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Comment by uses | Hacker News Reader

Pretty surprised they left the front camera on the side of the device. I can't figure out why they would think that makes sense after using it even once. It's so awkward trying to do a meeting and I have this weird camera angle coming from the corner of my face. The alternative is portrait orientation, which puts the camera really far from the center of the screen - feels like it's coming from above or below my face - and puts my video feed opposite to the orientation of my audience's screens, while also not being able to lean on the folded case.

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I was in a meeting the other and one of the participants looked off-center and he said "I joined with my tablet", ah yes was the remark from others

Now, I had joined also from my tablet but samsung put the camera in the center when in landscape mode and got no such remarks and I was just smiling

The camera on the new non-Pro iPad has moved from the side to the top though. Not sure why the inconsistency between models.

They're reusing the old enclosure so they save on tooling & parts.

Yeah this would be an improvement I think, considering how little I've seen iPads used in portrait mode it's a little surprising they haven't done it already. I'm guessing it's to support the pencil charging, since the new iPad does have cameras in the expected landscape location but only supports pencil 1

This would be solved if Continuity Camera let your iPad use your iPhone camera. Doesn't seem like it does, though.

You are too close to the camera. (Probably because iOS doesn't have good crop and zoom)

The orientation is just a software problem. No reason Zoom et al can't have an option to crop to the right aspect ratio.

This was the first thing I looked for. iPad is unusable for video calls.

Not to mention video calls (Google Meet, Zoom, Teams) kill the battery on an iPad. Google Meet in particular seems to be about 1% of battery a minute.

On the ARM versions? My M2 air uses very little battery for zoom (1+ hr about 10% or less, don't remember).

They are all ARM.

I have an iPad Pro with A15, and it holds battery better than my M1 MacBook Air on video calls. They are both great though, much better than any x64 devices I have ever had.

Your M2 Air is a Macbook, not an iPad

Yeah, but same processor.

To say it's "unusable" is ridiculous.

It works perfectly fine. Only main difference is that, in landscape mode, instead of people seeing you look slightly down instead of into the camera (like laptops), people see you look slightly left instead of into the camera.

99% of people seeing your image in the call won't notice or care. Especially when things like your lighting setup make most of the difference that people do notice, which has nothing to do with the camera you're using.

Are you saying unusable because attachment to keyboard skews image centering/symmetry?

I use my iPad for video calls (Zoom) all the freaking time and it's fine, but perhaps that's because i have it in the tall orientation so the camera aligns.

Everyone's creepily staring into nothing anyway. Except those of us who try to look at the camera instead of the screen most of the time. Which means we're not actually looking at anyone's face, even though it looks like we are, which is another problem.

Being a bit off-center is the least of the problems with video calls.

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