Apple iPad mini 4

The “mini” is really a misnomer now. The baby’s grown up.

The iPad mini 4 is one of those updates that Apple fans all over the globe were waiting for. For two years.

Ever since the not-so-significant iPad mini 3 upgrade in 2014 (crowded out by the headline act of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus), iPad mini aficionados were left feeling shortchanged and largely bereft of much humour.

It didn’t help that Apple strove so quickly past the mini 4’s introduction in their 2015 Keynote address too. Quite a few people had a sense of déjà vu, and next morning’s water cooler conversations referred to the mini 4 as “another minor upgrade”.

Let us assure you. It’s not!

It’s not a hand-me-down round either (people liken it to being a smaller version of last year’s iPad Air as the hardware on paper appears to be that of the Air).

It’s not.

The iPad mini 4 offers plenty of new stuff and is definitely a much needed upgrade, over both the iPad mini 3 and the iPad mini 2 (released way back in November 2013).

It’s taller, yet thinner; it’s a tad bit lighter and even though the display looks very similar to the iPad mini 3, it’s actually a lot, lot better!

The iPad mini 4 features a 7.9 inch LED-backlit IPS LCD display with scratch resistant glass and oleophobic coating. It has an impressive resolution of 1536×2048 pixels with 324 ppi. The display may look identical to that of the mini 3, but it’s actually a fully laminated display with anti-reflective coating. Which means the colour saturation is much better and it’s much easier to see the display in bright light. There’s only a small amount of glare, unlike the iPad mini’s previous two iterations.

The iPad mini 4 comes packed with iOS 9 (upgradable to iOS 9.0.2) and is available in 3 memory variants: 16 GB, 64 GB and 128 GB.

Under the hood, the latest iPad mini boasts of Apple’s A8 chipset with a dual-core 1.5GHz Typhoon processor backed by a PowerVR GX6450 graphics processor and 2 GB of RAM.

The iPad mini 4 feels a lot snappier than it’s previous iteration. Web pages load quickly, switching between apps is instantaneous and it supports Apple’s latest multitasking capabilities (Slide Over, Split View, Picture In Picture et al.

This device also features a fingerprint sensor (Touch ID) just as the iPad mini 3. It’s a lot smoother and faster though.

Both the cameras have been updated too. The rear camera is up to 8 megapixels now; and it supports burst mode, video recording at 1080p, slow-motion videos etc.

The front camera is a 1.2 megapixel camera with f/2.2 aperture that apparently lets in 81% more light than the mini 3’s — which means much clearer video calls and selfies.It too, supports burst mode! It is capable of recording 720p videos, just as before.

The iPad mini 4 is available in three colours: Space Gray, Silver, Gold.

Originally published at chip-monks.com.