iPad mini Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi & Vivek Gowri on November 20, 2012 6:10 PM ESTWiFi Performance
The mini uses the same Broadcom BCM4334 WiFi controller as the iPhone 5. The WiFi stack supports dual-band 802.11n as well as fallback to 802.11b/g.
iPad mini WiFi controller - image courtesy iFixit
Since the mini uses the same WiFi stack as the iPhone 5, you get support for 40MHz channels on 5GHz networks (20MHz on 2.4GHz). The maximum PHY rate supported is 72Mbps on 2.4GHz and a whopping 150Mbps on 5GHz.
In terms of actual performance, this works out to be a maximum of just under 100Mbps on a 5GHz network with 40MHz channels. In practice I wasn't able to get higher than 91Mbps, although Brian managed a very nice 95.7Mbps on the iPhone 5 in his tests. On average I pulled nearly 78Mbps on the mini on a 5GHz network. Move down to 2.4GHz and performance is cut roughly in half (peak performance is around 41Mbps).
I didn't have any issues with WiFi reception or performance in my testing of the iPad mini. The only complaint I really have at this point is I would love to see more intelligence when it comes to switching between multiple known APs of varying signal strengths. This is a problem on pretty much all devices I play with, they tend to want to stay on an existing network even if its performance drops significantly and there is another, better performing network that could be jumped to. I feel like some more intelligence in this department (testing nearby networks, looking for an ability to seamlessly switch and get better performance) would help mitigate a lot of the inevitable "hey my WiFi is broken" complaints we often see with a move to a new WiFi stack. You could also argue that we just need better designed WiFi deployments.
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jaydee - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
Keep in mind those FPS benchmarks don't take into account screen resolution. Nexus 7 is driving a higher resolution display, pushing 30% more pixels.Azuredragoon - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
The GPU test does take into account screen resolution with the offscreen 1080 testslowlymarine - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
GPU performance isn't anywhere near "better than even the newest Android-running hardware." It's identical to Exynos 4412's Mali400 MP4 and the ubiquitous MSM8960's Adreno 225, and markedly behind Exynos 5's Mali 604T and APQ8064's Adreno 320. Unless you were forgetting to look at the "offscreen" results?http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph6429/51693...
DeciusStrabo - Thursday, November 22, 2012 - link
1 GB RAM and the iPad Mini would be so much better, at basically no cost for Apple or in battery life.drx11 - Sunday, November 25, 2012 - link
because more RAM is free and takes up absolutely no space or battery power? What are you smoking?So it looks like Apple did install more RAM - its invisible and takes up no space and does not use any energy/battery at all ... and well its not actually in the iPad mini because Apple has to deal with the pesky physics of the world.
seanleeforever - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link
few things here:nexus 7 actually fit in all my pant's pocket, it has portability of a phone as far as i am concerned.
nexus 7 has usb host mode which can access your usb device.
if i need to carry ipad mini in a bag, which i will have to, i might as well just get regular size ipad.
just my 2 cents.
seanleeforever - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link
also, could we please have a nexus 7 and ipad mini display at the same size at least?the side by side thing you guys have shows a zoomed in nexus 7 vs zoomed out ipad mini, it shows the illusion that ipad mini displays much more content than nexus 7 while in reality the nexus 7 packs more pixel.
Mumrik - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link
Actually a pretty good point.EnzoFX - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link
Is this not the default behavior of the Nexus? Everything in Chrome always looks so big to me, all of Android I think actually. The UI, the buttons, just are way too big.Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, November 20, 2012 - link
Done, updated :)