Something new landed in my hands!
I wonder what it is?!
Lol, OK I think its very obvious, isn’t it? Yup, its an iPad mini (with Rock case and Momax glass protector)! Nope, not the retina version. I still don’t think its worth to pay an extra $100 just for a clearer and sharper screen. And its just a WiFi version too – I’m not gonna pay extra monthly subscription charges to get another data plan for it!
Took the plunge last Friday when they had a one-day only sale at their online store. This only had about $30 shaved off the usual price, but it goes down under $400, which I decided is actually a pretty good price, considering other BNIB sets that many are selling are priced at $400. Not to mention the fact that free express delivery is included!
I had been eyeing the mini since last year, especially when the reading experience on Android is less than satisfactory, regardless on my Note 2 or Tab 2. Don’t get me wrong, I still love Android for all its functionality and customizations, but when it comes to reading ebooks or digital magazines, it just fall way short due to the fact that there’s just so many variants of Android out there and the developers can’t quite have an app that works equally well on all devices. Zinio for Android is fine as it is, but the digital magazines seemed as if they were just scanned and uploaded into the app. No matter how big the screen is, I always have to zoomed in at every page to be able to read comfortably. It will always take about 5 seconds to render each page, and another 5 seconds to render each zoom. It was really kind of frustrating.
I contemplated on getting either a Kindle or Nook as an alternative, but its hard to buy books or magazines in Amazon as they don’t allow sale of such for Singapore customers. And since I’ve already got a couple of digital magazines subscriptions on Zinio, it doesn’t make sense for me to get a Nook and subscribed again to the same mags which I’ve already paid for! So yeah, Mini it is.
First off, I’ve used iOS before. Prior to making the switch to Android, I was using an iPhone 3G. Albeit some features have been changed / added in, the feel of it is the same. It does, however, take some time to get used to it. And I still hate the fact that there’s no back button or proper exit of apps. =_=
The first thing I did was, of course, to download the Zinio app and see how beautiful my digital magazines are gonna look. Epicure was a disappointment. Although I don’t need to zoom in to read now, there’s black borders on the top and below, making it feel again, as if its just scanned PDF pages.
(Pardon the tilt as I don’t want the light reflections on the screen.)
Yup, that’s Epicure. Not good.
Fearing the worst, I loaded AppetiteAsia and crossed my fingers.
Full screen experience! Phew! The layout and everything else looked so much smoother, as if its especially designed for iOS. Very nice.
But I still didn’t get the interactive experience that I saw on demo sets with Wired magazines and the likes. So I banked all my last hopes on a US magazine, Cosmopolitan.
I had to manually tilt this to avoid the reflections while getting a clearer pic on the words.
This is interactive! On this page for example, you can tap on each male celebrity picture to see their respective favourite fragrance. Now, this is the experience that I was looking for! Local magazine publishers sure have a lot to work on, seriously.
Now, with digital magazines out for the way, I then proceeded to check how ebooks are gonna look like on my new toy. I hardly touch ebooks on Android simply because my Note 2 screen is really too small for ebooks. I mean, just a couple of lines for each page. Really? Anyway, I googled a little for some eBook reader recommendations for iPad mini, and I decided to go with Kobo. Partly also because they have an extensive eBook shop as well, so if I ever run out of books to read, I can always buy from within the app.
The kobo app follows the theme of kobo itself (I’m Captain Obvious, sometimes), which is a nice turquoise colour. I loaded my Dean Koontz and Michael Crichton’s titles into it, and it seems to work just fine. I haven’t tried extensively, but it looks nice overall.
My favourite book – Phantoms by Dean Koontz.
Looks good eh? With these two apps and endless magazines and eBooks online, I guess I’ll never be bored on train trips or onboard flights again! :D