Ok, so I really didn’t have that conversation with my iPad 3. At least not out loud! But it is true: The new iPad mini is replacing my iPad 3; lack of Retina display, be damned! Before I share more thoughts on the two tablets and what led me to the decision, let me bring back some salient points I made nearly two years ago on Apple missing out on the small tablet market. That post, along with the great reader commentary, was read by Apple executives who then decided to enter the small tablet market.

What’s the big deal about small tablets?

Here’s my summary from back then when describing the experience with my 7-inch Galaxy Tab:

“I’m not suggesting everyone dump their iPads; I’m simply explaining my own decision making process to help you make your own. And aside from our own Darrell Etherington at the GigaOM Apple channel who tried, and then returned a Tab, I’ve heard from at least a dozen Tab owners who are also finding less use for the iPad (and other devices) based on the 7-inch form factor. Darrell’s experience with the Tab ironically made him realize that he wants a 7-inch iPad. I’m inclined to agree and would consider dumping my Tab if Apple were to sell such a device. It would be the best of both worlds, regardless of Steve Jobs’s insinuation that it will never happen.

Darrell’s sentiment highlights a key point I’m trying to make here: We often look at the features of a device, but I contend that form is just as much a feature as the CPU clock cycle or the amount of memory in a mobile device. Of course, you never know that until you try a new form factor to see how it fits in your lifestyle. I’m glad I did that with the Tab.”

Perhaps the most important point here is that without the experience of using a small slate, it’s easy to miss its biggest benefit: portability.

But it doesn’t have a Retina Display!

Dooming the device without experience is of using it has already been seen: iPad mini naysayers were decrying the device for its 1024 x 768 display before the device even shipped. I can’t argue with them that the Retina display on the recent iPads are outstanding. But the screen on the iPad mini isn’t as bad as the ones found on the first two iPads.

“Wait, aren’t those all 1024 x 768 resolution? How can the iPad mini screen be better than the first two iPads?” I’m glad you asked, and it’s a pretty simple answer really. Because the same 786,432 pixels of a display with this resolution are crammed into a smaller screen, the pixel density is greater. That means, all things being equal, things on the screen will look clearer. Not by much, but enough to see a difference. So no, the iPad mini display can’t compete with the screen on the newest iPads, but it’s better than the iPads from two or three years ago.

Just as I said when I dumped the first iPad in favor of a 7-inch tablet, I don’t expect everyone to follow suit. After all, thanks to a myriad of applications, the iPad is used differently by everyone. For example, I actually don’t create much content on an iPad, outside of emails and social network updates, that is. If I actually used my iPad to write my daily blog posts, I might feel differently as I find that activity better on a screen larger than 7 or 7.9 inches.

Instead, I do far more content consumption: ebook reading; web browsing; watching TED videos, television episodes and movies; using various apps and games. All of these activities fit nicely on the iPad mini and I’m already doing them in more places: my “large” iPads always tended to stay at home, but the iPad mini can easily go anywhere. And as I noted in early 2011, the best tablet is the one you have with you.

A full iPad experience in a smaller package is a huge selling point

As far as the iPad mini’s usage, performance and feature set, I feel like I’m getting the full iPad experience in a package more suited to my particular needs. Based on a visit to the local Apple Store in King of Prussia, Penn. over the weekend, I suspect many others are starting to see the light. I watched person after person enter the store and walk up to the iPad mini display units with a quizzical look on their face, as if to say, “What’s the point of this smaller iPad?”

More often than not, those looks melted away after a few minutes and it was as if I could actually see the light bulbs going off over people’s heads. Between the portability, the lower price and the full iPad experience, I suspect Apple will sell more iPad mini tablets this holiday season than any other iPad model.

So, goodbye, iPad 3. You were great; whenever I had you around, that is. The problem is a slimmer, lighter model provides the same utility in more places for me; even with that lowly 1024 x 768 display.

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Why the rumor makes sense

The rumor is certainly believable when you consider the the 7-inch tablet Asus previewed at the Consumer Electronics Show in January. At Nvidia’s press event, an Asus executive walked on stage to discuss how the company could compete with low-cost tablets from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The Tegra 3 device, dubbed the Asus MeMo, was indeed a quad-core, 7-inch Android slate that will have an expected price of $249.

Google has reportedly approached Asus to collaborate on the device, which could be a flagship tablet for Google’s annual developer conference, called Google I/O. Last year, Google partnered with Samsung to create a special version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and 5,000 units were handed out to developers. While not called a Nexus device, the tablet used a stock Android Honeycomb interface, presumably to give developers a pure tablet experience with which to build their apps. I don’t think the device succeeded, however.

What happened to last year’s Google tablet?

For starters, any developers that have the Google Edition Galaxy Tab 10.1 essentially have an orphaned device. The tablet came with Android 3.1 and received an update to 3.2 a few months later. Since then, however, no software updates have arrived from either Samsung or Google. And I’ve seen no reports of any planned updates. That doesn’t send an inspiring message to developers at an event that should generate excitement. How are devs supposed to create apps for Android 4.0 when the tablet they were given runs older software?

