Gadgets & Gizmos: Small Difference

But when I need to go off somewhere, I pick up the other iPad Pro. The 9.7-inch tablet that Apple just recently added to its lineup of tablets. I really like the fact that it fits into my sturdier handbags and that I can flip it open to work with when I'm on the go — especially when sipping a cup of coffee at a cafe. While travelling out of town too, the 9.7-inch iPad Pro is the companion I choose because of how easy it is to carry. It's no featherweight, but compared with a laptop, it'll do just fine.

And then, when done working, I detach the keyboard and set it aside or flip it backwards and read. Or pick up the Apple Pencil and indulge in my favourite activity — digital photo art. It's very difficult to turn the larger iPad Pro to portrait mode to read because it's just too large for that. The canvas for art though, is great.

So, the two iPad Pro tablets, similar as they look, call for different usage habits. Someone who has a heavy amount of work to do and isn't flitting from place to place would be better off with the larger one of the two. I think of it as the 'lean forward' tablet. Someone who wants to use it for short spells of light work, take it travelling and switch from work to relaxation in an instant, should consider the smaller iPad Pro.

Smaller though it may be, the new 9.7-inch tablet still costs a pretty packet. The tablet itself is Rs 49,900 for the base model (more storage space and cellular connectivity will mean you spend even more) and then there's the Smart Keyboard at Rs 13,900 and the Pencil at Rs 8,600. And wait — you also need to buy a cover for the back because the keyboard part only protects the front. That should be another Rs 3,000 or so. All this is enough to make anyone wonder whether they should think of picking up a pretty good notebook instead or settle for a non 'Pro' tablet and buy a cheaper third party keyboard attachment. No other tablet has the kind of stylus support and applications that the iPad Pro does, but that's something people need for something specific. Apple says that every industry finds its own use for that Pencil. Surgeons use it to get into anatomy apps and demonstrate very precisely where a procedure is to be done. This works astonishingly fast.

Artists will use it to sketch and paint and I know that many people on the artists group I'm part of on Facebook promptly equipped themselves with iPad Pro's and Pencils. Anyone else who needs to annotate, make precise markings or do work by hand carefully, could do with the Pencil. But certainly that's not everyone.

With my main task being writing, I find that it takes a little while to switch from a full keyboard to a smaller one. I touch the wrong keys for a while until I start doing better. But it's workable. The smaller iPad Pro actually jiggles a bit when I type though because it's lighter and each key press moves it a little. On a flat surface, it's stable of course.

The 9.7-inch iPad Pro has a few features that set it apart from the larger one. Its display is less reflective and has a 'True Tone' feature that lets it sense the light around you and adjust accordingly, making it easier on your eyes. You can see this working when you move to another room where the light is different.

The other bonus feature is that it comes with the 12MP camera that is on the current flagship iPhone 6s. Everyone doesn't like taking photos with a tablet, but sometimes, this is really enjoyable as you have a bigger viewfinder. And you can scan documents real well with it.

In the end, one needs to see whether the entire package of tablet plus accessories makes sense. Buying just the tablet without them is a bit of a waste — and buying them with, is expensive.

iPhone SE
Hhave you ever found yourself wishing smartphones today weren't quite so large? You may not be alone, but you're definitely in the minority as it's the 5-inch-plus devices that sell the most these days. It's logical when you think that there's much more one can do on a phone and one needs the screen space.

But in a throwback to the smaller phones of a couple of years ago, Apple decided to fill a gap for that niche of users who still want a small phone and launched the iPhone SE. It looks all-Apple, much like the iPhone 5s, except for fine tuning of design elements. But on the inside, it's almost like an iPhone 6s. Almost.

The diminutive iPhone SE runs on the same A9 processor that the flagship 6s does. Also the M9 CoProcessor. In short, it's a powerful little device. Apple says it's the most powerful phone in that size — and they're right about that, though it's also the most expensive. It doesn't feature the much talked-about Force Touch or 3D Touch technology from the 6s and also has an older version of its Touch ID fingerprint sensor technology, but it does have NFC, which isn't yet of much use to us here as it enables Apple Pay. It also easily runs Apple's latest version of iOS, 9.3 and brings with it the popular Night Shift feature which schedules the screen to turn warm yellowish and dim as night approaches preventing blue light from ruining the user's chances of getting to sleep.

But small or not, the iPhone SE certainly doesn't disappoint phone photography enthusiasts who will be delighted to find it houses the 12MP iSight camera which steadfastly remains one of the best cameras on a smartphone. There's something rather nice about having a capable camera in such a small form factor — just whip it out and take a quick capture. It even has the new Live Photos which shoots a few moments before the click and is a sort of one second video. You can actually also do 4K and slow motion recording, but there's no optical image stabilisation. The front camera is also only a 2MP one. It has a True Tone flash which lights up the screen in dark conditions but I've always found the results looking pretty frightening, though perhaps that's just me.

Though Apple clearly wanted to bring in an affordable model into emerging countries like India with the iPhone SE it's rather doubtful whether Rs 39,000 to Rs 49,000 can be considered affordable for a tiny phone. Anyone who's coming from a larger phone will find it very difficult to adjust to the size, especially of elements like the keyboard which has to be squeezed up to fit the screen space unless you want to switch to landscape every time you want to input text. I've been using it as a second device and while it's great to pair up with the Apple Watch, I'm unable to make it my primary phone because that size is just not enough for all there is to do now.