T Cubed: Apple’s New iPad and The LTE Barrier

As is typical for this time of year, Apple has announced this year’s version of their wildly successful iPad. The new iPad (just referred to as the iPad, not the iPad 3 as was rumoured), looks at first glance much like the iPad 2 that preceded it. Even browsing the web for pictures probably won’t help you see the difference between them that much, but this is because the new iPad has a screen with an incredibly high resolution, increasing from 1024×768 to 2048×1536.

What does that mean? Resolution determines how many pixels are across the screen horizontally (2048 pixels for the new iPad) and vertically (1536 pixels). The best HDTVs often have a resolution of 1920×1080, so this iPad has a much higher resolution than most screens you have likely seen in person. The new iPad managed to squeeze all those extra pixels onto a 10-inch screen, which makes the device incredibly impressive to look at. Much like the change from the iPhone 3GS to the iPhone 4, third-party iPad applications will take some time to adjust and take full advantage of the display, but there should be some really impressive games and applications that push the iPad to its limits.

With a high resolution display, you need to have power behind it to keep things running smoothly. The new iPad has a quad-core graphics processor (made of two dual-core graphics processors), which keeps the tablet’s software running smoothly. It may not be enough to run games at console quality yet, though, as some games have shown to stutter a little, but for the majority of games and applications, it seems that the tablet runs quite smoothly.

LTE is the third primary feature of the new iPad, which brings blazing fast wireless speeds to an Apple device for the first time. LTE is a newer standard in cellular networks, initially introduced to Canada by Rogers at the end of last year, with Bell and TELUS launching their LTE networks soon after. In real-world usage, LTE commonly gives download speeds up to 25 Mbps, rivalling or exceeding most home Internet plans. While LTE  access is not exclusive to the iPad, it is much faster than HSPA+, which is the second-fastest network standard used in Canada. Adding the iPad to the list of LTE-accessible devices will give many people their first taste of LTE speeds. While the network is mostly in large cities right now, it is due to spread to other locations quickly over the next year.

Most devices have added LTE access at the expense of horrible battery life, but the new iPad’s battery is powerful enough to provide nearly the same battery life you’d get on the iPad 2. This is arguably its greatest feat and it will be interesting to see if Android, BlackBerry and Windows devices can follow suit. Android tablets have been mostly competing by producing 7-inch models, which can afford to be cheaper due to a number of factors. To see an Android device with LTE, that much processing power, that level of smoothness, and that rich of a display would be impressive. Let alone, one that can do that in 10-inches for the same price as a new iPad. Apple chose not to compete on the size scale, instead keep the iPad 2 as an option and lower the price by $100, bringing it to $419 in Canada, with the new iPad starting at $519 for the Wi-Fi model.

However, is it worth it to add LTE to these devices? Yes, the speeds are incredibly fast, and it’s an impressive technology to say the least, but one problem still remains: data plans. It’s cool to imagine doing all your typical browsing tasks over your cell network, but all those hours of watching YouTube will add up, and our data plans aren’t changing to reflect the technology. It’s quite restricting when most data plans, even for LTE, still only give you 500 MB to 1 GB of data a month, or charge you up the nose to get anything higher than that. 500 MB on LTE really isn’t that much, and the only way to rectify that is to start spending often over $75 on a plan for your phone.

While it can be argued that people should pay more for a service that’s comparably fast to your home Internet, the plans don’t quite match up yet. Using Rogers as an example: Rogers Express, while slower than LTE (theoretical speed of up to 18 Mbps with Express vs. up to 100 Mbps on LTE), gives you 70 GB of bandwidth for $35.99 a month, while their top tablet LTE data plan comes out to $37 a month for 10 GB of bandwidth for a few months and then down to 5 GB. Getting a tablet on Bell on the other hand, 5 GB of data is $35 a month, whereas $33.95 a month gets you only 2 GB a month with a much slower speeds (Bell advertises lower rates for all their Internet plans, but this is only for the first six months). When you go higher with Bell, to say, $50, the Internet speeds get much higher through the home connection. But it is not clear if you can get anything past 5 GB on a tablet without paying per GB.

In most cases, the increased speed is great, but there’s a price discrepancy that can’t be justified for a majority of subscribers. Because of that, most people won’t be using their phone for their primary Internet connection anytime soon. If the data plan on my phone were as competitive as my home Internet plan, it could easily displace it much in the same way mobile phones have displaced landlines. None of us at Waterloo likely have landlines, since they’re too much of a hassle to set up for a rented house and no one is going to call it when you have a personal cell phone. Shifting to your own Internet plan could be harder to justify, considering we take it for granted much of the time in our housing. Considering tethering is a thankfully included feature for most Canadian mobile plans, connecting all my devices to my phone for Internet would be an interesting concept. And if it were cheap enough, it could be a potentially viable concept in the next few years.