iPad: Joys after my second week of use

Not too long ago I wrote about some of the minor gripes I had found during my first week of use with the iPad. Now, I’d like to talk about the other end of the spectrum—what I’ve most enjoyed. There certainly is a lot to enjoy about the iPad being one of the first clearly successful tablets on the market. Some of them are due to hardware, and others are all thanks to software; but regardless of where they come from, they’re definitely there.

Here are some of my joys after using the iPad for a week or so:

1. Battery life – To put it simply, the battery life on this thing is phenomenal. So far, I haven’t turned the device off once and haven’t worried about it being at a low charge, unlike with my iPhone. In fact, the only times I’ve had it connected to a power source are when I’m syncing it and/or using it to deploy development code to. Other than that, I’ve either had it in sleep mode or have been using it for minor web browsing, etc. The best part? It hasn’t really dropped below 70% battery life yet, something we could only pray for on our iPhones (I’m aware the battery on the iPad is much larger, but I have a feeling part of this is also due to the A4′s low power consumption).
2. Responsiveness – Whether this is also due to Apple’s A4 could be debated, but I also have noticed that the iPad is also much, much more responsive than my iPhone 3G. While the 3G is a generation behind the 3GS and has lower specs, it is still unbelievably slow when compared to my iPad. The iPad responds to my touches almost instantly, and the loading time for even some of the more demanding 3D games is phenomenally shorter than those same games on my iPhone, even if the game was built specifically for the iPhone.
3. New User Interface Elements – As part of the software that runs on the iPad, new user interface elements have been added by Apple to take advantage of the large screen. For instance, popovers, which wouldn’t work very well on the iPhone, are one of my favorite parts about the iPad. They fit perfectly with the workflow of the device and make using it even easier. In terms of making the iPad fun to use, they’re probably the best way to interact with interface elements in most situations where a small menu is required.
4. Larger Screen Size – While this may at first seem obvious, this is a larger advantage than I would’ve anticipated. The extra room on the screen allows for so much more information to be shown. For instance, The Weather Channel’s application allows you to see the current weather, hourly weather, weekly weather, and more all on one screen, whereas with my iPhone, I can usually only see one of these at a time. However, this application is only one example of how useful this is. As an overall benefit, the split views that apps such as Twitterific use are fantastic. Instead of having to navigate backwards like on the iPhone to change categories, landscape mode allows them to always be visible. And in portrait mode, the awesome popovers are back. It really is great.

Overall, I did expect most of these things to be true, but not to the extent to which they were.

Have an iPad? Tell us what you like!

Also read iPad: Minor gripes after a first week of use.