I myself am a heavy tablet user who’s picking up his iPad at least a dozen times a day. I especially find the tablet indispensable for catching up on morning news and before nap time, when I would typically consume interesting stories I was saving for later throughout the day.
A month into my new iPhone 6 Plus and already I’ve found myself using my iPad Air less often.
And if a sketchy report from Taiwan’s Economic Daily News is to be trusted, Apple itself is mulling winding down iPad mini development and devote resources to developing a 12.2 or 12.9-inch iPad model.
While mini tablets may not be dead yet, there’s no question that today’s smartphone consumer is gravitating toward smartphone-tablet hybrids (phablets) like the iPhone 6 Plus. Which brings me to our question of the day: have you noticed using your iPad less often due to the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus?
Here, cast your vote now and then join us for the discussion down in the comments. Please don’t vote unless you own an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus.
A few observations of my own…
The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have bigger screens and stronger batteries, two key features making these devices more suitable for prolonged use.
Not only do you get bigger canvases, there are more pixels to work with, too. In the case of the 5.5-inch Retina HD screen on the iPhone 6 Plus, you have nearly three times more pixels versus the four-inch iPhone 5s.
And because the increased pixel count lets me see more content in apps and scroll less, I find myself using my iPad Air less often now.
On the other hand, I don’t see the iPhone 6 Plus replacing my iPad anytime soon. The bigger question to ask is if oversized smartphones are equipped to bridge the gap between the smartphone and the laptop.
As awesome as the new iPhones are, they still don’t hold a candle to full-size iPads when it comes to activities such as browsing the web, checking email, watching movies, enjoying photos and playing games.
I asked several members of the iDownloadBlog team to chime in on the smartphone vs. tablet debate and received some interesting answers.
Sébastien Page, who runs iDownloadBlog, says a full-size iPad feels so big in his hands (“I just don’t know what to do with so much screen space”). Besides, he barely uses his iPad mini these days.
For Jeff, it’s a non-issue. He fires up his MacBook Air, not an iPad or an iPhone 6, whenever serious work needs getting done (“I have to find excuses to use” my iPad over the Air).
“I can be ‘productive’ on my iPhone 6 Plus,” he tells me. “But nothing more than editing a typo in a post, or starting a post. Outside of that, the Mac is the only thing that makes sense for me productivity-wise”.
Timothy Reavis, who is about to get an iPad Air 2, is going to pass on the latest iPhones and wait for the iPhone 6s Plus or whatever Apple calls it.
“I have some iPad-specific uses including digital textbooks and sheet music that wouldn’t work as well on a smaller iPhone 6 Plus screen,” he said.
An iPad Air 2 is more valuable to Timothy than an iPhone 6 Plus (he’s currently an iPhone 5s user) because it’s much faster, has a bigger screen and a much stronger battery so it would easily “take away tasks that used to burn the iPhone’s battery”.
“The main things I’d be missing are NFC payments and a nice camera, both of which I can live without for another year,” he summed it up for me.
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