Secondly, there really hasn’t been a huge uptick in the number of Android tablet apps since then. Instead, Google added a function that zooms or upscales Android smartphone applications on a tablet. The entire point of the Google I/O device was to generate momentum for Android apps, but top-tier tablet apps and content available on Apple’s iPad are still missing from the Android ecosystem. Think Flipboard, for example, or HBO Go, which is available on Android smartphones, but not tablets.

Simply put: when it comes to tablets, very few developers are thinking Android first and iOS second. And why should this change when the iPad is still outselling all Android tablets combined? Programmers are following the money, which means targeting their wares on the best-selling tablet.

Why the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire worsen the problem

With the Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire taking 21 percent of the overall tablet market in the last quarter of 2011, you’d think these would help the situation, but they don’t. Both slates are built on Google’s smartphone platform, Gingerbread. That means they run phone applications, not software built for Android tablets. Neither of these have access to Google’s Android Market out of the box, either; developers have to work directly with Amazon or Barnes & Noble to get their apps in the virtual stores.

These two alternative slates built on Android underscore the challenge Google faces in the tablet market. People are looking not just for solid hardware, but also a wide range of content and applications they can use in a friendly user interface. Both the Nook and Fire meet those requirements and do so at a compelling price. My point is: Creating a quad-core tablet at a competing price alone isn’t going to address the issue.

There are three parts to mobile devices: hardware, software and ecosystem

Google needs to work hard — perhaps more than ever before — at its upcoming I/O event to convince developers that there’s a reason to create tablet applications for Android. Perhaps selling a $199 pure Google device can help with that, because up to now, the Android tablet freight train isn’t chugging down the tracks at the speed of the iPad Express.

Perhaps if Google were to create a pure Google experience slate or a Nexus tablet at a compelling price, sales will rise, but that’s only going to carry Android tablets so far. To truly compete, Google needs to convince devs to build iOS and Android apps at the same time; or even better: think Android first when it comes to tablets.

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After the release of the first iPad, Steve Jobs downplayed the idea of a smaller iPad, suggesting that the icons and touch controls would be too small for the device. His words, from an Apple investor call: “It’s meaningless unless your tablet also includes sandpaper, so that the user can sand down their fingers to around one-quarter of their present size.” Jobs was correct about many things in the mobile space, but this isn’t one of them.

I suggest that because I’ve used a 7-inch tablet on a daily basis for the past 14 months. Obviously, it’s not an iPad, but even a small Android tablet proves that a tablet of this size can be used. It works for Android and it will work for a smaller iPad too.

Why? Because an iPad of 7 or 7.75 inches with the same resolution as today’s iPad — 1024 x 768 — won’t shrink the icons or controls all that much. They’ll surely be at least as large as the icons on an iPhone or iPod touch, so if you can use iOS on those devices, it should work for a smaller iPad too. That resolution makes sense for another reason: developers won’t have to change a thing for their applications.

I recently suggested we’d see a smaller iPad for a number of reasons. Smaller devices are more portable, making them easier to carry and use in a wider range of locations. Given the growing number of Kindle Fire and Nook Tablets I’m seeing, clearly there’s a market for smaller slates. Obviously the $199 to $249 price tag of those devices adds to the appeal, but Apple could compete with a smaller iPad that starts at $299 thanks to its diverse ecosystem.

With an expected iPad 3 announcement early next month, I don’t foresee a smaller iPad debut soon. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see such a device in the fall, a time when Apple has typically refreshed its iPod lineup. I’ve even suggested the unpopular opinion that an iPad mini will actually take the place of an iPod touch at some point. Regardless of what happens to the iPod touch, it’s time for the iPad mini.

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Engadget  was tipped by a reader who Googled the Toshiba Thrive’s part number; the search results pointed to ACOS, which offers limited information and says to “call for stock.” No technical specifications are offered by the reseller; however, Toshiba has already shared what hardware to expect in the smaller Thrive tablet:

• 1 GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor
• Options for 16 or 32 GB of internal storage
• Google Android Honeycomb, version 3.2
• 1280 x 720 resolution display
• Dimensions of 7.44″ x 5.04″ x 0.48″
• Front- and rear-facing cameras

My expectation is that Toshiba’s officially recommended price for the smaller Thrive tablet is far lower than what ACOS is selling it for. Logic dictates it has to be: The 10-inch Toshiba Thrive starts at $379 for an 8 GB model. Based on that, I could see Toshiba offer the 7-inch Thrive for $299 or so. Aside from competing against its big brother, the 7-inch Thrive joins several others in the small-slate market.

The HTC Flyer, a comparable Wi-Fi tablet being readied ready for the Honeycomb software update, costs $399, as does Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus. These no-contract prices are all comparable, but show a significant premium to watered-down tablets build on Android.

