The Apple iPad 2 Review
by Brian Klug, Anand Lal Shimpi & Vivek Gowri on March 19, 2011 8:01 PM ESTFaceTime
by Vivek Gowri
After the iPhone 4 debuted FaceTime last year, Apple has started making every new device FaceTime capable. The iPod touch, MacBook Air and Pro, and now the iPad all can make use of FaceTime to video call other Apple devices.
Apple went with a somewhat disappointing VGA resolution front facing camera on the iPad 2, so video quality isn't great, but overall FaceTime works as advertised. The app itself is pretty similar to the iPhone/iPod touch application, with just three buttons at the bottom while the call is running - mute mic, end call, and switch cameras, in addition to the small window displaying your video stream.
The cool thing though, is that the window with your video around the screen is magnetized to the four corners, and you can flick it across the screen to any of the other three corners. I was FaceTiming with Anand and basically just playing air hockey with a picture of myself without anyone the wiser. It's a neat little detail, one of those UI flairs that makes you appreciate the attention to detail Apple has for its operating systems.
As with the iPhone and iPod touch, FaceTime requires roughly 300 Kbps total bandwidth - 150 Kbps upstream and downstream. Me and Brian both have connections with 3-5 Mbps upstream, in contrast to Anand's 500 Kbps upstream speeds, and the connection between me and Brian was significantly better than between Anand and I, providing a higher quality and less choppy video call.
It worked about as expected, though we did once manage to crash the app when switching between front and rear cameras during a video call. The biggest issue I had with it is that while video quality from the front facing camera, while acceptable on the 3.5" iPhone and iPod touch screens, looks rather poor when scaled up to a 9.7" display. But that's an issue with the actual camera hardware - the FaceTime app itself does the job about as well as one could expect.
How does FaceTime on the iPad 2 compare to Google Video Chat on the Xoom? The experience is pretty similar. Since both tablets rely mostly on the front facing camera for video chat, image quailty is similar. The big advantage the Xoom holds is you can also receive text during your chat if one of the parties is using Gtalk on a Mac/PC.
Photo Booth
by Vivek Gowri
Photo Booth started out as a small application in OS X used to take photos and videos, with a number of after effects and filters that can be applied to customize an image. I basically never ended up using it, even when I was at an easily impressed age, but I know a lot of people who thought it was pretty cool.
Apple has created a version of Photo Booth for the iPad 2, and like the desktop app, it's mostly a gimmick. The really cool part about Photo Booth is that when you first open the app, you're greeted by 9 separate live video streams with the different filters applied to each one. The center video stream is just the normal video feed, then thermal imaging, mirror, x-ray, light tunnel, stretch, twirl, squeeze, and kaleidoscope as the available effects.
Having all 9 video streams displaying at once is a nice way for Apple to showcase the computing power that the A5 has, but also a slick app that Apple can use to show off the possibilities of the iPad form factor. It's not the most useful app in the world, unless you're 13 years old and think that distorted images are cool.
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name99 - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
"you cant be a very tech inclined person if if you think you are, if you dont know that 1.2 GHz quad core arm cortex is coming later this year and so most tech people are waiting on that to happen"Really? You're going to buy that crappy 1.2GHz quad core A9? You're not going to wait the even better 1.8GHz quad core A15 that will be available in late 2012? Sucker!
Personally I think that if you buy now, before the 802.11s wireless spec is standardized, and before the chipsets support OpenGL 6, you're just throwing your money away. But I tell you, come 2020, that's going to be one SWEET rig that I finally get round to buying.
CZroe - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
"Just to test it out, I shot a series of videos of my car and stitched them together using iMovie, then added some titles and a soundtrack."I found iMovie completely useless on my iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS because I could not combine two clips/videos nor could I make a runing commentary with titles.
Are you sure that the iPad 2 version can do this or were all the "videos" in the "series" made from the same longer video?
CZroe - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
"Lately Apple has been trying its hand at first party case solutions. It stated with the bumper on the iPhone 4, carried over to the original iPad, and continues now with the iPad 2."When you fix that typo ("stated" instead of "started"), you may also want to correct that fact about what came first.
