Comment by metadat
13 hours ago
Why is the bezel so thick? A 1-2cm bezel around the entire "mini" device seems a bit odd, given that the iPad Mini is a relatively tiny device and phones these days come with a 1-2mm bezel (10x less useless border).
Is it a cost saving measure / sneaky margin increaser, or what might be the motivation?
Edit:
Touch interference is a good idea. Still, from the picture, it looks like the bezel could be half as thick and work well. Sorry to be such a stickler, I am genuinely curious if Apple is chasing better margins, the best feasible UX, or something else.
Could it be that since this device is only $650 USD, it isn't expensive enough to warrant a premium display? (Like the iPhone SE https://www.apple.com/iphone-se/)
If so, I wish there was a fancier "Pro" model with premium components. IIRC, I paid $1000 for my first iPad, it was the first super high-resolution one back in 2012. Perhaps there aren't enough customers who are sensitive to wasted screen real estate on an 8-inch device.. and FWIW I have noticed a constant stream of toddlers pacified by iPad Minis whenever I'm at Costco.
Bezels are useful for devices that you can’t just hold in the flat of your hand. Provides a place to hold on to.
Also, this is an LCD screen. The substrate is rigid. An OLED, like on the iPhone is on a flexible substrate and can be bent at the edges to connect to the circuit board. That lets you put the screen closer to the edge.
There are no LCD panels in recent phones that use COG packaging (chip-on-glass) for the display driver and run into the limitation you mentioned. Almost all current LCD phones will utitlize COF (chip-on-film) where the TFT array is attached to a flex-pcb which also contains the display driver. The flex-pcb You can achieve bezels just as thin using this technique, and Apple has used the technique you mention only once, COF is used even on flexible OLED panels.
I have had phones and tablets with IPS displays with way thinner bezels so that argument is void.
Only on 3 sides I think though? You still need an edge connector on one side (i think)
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I think it's so that the fingers holding the device don't obstruct the view/ don't get counted as touch event.
I’d be surprised if thumb rejection/palm rejection isn’t close to perfect by iPadOS 18.
I’m forever triggering the camera app, while locking the device, on my iPhone 15 pro max. Every day, regularly.
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Doesn't work well for me. Thumb gets too close to bottom, and now scrolling becomes zooming. All the time.
Well its not that they couldn't do it but the iPad has always had bezels and the apps are expecting bezels not thumb rejection. They could be but they're not built with an on screen safe area.
Ipad Mini is such a good size. My friend lent me his Mini2 when he borrowed money from me and used it for a good 6 months i think and it was marvelous. I didn't use it all that much but later got an Air 2 and used it maybe slightly less. Then I got an iPad Pro 11" but only used it for a while and don't really touch it too much anymore. I feel maybe an ipad mini I would use more. But the jelly scroll really has me urked and I kinda want OLED on it, so there is definitely room for a Pro version if they wish, but the iPads are overwhelming with 5 sizes already.
> overwhelming with 5 sizes already.
without jobs it's just a matter of time they go back to being "just an expensive dell" like before
Steve Jobs has been dead for 13 years. Whatever was going to happen without him already has.
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What makes you say that?
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So that they can release a successor model with thinner bezels.
In reality this may be to (1) to keep costs down and (2) to distance the iPad mini from the more premium iPhone Pro Max.
All in all, this device leaves me wondering who this is for? iPads are mostly used for media consumption, no matter how Apple wants to position them. Not sure why this necessitates AI hardware, but perhaps people really start using iPads for productivity/creativity workloads that can make use of “Apple Intelligence” (the silliest moniker since “Spatial Computing” and “Retina Display”).
The comparatively small difference in screen real estate between an iPhone Pro Max and the iPad mini makes the latter rather pointless. Perhaps they are targeting people with a smaller iPhone who want another device to watch YouTube. What could have made a difference is a folding display. I think the iPad mini would have been the ideal candidate for that.
> Perhaps they are targeting people with a smaller iPhone who want another device to watch YouTube.
Hi, it me.
I have an iPhone 13 Mini that will have to be pried from my cold dead hands because it's about as big a phone as I'm willing to carry (I'd still rather have the 5s form factor.)
I also have an iPad Mini that supplements it perfectly.
Really don't want anything larger, because I like to handle it with one hand while walking or I'm propping it up in a tight space like when I'm watching a how-to video while doing a home-improvement project or working on my car.
There is absolutely no way I'd buy a phone as gigantic as a Max.
