Optimistically, a mobile device fresh start.
November 10, 2014 5:43 PM   Subscribe

My iPad 2 recently bit the dust. Before then, I had been using the iPad for entertainment + school, as well as a droid smartphone for typical smartphone things. My droid is also on its last legs, and I'm considering changing my technology situation to an iPad Mini with mobile data + a dumb phone (just talk and text). Questions ensue.

Most broadly -- have you or anyone you know done this? I've read some accounts via Google search, but I'm interested in your experiences.

Maybe most critically -- is there any way to see and respond to SMS messages that I receive to my cellphone number on my iPad? (ie, if someone sends me an SMS text to my phone number, is there a way to have it sent to my iPad as well as or instead of to my dumb phone?)

From what I can tell, the only difference between iPad Mini 2 and iPad Mini 3 is the fingerprint sensor and $100. What gives??

What will I be losing by not having my apps on the same device as my calls/texts?

Does an iPad Mini do what my big iPad and tiny smartphone do just as well? (I mainly use my phone for texting, photos, calendar, Facebook, maps, web browsing, and email. I use my iPad for all of those things plus Netflix, note-taking, and viewing documents.)

I haven't used a dumb phone in.... 8 years. Will I find the call quality really problematic? Will I still be able to send and receive picture messages and group messages (MMS)?
posted by i_am_a_fiesta to Technology (11 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Best answer: I think you're right about the differences between the iPad mini 2 and 3. I've got a mini 2, and you can do anything on it you can do on its larger and smaller siblings. Even the mini is substantially larger than biggest phablets, though, so if you're used to texting/facebooking/ routefinding on the move using the iPad for this might be a pain.

Personally, I'd investigate getting a cheap Droid phone with a plan that allows for tethering, and getting a cheaper iPad with wi-fi only. That way, if you do need smartphone features on the go, you've still got that option.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:14 PM on November 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't remember the name or Url but I came across a free web service a while ago that lets you receive and respond to text messages via a web interface, on your main computer. I don't see why you couldn't use it on an iPad instead of a desktop. I don't remember exactly how it worked, though. Sorry if that isn't much to go on, but with a bit of googling maybe you can find it or something like it now you know it exists.
posted by lollusc at 6:39 PM on November 10, 2014


To be clear, the interface let you get the text messages that were sent to your phone via your regular number, not some sort of extra web-based service.
posted by lollusc at 6:40 PM on November 10, 2014


Best answer: I'm going to make a possibly weird suggestion here, and ask if you've considered just getting a bigass phone and not having two devices. I recently contemplated doing what you're thinking of, and just keeping my old beat up meh battery life phone and getting a new small tablet alongside it and realized i'd rather just go the one device route. There's affordable good stuff in this space, like a oneplus one, used note 3, lg g3, used refurb xperia z ultra/z3/etc, all of those are in the ~$350ish range used besides the newest Z3.

That, of course, might not be for you and you may have already looked at those and not been interested. They really only work if you can get used to using them with two hands more like a small tablet that also makes calls, rather than regularly one handed as a phone... unless you have giant hands.


If you want an ipad mini, get an apple refurb. They're an AMAZING deal since you get the full 1 year warranty, support, etc. The non cell data versions are a slightly better deal, but then again that also applies to the new ones... And yes, the mini 3 is a fucking terrible deal. It's best to look at it more that the non-fingerprint-scanner mini got an awesome price drop, rather than that the new one is anything to seriously consider. It's a joke.
Maybe most critically -- is there any way to see and respond to SMS messages that I receive to my cellphone number on my iPad? (ie, if someone sends me an SMS text to my phone number, is there a way to have it sent to my iPad as well as or instead of to my dumb phone?)
I'm pretty sure google voice can do this. You have to pay the fee to port your number in to them, but then you can see stuff sent to that number from any device
I haven't used a dumb phone in.... 8 years. Will I find the call quality really problematic?
They're all either terrible, terrible and overpriced, or overpriced and meh now. My dad flat out refuses to ever own anything but a simple flip phone, and i've basically just been finding him older phones from when they actually cared about building a quality flip/dumb phone, replacing the batteries, and sending them on to him. There's 3 types of dumbphones now.

