The iPad Pro Preview: Taking Notes With iPad Pro

For the past week, I’ve been working on a review of the iPad Pro. For better or worse it has been a very quick week and I’ve been working on the review right up to the embargo time. Rather than rushing out our review of Apple’s first large-format tablet in an incomplete state, I’m going to hold it back so that we can get it right and produce the kind of high-quality article that we’re known for.

Instead for today’s embargo I want to take a more personal look at one segment of the iPad Pro’s new features as a preview of things to come. The iPad Pro is a tablet of several firsts for Apple – their first large-format tablet, their first tablet with Apple’s A9X SoC, and their first tablet clearly geared towards productivity as opposed to content consumption – and as a result one area that’s worth discussing in depth is whether or not the iPad Pro is useful to people that might not have wanted or needed an iPad before.

Samsung Announces The 18.4″ Galaxy View

For a while now there have been small pieces of information about an 18.4″ Samsung Android tablet that was due to release in the near future. The tablet was also hinted at earlier this year at IFA. Today that tablet has gone official as the Samsung Galaxy View, and it’s unlike any other Android tablet that I’ve seen before. Some information is still scarce, but I’ve put together the known specifications in the chart below.

It’s pretty obvious just by looking at the specs that the Galaxy View is a unique device. It sports an enormous 18.4″ LCD display, with a 1080p resolution. This certainly isn’t near as sharp as the screens you’ll get on recent smartphones and tablets, but you’re also more likely to use the Galaxy View at a farther distance. However, you are ultimately limited by the length of your arms because you need to touch the display, and so a higher resolution probably would have been beneficial, and I would imagine if the Galaxy View ends up being successful to any degree that we’ll see an improved display on the next generation.

With that large display comes a very big and heavy chassis. At 2.65kg it is by far the heaviest Android device I have ever seen, apart from perhaps some AIO desktops that include an Android partition for whatever reason. In order to make the Galaxy View easier to handle Samsung has actually build in a kickstand of sorts, and a handle which can be used to carry it around. It honestly seems a bit comical, but then again so have other past devices like the original Galaxy Note, and perhaps it will eventually be normal to see people walking down the street carrying a giant tablet at their side.

As for the rest of the internals, Samsung has only provided some high level info. The 1.6GHz Octa-core SoC has been reported as the Exynos 7580 by some other sources, but given that it’s an unknown part and the available information seems less than reputable I wouldn’t want to make any definitive claims at this point about exactly what SoC is in use. It is paired with 2GB of RAM, but it’s not clear whether it’s of the LPDDR3 or LPDDR4 variety, and that will come along with the SoC verification once we get more concrete specs. There’s no rear-facing camera, because when you get to 18.4″ there is really no way to take photos. I do wonder if it might have been a useful inclusion for showing a different point of view when video chatting, but ultimately Samsung has decided not to include one.

The battery also looks very small if you assume a 3.85V chemistry, and in fact it would actually be smaller than the battery in the iPad Air 2 if that’s the case. If that is true I could only assume that Samsung had to reduce the tablet’s mass, and assumed that in most circumstances the user would be close to a power outlet anyway. It’s very possible that Samsung is actually using a battery chemistry with a higher voltage and so the capacity will be much larger than the specification given in mAh would imply. This is again something that will hopefully be clarified in the future.

Samsung hasn’t announced pricing or availability for the Galaxy View yet, but with it now being official those details shouldn’t be far off.

The Apple iPad Mini 4 Review

For a while now Apple has been holding two launch events toward the end of each year. The first event in September is used to launch new iPhones, and new products and services like the Apple Watch and Apple Pay. In October Apple then has an event where the main focus is on new iPads, along with some other announcements such as new Macs or accessories. This year Apple appears to have switched up the formula, as they rolled both the iPhone and iPad announcements into a single September event. With October essentially over it looks like we won’t be seeing any more Apple launch events this year, and new products like the iMac with 4K Retina display have had quieter soft launches.

Since Apple combined their iPhone and iPad events into one, we actually have a new iPad shipping earlier than they’re usually even announced. The iPad Pro won’t go on sale until November, and the iPad Air 2 didn’t see an update, but the iPad Mini line got a significant overhaul in the form of the iPad Mini 4, and it has been available for well over a month at this point. Read on for the AnandTech review of Apple’s iPad Mini 4.