Honestly not sure how people walk around with those things.
If I didn't have to spend the $, I'd totally have a small phone for when I leave the house, and a bigger device like this for when I'm at home.
> There is absolutely no way I'd buy a phone as gigantic as a Max.
It's not gigantic for everyone to be fair. I'm 6′1″ with largish hands I suppose and the Max is a single hand device for me. Small devices look comical in my hands. I was one of those very well served by Apple starting to make larger devices, and it's when I shifted over from Android full time to iOS devices. (I was very fond of the early generation Galaxy Note devices prior to that.)
> Honestly not sure how people walk around with those things.
The same way as I do anything of that size. It goes in my pocket or i'm holding it?
I get where you are coming from those because my partner has a much smaller 13 line device and we've done some basic testing and like you, shifting to a Max sized device...well, its just not very likely. My phone looks absolutely jumbo once you put it in her teeny hands.
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“ The comparatively small difference in screen real estate between an iPhone Pro Max and the iPad mini makes the latter rather pointless.”
While the linear diagonal size of the screens are not so much different, the area of the iPad Mini is significantly larger. I ran the numbers a month or so on it when someone was making the same claim of equivalence. I don’t recall the specifics now but I think the iPad screen had at least 60% more area. That is significant.
“ Not sure why this necessitates AI hardware”
It would be hard for Apple to put in a chipset now that didn’t support AI. All of their SOCs for the past 10 years have had neural processors. This A17 Pro has 8GB of RAM. All of their recent SOCs have the 8GB of RAM needed to run AI. Why not?
> All in all, this device leaves me wondering who this is for?
Who is any iPad for? They’re nice screens attached to good processors.
I bring mine to work to either read or watch videos over my lunch break. Don’t want the full size of a regular iPad. Don’t want to use my work laptop with my personal service accounts like YouTube, Netflix, kindle, etc.
And while the Mini is small, it’s still a substantial screen size increase over using my regular sized iPhone for that purpose.
Lots of aircraft pilots love the iPad mini. Ideal sized tool for having strapped to a yoke, or to one's knee.
I plan on buying one for exactly that use-case. I have a mini 5 that's showing its age and doesn't have enough storage (downloading flying charts takes up a surprising amount of space) and I didn't want to upgrade to the mini 6 considering how long in the tooth it was getting. The mini 7 isn't some massive improvement, but it's improvement enough in a very good niche for flying.
Edit: For the non-pilots reading this, it's also worth noting that the most popular flying app by far for general aviation at least, ForeFlight, is iOS only. So your choices are generally small iPad or big iPad, and a lot of people don't like big iPad in a small airplane cockpit.
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I hate that ForeFlight does not run on Android. It is is keeping me from getting rid of my last overpriced, closed, proprietary Apple device. Not that Jeppesen (Boeing) has a good record on any of that either.
> All in all, this device leaves me wondering who this is for?
You know, you could just read all the other comments on this post talking about why they like the mini.
People like to spend 1 minute looking at a product and pretend they've done a market analysis by only looking at their own consumption patterns or those of their very close group of people around them combined with some stereotypes like "people use tablets for media consumption" (and never do anything else on them in between).
>Not sure why this necessitates AI hardware
New Siri and iOS notification summaries seem like it should be enough of a reason for apple to want to ship an iPad with ai hardware.
> for apple to want to ship an iPad with ai hardware.
You mean the dedicated neural chip they've been gushing over for half a decade saying how it's an amazing dedicated chip for exactly this kind of work?
> The comparatively small difference in screen real estate between an iPhone Pro Max and the iPad mini
Due to the aspect ratios, there are significant differences in viewable area. It is not a "small" difference at all. Once you add in the ability to deal with specific aspect ratio content, the difference becomes even larger.
https://displaywars.com/6,9-inch-d%7B19,5x9%7D-vs-8,3-inch-d...
> All in all, this device leaves me wondering who this is for?
Not for everyone I would suggest. But I have people in my circle who will be very pleased. As they use a Mini as their phone/portable machine out of the house. They have little keyboard cases and use VOIP services for communication.
> but perhaps people really start using iPads for productivity/creativity workloads
Part of the appeal for most people is the seamless usage of features and functionalities across their sweet of products. People expect to be able to pick up where they left of, and have access to the same functionality as they largely do on the rest of the devices.
It's nice even if something is not your primary productivity device, to be able to execute or perform things on them if that's what happens to be in front of you at the time.
