on a Mac or PC over a WiFi network to the iPad 2, along with a boosted version of AirPlay. That now supports video streaming from third party apps and sites, videos from the iPad 2′s Photos app, and previews from the iTunes app to an Apple TV. On a day-to-day basis, it’s arguably the user-assignable mute/lock switch that makes the most difference. We still can’t quite understand why Apple changed it in the first place, but we’re happy to be able to change it back.
Of course, you won’t need an iPad 2 to get a taste of iOS 4.3, and in fact you don’t even need an iPad at all. Apple released the updated iOS earlier today for the GSM iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, 3rd and 4th generation iPod touch and the original iPad, a free download that brings the new functionality to the older devices.
iOS 4.3 builds on the existing abilities of the last significant platform update, iOS 4.2, which introduced multitasking, folders, Game Center, AirPlay and AirPrint to the original iPad. It remains one of the easier mobile OSes for new users to become familiar with, as well as offering the most well stocked App Store, though there’s still room for improvement. Notifications remain a bug-bear, and we’d hoped Apple would demonstrate its intentions for an updated system in iOS 5.0 at the iPad 2 launch event. The pop-up dialogs work, but can be distracting – especially if you have multiple apps alerting you throughout the day – leaving the system perhaps the least elegant part of iOS overall.
We’d also like to see OS X’s widgets carried over to mobile, seeing as the iOS homescreen is particularly icon-heavy. While Android 3.0 Honeycomb could well be seen as intimidating in its UI to new users, there’s a balance point somewhere in-between where more at-a-glance information is presented. At the least, pulling updates and notifications to the lock screen would make catching up with iOS’ activities more straightforward. We’ve high hopes for iOS 5.0.
Something you can’t really complain about is the iPad 2′s speed. iOS 4.3 whips along almost instantaneously on the new Apple A5 processor, with apps loading more swiftly, running more smoothly and the whole thing feeling incredibly responsive. The original iPad never exactly felt slow, but side by side with its successor the difference is noticeable in daily use.
We turned to Geekbench, a synthetic test of processor and memory performance, comparing the new iPad 2 with its predecessor and the iPhone 4. The iPad 2 scored 749 overall with its dual-core chip and 512MB of RAM, almost double the iPhone 4 – at 377 – with a single-core processor and the same amount of memory. The first-gen iPad – with the single-core processor and 256MB of memory – scored 453 under iOS 4.2; strangely, after upgrading to iOS 4.3, that actually dropped slightly, to 448.

In the real world that – along with graphics performance, which Apple claims is up to 9x faster than the iPad – means more multimedia grunt and fewer app crashes. We were able to software decode a side loaded 1.4GB .avi file in OPlayer on the fly, while watching it, without and lag or stutter. The same clip in the same app on the original iPad loads slower and drops frames and audio during playback. Large PDF files were also easier to handle, rendering more quickly, scrolling and zooming more smoothly, and the iPad 2 capable of displaying documents that proved too big for the iPad to handle.