Ipad mini-siri

Siri

Oh, hello Siri – what are you doing here? Surely given the iPad 2's processor, which is the same as in the iPad mini, can't handle Siri (according to Apple) then it shouldn't be on the new device, should it?

But, there it is, and nicely incorporated too, as the little pop-up window that gives access to the voice recognition is nicely unobtrusive. The accuracy is also much improved over the first iteration of the software, and the range of functionality also enhanced.

With the ability to tell you if your football team is winning or losing, the weather in Paris or open an app on command, the iPad mini has the same implementation as the iPhone when it comes to Siri…and therefore as much use.

There's no way you'll ask it to book an appointment for you, because a) it doesn't always work, and you'll wish you had just typed it in and b) you're likely to be with someone, and the risk of failure and looking stupid in front of them is too high to try it.

The Google Now cards on Android Jelly Bean are much better when it comes to information, as being told what's going on with your team is much easier than having to ask for it. Both are different systems, but Siri is never going to gain mass appeal until it finally becomes almost unerringly accurate at recognising what you're saying.

We still like the little pop-up window, though.

The camera on the iPad mini is a fairly standard affair, coming in with a 5MP camera sensor on the rear of the device.

It's not the strongest camera on a tablet by a long way, but does come with some features to help bolster its performance, such as backside illumination to improve the light sensitivity of the sensor and the same five-piece lens that helps filter the light more efficiently.

But in practice, well, you've guessed it: it's an average camera on a tablet, and people shouldn't really be using such a device for photography unless it's an absolute emergency. Simple as that.

There's also no HDR mode here, which is usually necessary to help enhance the quality of your snaps on the go – we're upset that Apple has shorn the iPad mini of the functionality, but it's nowhere to be found.

There's no flash here, so while the low light sensitivity is improved, it's a long way from usable in the real world. The same autofocus elements are in place though, so face detection and focus/exposure locks are available (the latter by long pressing the portion of the picture you want in focus and brightest).

The front facing camera is actually a little more usable, as the 1.2MP sensor helps take some above-average profile pictures, if that's what you're into. It's obviously better for FaceTime games, but it's a surprisingly high-spec sensor in a budget Apple tablet.

Check out our samples to see what we're talking about – but if you really don't want to use a phone or dedicated camera for snapping, this isn't the tablet you should be turning to.

Video

The video capabilities of the iPad mini are alongside the camera in impressiveness. While it can take 1080p video and stabilise video as you go, the lack of video light makes it a little hard to use in many situations.

You can at least focus the scene during the video shooting, which helps improve snaps in a constantly moving scene… but that's about the most impressive thing we can say about it, other than it's a decent alternative when you've got nothing else to shoot with and you can rest it securely on a surface to minimise judder.

Apple devices have historically had issues with battery life, but in recent years the iRange has been stepped up in terms of power performance, and the iPad mini is following in that trend.

The battery life was a hot topic at launch, as many suspected that the lack of a high resolution screen was to help manage the power consumption as much as give Apple the specs for the iPad mini 2 next year. In practice this seems to have worked, as the battery life is pretty darn low.

We tested two usage scenarios: one with full brightness, high power apps running constantly and movies being played over and over, with downloads running in the background. In this case the iPad mini managed to last nearly six hours, which was more than acceptable in our eyes.

In low power mode it was a whole different case. Powering the display right down to the minimum brightness, keeping it turned off and locked and jumping onto Airplane mode from time to time led to an astonishingly low battery consumption, with the unit lasting well over two days with 50% still remaining (on the Wi-Fi only version).

Given that the device will mostly be in the bag or pocket (at a stretch) we can see you'll only need to keep the charger handy every two or three days to keep things juiced - barring a marathon gaming session or email reply storm.

In short, the battery life won't ever give you any nasty surprises on the Wi-Fi version - while we haven't tested the LTE option as yet in our time with other iPads rocking the cellular signal there wasn't a huge amount of power consumption difference, so we're pretty hopeful the same will be true of the smaller-screened iPad mini.

ConnectivityThe iPad mini's two specifications, 3G and Wi-Fi only, and they differ quite a lot in terms of what's on board. The latter is pretty sparse, with only dual-channel Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0 on board. We say 'only', but in truth that's quite a decent option for the things you'll want to do with it.

The former has everything under the sun: most LTE bands, DC-HSPA for sub 4G speeds that still impress, GPS and GLONASS for on the go mapping (providing you get the courage to do use such a function with Apple Maps).

The Bluetooth 4.0 integration is one that's impressed us over time, as it means low power sensors (such as those in healthcare or fitness) can be used with the more portable tablet, which will be great news for doctors who can't convince their patients to buy an iPhone or lug around a larger tablet.

We do have a slight problem with the Bluetooth connection to headphones - weirdly whenever connecting up wirelessly the sound would fall out of sync, before locking back into step with the video in a few seconds. However, every new chapter saw the problem happening again, which was really, really irritating when the same headphones showed no issue on the Nexus 10 tablet.

There are other devices that have the same functionality, of course, but Apple always likes to put in the minimum amount of technology when designing devices, so this shows it really believes in the technology.