Do I Need a Bigger Screen?

[canyonwalker]

It's now been 6 weeks since I bought my first iPad. I had doubts about whether I'd find it useful. Sadly at the one month checkpoint I found my feeling that it's a third wheel proving true. At the 6 week mark nothing's different. I did have another flying trip (to Austin last week) where the iPad could have proved useful. Recall on my lengthy flights to/from Australia I really liked having the larger screen than my iPhone. But on these flights I was happy with the smaller, easily hand-held form factor of my phone.

"But why would you choose such a small screen??" some friends have sneered. ...Actually they're not friends but are in the widening category of Assholes I used to not mind.

One in particular always rode me, and everyone else who owned an iPhone, for choosing such a small screen when Android devices were clearly so much better because they were available with larger screens. The screen size of an iPhone has virtually never bothered me. Still I wondered, am I missing something? Then one time we were in a room together using our phones at the same time....

His font size was so big 6 or 7 lines of text filled the entire screen.

Yeah, the dude needs a huge-ass screen because he's practically blind. My vision isn't as detailed as it used to be, but it's nowhere near that bad. I'll stick with my easily pocketable phone for now. And sadly that means my iPad mostly continues to gather dust.

Comments

[ckd]

My phone is an iPhone 15 Pro non-Max because I want "thing I can reasonably carry" rather than "monster screen of monstrosity" and I think even this one is a smidge bigger than I'd prefer. OTOH, I get a lot of use out of my iPad when at home or on a plane, though even there I have the smaller 11" form factor.

[canyonwalker]

My iPad is the 11" form factor, too. That's huge compared to my iPhone SE 3— which is the same size as an iPhone 8 (though with much newer hardware inside). I chose the SE 3 when I updated two years ago because I really like the pocketability. And while I wouldn't mind a slightly larger screen for a lot of stuff I use it for I do like its compact size because I can do most things on it one-handed when I want/need to. Compared to all that the iPad is like a laptop with a touch screen instead of a keyboard. Oh, and without strong CPU, gobs of internal storage, or flexible apps. So it's like a phone that doesn't fit in my pocket and can't make calls.

[ckd]

Mine's an M1 iPad Pro and I specced it up a bit, so even though it's no longer the latest it still has a stronger CPU than my current (2019 vintage :-) desktop machine and more than enough internal storage for me.

I agree that the apps are less flexible, but as a media/content consumption device (ebooks, email, websites, games, and movies - though that last I generally only take advantage of when traveling) it's been great.