> All in all, this device leaves me wondering who this is for?
I know children who study with their iPad minis and prefer them over notebooks. This isn’t necessarily a pro-Apple statement, but rather a reflection on how different user groups may engage with devices in ways that are cognitively distinct from what we discuss here on HN.
There are also comments here about specific use cases, like pilots using tools such as ForeFlight. While this kind of usage may not drive overall demand, it highlights how certain groups find unique value in the iPad mini for their specialized needs.
> who this is for?
I dunno, every Boomer guy I know with disposable income seems to have settled into Big iPad, iPad mini and iPhone as their compute stack.
I think for them it's like desk/table computer (Big iPad), sofa computer (iPad mini), out&about computer (iPhone).
I know guys like this who haven't even really owned a computer-computer (MacBook or otherwise) for 5+ years.
The iPad mini is a second-class product in Apple's lineup. It rarely gets updated, and if you use one you will see how poorly UI is scaled. I was really hyped up and really wanted one, but after using one I gave up on the idea. The 60 Hz LCD screen is also among the worst screen of all the products Apple currently sells.
I have an iPad mini and it's pretty much perfect as it is for my use case. I use it as a device I can pick up and watch videos while on the go or doing an activity (cooking etc.), show videos to my kid and as a device I can travel with.
The only complaint I have with it is that it only supports one profile but I think that applies to all ipads
I'm at my second iPad mini, and finally bought a new Apple Pencil. I'm still angry about the pencil battery not being replaceable, and the iPad is the device I use the least among laptop and phone, but there's something really nice about the mini form factor.
My single use case is reading research papers. I also do that on pc but the ipad mini is great to take a paper and read it entirely without distractions and with the ability to take handwritten notes. That was a nice combo with the lab couch when I was in PhD. Also the fact it can be held in one hand, especially nice when presenting or walking.
that's a pity. I had a regular iPad, I used it for document browsing and regular reading. I eventually gave up on it because it was just too big and too heavy and required two hands to hold it.
I really wanted something that'more Kindle-sized, which the iPad mini seems to be, which is the perfect form factor for one handed usability.
Wow, so negative! I use mine heavily, including right now. Mostly with Chrome and Google apps, though, along with Kindle. Also, Genshin Impact to play games with the kid.
Best tablet I’ve owned. Genshin Impact uses a huge amount of space, though.
Why don’t you want to use a bigger iPad? I play, read graphic novels and watch videos on the larger iPad as more screen estate is better.
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I upgraded to an M2 Air from an iPad 7 a couple months ago, My biggest complaint apart from the worse battery life is that there is no way to safely hold the thing one handed while walking while not be interacting with the screen.
Give me somewhere to hold the thing!
It's about 9mm which is not that thick. It really does make a difference in how you can hold it one-handed and without accidentally touching the screen. Most phones and thin-bezel tablets need to be held very carefully.
somewhere to grab it without putting your fingers on the screen?
Maybe I'm weird, but I don't mind having a bit of bezel around the screen. It makes the device easier to grab without extra touches or fingerprints on the screen. It's also a good place for cameras and front-facing speakers. (Although I don't think any iPad has front facing speakers.)
> Why is the bezel so thick?
How else were they supposed to make room for the extra 4GB of RAM required to support Apple Intelligence?
It's likely they're repurposing slightly older display inventory to preserve margins, recoup R&D costs and to bring overall component costs lower since this is meant to be a cheaper device.
>Why is the bezel so thick?
So you have somewhere to actually hold the bloody thing.
Bezelless gadgets look great in photos but are impractical as fuck to handle.
My thoughts exactly, when I first saw it I thought I had landed on a launch article from 2014
Screens come in standard sizes. It might simply be that they can't fit all the parts inside, including the battery, without making the device bigger than the standard screen size and so you get bezels. Bigger devices have more room in them and many of the parts are just the same size.
Are "standard" screen sizes really something you have to care about at Apple-scale?
Yes, LCDs are made as giant sheets that are cut into panels. They will want to cut those sheets in a way to ensure the least amount of waste as possible. They are not making them completely arbitrary sizes.
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No. Screen sizes come in whatever size Apple orders them in.
The device can have a bigger battery with a thick bezel.
Can have or does have?
Honestly with a tablet I prefer some bezel so I can hold it without touching the screen. I have both a 9th Gen iPad and an M2 iPad Pro, I use the “inferior” one almost exclusively.
because the target audience of mini ipads are babies.
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