Specifically, I’m thinking about the $199 Amazon Kindle Fire and $249 Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet. Heck, you could include last year’s Nook Color at $199 too. All three of these products are essentially media tablets that excel at viewing digital content: movies, TV shows, e-books, magazines and even the web. But all three also run a limited subset of popular Android apps and can even be tweaked to run as native Android tablets.

How the similar Thrive — not to mention the Galaxy Tab and Flyer — will justify more than double of a price tag is an open question at this point. Over the long haul, my expectation is that none of these will, meaning they’ll either sell very few units going forward, slowly die off, or see some price reductions in the coming months.

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We’re still getting to know this new Android-based 7-inch tablet, but we have cracked it open and taken it for a spin. Here’s our first look at the device, right out of the box.

Be sure to check back here for Kevin Tofel’s ideas on the device once he has a chance to take an in-depth look at it. For more on the Kindle Fire now, see what the web is saying about it and how Kevin weighed his options between the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet and the Kindle Fire.

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Aside from the smaller, 7-inch display at 1024×600 resolution, the guts of the A100 will sound familiar. The tablet runs on Nvidia’s 1 GHz Tegra 2 processor, has a 5-megapixel rear camera with flash for stills or 720p video capture, a 2-megapixel camera for video chat, and supports 802.11 a/b/g/n flavors of Wi-Fi. For $330, Acer’s includes 8 GB of storage capacity, but another $20 buys a model with 16 GB. A microSD card slot supports additional expansion up to 32 GB of storage.

I’ve been using a 7-inch Android tablet since December of last year when I bought a Samsung Galaxy Tab, and I like the smaller form factor that Acer is using for the A100. My Honeycomb experiences on larger devices has been mediocre at best, partly because relatively few software titles are optimized for the larger displays. With Android 3.2, however, Google added a “compatibility zoom” mode, similar to Apple’s “pixel doubling” feature on the iPad. This allows phone apps to scale better on Honeycomb tablets.

That could make all the difference for small tablets like the A100. I’m waiting for a review unit, but Sascha Segan at PC Mag took the A100 for a spin and says the zoom mode is:

[K]ind of wonderful on a 7-inch device, which is just small enough that the scaling still looks usable. I tried the Conan O’Brien Team Coco app, which looks awful on most tablets. In Standard mode, it’s an ugly list with too much empty orange space on the right side of the screen. In Zoomed mode, it’s tight and good-looking.

The A100 could be better positioned to offer a richer third-party app experience than the more expensive 10-inch Honeycomb tablets, and it has a compelling price as well. Acer is known more for its budget-conscious hardware than for its superior device quality, something I found out when I reviewed the capable A500 Android tablet. But there could definitely be a market for a contract-free $330 slate.

The only major downside I see so far, at least until I get my own time with the tablet, is the small battery. Acer expects five hours of web browsing, but even less time when watching video. For a device that’s meant to be more portable, it really needs to run all day long on a single charge.

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Huawei isn’t offering many details on what Android 3.2 brings to the small screen, only suggesting that it will allow Honeycomb to work well on the 7-inch display. Engadget reports the MediaPad will have a pixel density of 217 pixels per inch (PPI), and although Huawei’s official specifications page don’t mention the screen resolution, I used an online PPI calculator to try and reverse engineer that particular stat. A 7-inch screen with 215.63 PPI — roughly that of the reported pixel density — works out to 1280 x 800 resolution, or exactly what the larger Honeycomb tablets currently offer.

Update: According to one of my Twitter followers, dcseifert, the official Huawei MediaTab page shows displays specifications of SWVGA resolution, which is 1024×600.

Additional official specs from Huawei:

• Qualcomm 1.2 GHz dual-core processor
• 7-inch IPS capacitive touchscreen
• Integrated HSPA (14.4 Mbps), 802.11n Wi-Fi
• 1080p playback and HDMI output
• 5 megapixel rear camera with auto-focus, HD video recording, 1.3 megapixel front camera
• Adobe Flash Player 10.3
• 10.5 millimeters thick and weight of 0.86 pounds
• Access to Huawei’s Hi-Space cloud solution

The MediaTab surely looks like an upsized iPhone 4, complete with a metal bezel. Perhaps this look will add Huawei to the list of companies that Apple sues; the company is currently in a heated legal battle with Samsung over the look and feel of many Samsung handsets. From a feature standpoint, the device also resembles current 7-inch tablet,s but improves with the dual-core processor and, of course, Android 3.2. Currently available 7-inch slates are running the smartphone version of Android 2.2 or 2.3.

The odd thing is that unless Android 3.2 is the version called Ice Cream Sandwich, which I doubt, I can’t see why this slate needs it. If the screen resolution is indeed 1280 x 800, Honeycomb should already run just fine, although the icons and user interface elements may be a little small on the 7-inch screen. Regardless, I’m excited by the prospect of another 7-inch slate to choose from, as I find this form factor highly portable and more generally useful than larger tablets.

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