The iPad launched before the iPhone 4 so the official iPad case launched before the iPhone 4 bumper case, unless I somehow missed it and the official iPad case came out mid-life for the iPad.
darwiniandude - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
pja: The 64gb 3G version was at most $1049 AUD rrp, before the price drop, the 64gb WiFi one was $899 AUD rrp. The 64gb WiFi was never $1100 AUD unless you were looking at eBay pricing while stock was scarce. Anyway as this article states, the iPad, provided it does what you require, is a great combination of battery life, weight and size. Tablets certainly aren't for everyone though.Deepcover96: Agreed. Hopefully this changes later and I'm sure it will, but for the moment Android has a poor selection of AAA titles. Nothing like Garageband or iMovie, but certainly nothing like Infinity Blade, Nanostudio, Beatmaker 2, World of Goo etc. I'm sure Gameloft and EA will eventually do more, provided they can monitize ok on Android. And for the limitations of iOS apps, I wouldn't be able to have an iPad as my only portable device if it were not for Pages/Keynote/Numbers/TouchDraw/Photogene and so on.
CZroe: iMovie for iPhone (last year even) could do what you ask after the first update. This year it's greatly improved. A downside to this app and other Apple apps can be a lack of well known gestures. People don't know in Pages that if you hold your finger on an object, swiping with another finger moves it by one pixel, swipe with two moves it by 5 pixels, and so on. Likewise in iMovie, you swipe down through footage like you were cutting it at the playhead to make a cut. Each cut is a faultless transition, but then you can title each cut area separately. So you cut where you want the text to change, and label accordingly. In the new iMovie (only used on iPhone 4 as I sold 1st gen iPad whilst waiting for iPad2) when you import video there are standard iOS movie trim handles over the clip, you only need import the bits you want from each clip. But you could definitely always import more videos into one project in the last version. I think Apple need a modal help "Would you like to watch a short video about iMovie?" dialog or something on the first few launches with a website link, all these apps have their features tucked away so people often think they're less powerful than they are. I'm not sure Apple is choosing the best ratio of controls to expose to the user here. And yes, iPad case came out before iPhone 4, definitely.
kschaffner - Sunday, March 20, 2011 - link
An awesome free web browser for the iPad is Terra, it gives you tabs, has an incognito mode. etc I would definitely check it out.darwiniandude - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
Thanks, I'll check it out. I only use iCab as I bought it for iPhone, it got a universal update and I've been happy enough not to bother looking elsewhere. (it does have a 'privacy' mode) also caching of pages for when you're offline. Anyway, I've downloaded Terra and will play with it on the new iPad. It looks nice.Ha, there's a Terra Incognito HD game, lol
medi01 - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
Looking at the rounded back of ipads, ipad2 in particular, it's hard to understand, why the newer version is easier to hold.With rounded surface, they both should be harder to hold, and ip2 in particular.
darwiniandude - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
The original had flat sides, probably about 4 or 5mm, and a giant convex back, domed in the centre. The new one is thinner, has no flat sides (the curve just falls away from the front) but it's more of a bevelled edge, and once you're about 1cm in from the edges the back is perfectly flat.Is it easier to hold? Dunno, haven't got mine yet :) But that's what people are saying.
thebeastie - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
Everyday I use my Ipad even when I don't think about it.I use it as my wake up Radio clock via TuneIn Radio app. This app is great as I can go to sleep with the timer and then wake up to Internet radio which beats the hell out of analog radio. I been looking at a digital radio for a while but there is no reason now for me in the world to do that, and digital radios aren't cheap, it is just another device the Ipad as replaced perfectly with much better screen interface, and life time of free updates as app software evolves.
I think the Anandtech authors here saying that they found them selfs not using their original Ipad1 after a while didn't adapt their imaginations enough of where it can be used, maybe it is something to do with age and being hardwired into their life styles, dare I say it but becoming 'old school'.
I am wondering how they wake up in the morning, I find it hard to believe there is a better way to wake up in the morning then from an Ipad radio app, if it is about sound quality there are plenty of speaker options.
For people who don't get it then I say you just don't see things the same way, I would rather shove a pine cone up my backside then wait more then 2 seconds to be able to look at my email. A laptop takes ages to boot up let a lone the loading of the email client.
The main reason I got an Ipad was because I LOVE to read the paper outside, but the wind blowing the paper around drives me nuts, the Ipad is a killer in this regard.
damianrobertjones - Monday, March 21, 2011 - link
I have an Asus EP121, 4Gb ram, SSD drive, etc. It takes 20 seconds to start from cold onto the desktop. Anotgher 2 seconds to pen my email application.Is that fast enough?
from sleep, we're talking seconds