“So what can you do with an iPad Mini that you can’t do with an iPad?,” asked Apple’s marketing guy Phil Schiller during the iPad mini launch. “You can hold it with one hand.”
Well, yes you can. You can grip it between your fingers like a fat candy bar. That is, if you’re a big guy with big hands.
I have yet to get my hands on an iPad mini, but I’m already seeing a possible design flaw. And that is…
If you’re a petite girl with smallish hands, can you comfortably grip an iPad mini?
Now you might think that this is a non-issue. After all, nobody complains about the regular 10-inch iPads (save for the weight).
But the regular iPad has a thick bezel, the kind that you can comfortably grip pincer-style:
The iPad mini? The bezel is pretty thin. On the top picture, you can see Schiller holding its width within the tips of his fingers. But Schiller is a guy with big man hands.
But if you have small hands, the only way to hold it in portrait mode (without your thumb landing on the touch screen) is with the mini resting on your four fingers while your thumb stabilizes it by the very edge:
That’s not the most stable way to hold a 0.68-pound device with a slippery aluminum backside.
Possible result? Lots of dropped iPad minis.
“That’s why you need to get a case for it!”
True. And perhaps you should. The thing is, the ultra-slim bezel will still be a problem, so the case only solves the slipperiness issue. But for holding the iPad mini on portrait mode with just one hand? Still an issue.
So the iPad mini, as designed, seems to require man-hands. Now if this was any other tablet maker, we’d just shrug. But this is Apple. The best design house in tech today.
But this is still mostly speculative for now. Lemme get my man-hands on an iPad mini and we can finally say if this will in fact be a real big (or little?) issue.
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If I’m not mistaken, the iPad Mini sports a “thumb rejection ” technology allowing you to properly rest your thumb in the sides for a more secure touch without the screen detecting it as a touch or as a gesture. I think this is quite an interesting idea, and if it did worked for the iPad Mini, I believe that the next generation of the bigger iPads will also adapt this and will soon have a thinner bezel in the sides (or maybe even in all sides).
one option is to hold in horizontally
@Messie: Now why didn’t I think of that? Gee, you’re right. This renders this a non-issue.
Well, actually, it’s still an issue for me because it still feels weird to cover a touch screen with your thumb. But still, yeah, it makes my “big issue” suddenly become moot.