Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

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My experience with the Nexus 7 (in comparison with light usage of my wife's iPad 2, which I never really warmed too) is sort of the opposite. A 10" tablet is a "small laptop". The 7" device is a "big phone". It's better than my phone for everything I want to use the phone for, and I love it. I'll grab it preferentially to the Galaxy Nexus in my pocket any time there's a choice.

That wasn't true of the iPad, nor of the 10" Android tablet (a development board) I had at home for a while. With those, the choice was always between the big tablet and the laptop, and my experience was the laptop always won.

Obviously, the one spot where a 7" tablet fails is the important use case of carrying it around while not using it. So the phone isn't going away. Nor, obviously is the laptop.

But my surprise is that, unlike the 10" model, there was space in my life for a 7" tablet. It's really a very different kind of thing, and it's not surprising Apple wants to play in that world.

I bought a Nexus 7 and then sold it a month later after pretty much never using it. The only device that it could feasibly replace is my Kindle, and I preferred my Kindle for reading.

You might have missed his point. He's contrasting the Nexus 7 (7 inches) with the iPad Mini (7.9 inches). He's saying that the iPad mini is sufficiently larger that it doesn't feel like a "big phone" -- unlike the Nexus 7.

... you're right, I misunderstood. Though frankly that's insane. The mini is 14mm wider, 2mm longer and actually slightly lighter. It's simply "the same size" to any sane observer. The attempt to argue that it's not is just Apple marketing, trying desperately to achieve market separation in a segment that doesn't really have much.

I have ample evidence that I'm a mostly-sane observer. Is everyone who disagrees with you insane?

The 1.5 cm is a huge difference for most people being able to comfortably hold it the way I and most people I've seen seem to prefer to hold the Nexus 7: in portrait mode, with my thumb on one side and my four fingers on the other. I found a book that is the exact width of the iPad Mini (and it's lighter) and it hurts my hand to try to stretch it that way.

I'm sure some people with large hands will be able to hold it that way, but my opinion (I don't think you're insane if you disagree) is that most people will not be able to do so comfortably.

In short, 15 mm isn't a large difference in the abstract, but it's quite a lot of difference "at the margin," which is what I think we're talking about. I think it takes you from dimensions that maybe 80-90% of people can hold comfortably in the way I've described to ones that perhaps 10-20% of people can.

I think they certainly fall in the same category, but I'm hoping that the iPad Mini will be slightly better in some scenarios where my Nexus 7 fell short.

I sold my Nexus and have preordered an iPad Mini to see if it'll be more usable while still retaining the portability of the Nexus (which I loved - you could actually stick it in your jeans back pocket)

Browsing the web was fundamentally frustrating for me on the Nexus 7 because you'd either be served a mobile site which looked awful because it was meant for a 4 inch screen or you'd be served a desktop site where you had to do a lot of pinching and scrolling to get the text to a readable state which felt like more work than it was worth.

Especially in horizontal mode the Nexus 7 felt like browsing the web through a letterbox because the OS is quite greedy with the screen real estate and the 16:10 doesn't have that many pixels to begin with.

Perhaps I have abnormally large pockets, but the nexus 7 fits easily in my front pocket of my jeans. I don't buy any particular brand (usually whatever is cheap/on sale at Walmart that they have in my size) and this is the case for shorts as well.

I find I use the nexus 7 far more than any other tablet I have (though admittedly, I don't have an iPad, and even the iPad mini is slightly priced out of my "purchase without thinking twice" range. The only time it isn't ideal for me is when I'm trying to read schematics. At that point I tend to grab one of the 10" tablets I have.

I love my nexus 7, But you're right, most websites assume anything less than <768 is a phone and deliver a single column layout. Even though the n7 is 800px wide (portrait), it reports a device-width of 600px. And of course plenty of websites sniff UA and deliver mobile if they even see Android.

At least some people will be able to carry it in their jeans: http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/10/31/ipad-mini-fits-in-your...

This gives me hope!

It's not that I'm planning on rocking it like this often, but it's really practical for when you're moving between rooms and have a lot of other stuff to carry.

Home to measure my jeans pockets I guess.

When you phone just fits in your pocket and then someone stretches by 5mm and now it doesn't. It is not the same size it is the difference between having to deal with your phone some way (finding another pocket, buying a belt clips etc etc) as opposed it it just fitting in your pocket. There is a big difference from one to another in terms of how the product can be used.

I suspect it's the aspect ratio that makes all the difference between the two.

Honestly to the extent that's true, I think the 16:10 android tablet is the clear winner as video content matches one device much better than another. Landscape web browsing is probably best done in squarer ratios, but I'm not sure that's universally agreed (desktop computers, for example, spend their browsing existance at 16:9).

Again, this seems like splitting hairs to me -- trying to come up with something that makes the mini "special" and not just another 7" tablet. Why can't it be just another 7" tablet?

I understood that there was a fair difference in viewable area - 49% when web browsing. I don't know what that means, and it sounds like a crappy stat, but I heard it somewhere.

The mini screen is slightly larger. My math says 4.7 x 6.3 inches vs. vs. 3.7 x 5.9 (from which I get a 36% difference in area, FWIW). And it has a lower pixel pitch (162 dpi vs. 216).

Neither seems particularly significant to me when compared with a 4" phone or 10" tablet which are vastly larger jumps. But obviously that won't stop folks from arguing about it.

The Nexus 7 has the higher res screen though...

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