1. $7 ones made out of paper thing plastic and the crappiest everything to sell at 7-11
2. slightly better ones than above that still suck that verizon/at&t/etc keep selling to sucker grandpas out of $89
3. silly keyboard phones and such, some of which are sort of built ok, but not really. they also usually cost like $89-120 for something that's just a stupid dumbphone.

I've been happy with stuff like the older casio g'zone phones that were really made well out of quality materials. Samsung also used to make decent flip phones too that were heavily built, as did nokia. Batteries can be as little as $3. If you really really want a flip phone, just know that it's fallen in to this awkward cassette player space where no one makes a quality anything anymore.
Will I still be able to send and receive picture messages and group messages (MMS)? What will I be losing by not having my apps on the same device as my calls/texts?
This is a solid question, and the answer is that... it's annoying. I don't remember if google voice can handle MMS yet, and i think it maybe still can't? but you'll be stuck looking at photos on your flipphones tiny screen, and sending super terrible quality photos from it. You can of course use the ipads(actually pretty decent) camera and google hangouts/facebook messenger/etc but yea, this is a consideration. Especially since basically every half-phone-half-tablet device i suggested above has a way nicer camera than the ipad, especially the sony. And tying in to that, you won't be able to save a silly image from the internet and MMS it. Everything else though, if you were using online messenger services anyways, you can still do. I'd argue most apps improve in their ipad version, and all the iphone apps can still run. There pretty much isn't an app on your droid that doesn't have an equivalent or nicer version on iOS as well(although some may require a jailbreak, but that's always an option)


You could also, you know, do what i did in this situation if you like your ipad... and just buy an iphone 6 plus. I'm not going to deny that they're expensive as hell and sort of hard to justify when stuff like the oneplus one exists, though.
posted by emptythought at 6:47 PM on November 10, 2014


What about getting a big smartphone and ditching the tablet?
posted by J. Wilson at 7:41 PM on November 10, 2014


3rding phablet. I never use my ipad anymore because I love my Note so much. And is so nice to just have one device that does it all.
posted by rabbitrabbit at 7:54 PM on November 10, 2014


Response by poster: I'm already concerned the iPad Mini will be too small for some of the things I used my iPad 2 for (namely, watching movies and taking notes using Noteability). I'm a medical student, and I'm also planning to use the tablet when I'm doing rounds in the hospital next year -- from what I've heard, the culture permits tablets for reference, but frowns upon phones.
posted by i_am_a_fiesta at 8:11 PM on November 10, 2014


FWIW, I am pretty much the last person I know to still not have a smartphone (even my mother has an iPhone). I use a Palm Pixi, which I got from Amazon for around $40 and only use for occasional texting/phone calls; I also have an iPad Air. I like the Pixi a lot: it has a great texting interface and a physical Qwerty keyboard, and the battery life is great because I never use the web function. It also only costs me $5ish/month because I do most of my texting on my iPad (most of my friends have iDevices).

What I don't like is that because I use my phone so rarely, I keep leaving it at home and not having it charged when I need it. I also haven't figured out how to get my texts forwarded, so occasionally I'll miss something. And I can't do group texting (and I can only receive group texts with data on) so I sometimes miss event invites.

Overall, I like my setup a lot, but I'm definitely going to upgrade to a smartphone next year.
posted by littlegreen at 8:21 PM on November 10, 2014


I found the mini very hard on mt eyes, fyi.
posted by tel3path at 11:03 PM on November 10, 2014


Your plan would only work if you're willing to carry the iPad Mini with you 100% of the time (when you would normally have a smartphone), otherwise it's going to be a big step backwards. Getting texts on one device (the phone) and iMessages on the other device (iPad) would be very annoying. Dumbphones are also strangely difficult to use since they don't sync with my existing address book or Facebook.

I had a slightly smaller tablet (Nexus 7) and although it fit in a jacket pocket, it was still far too big to carry with me all the time. It would be pretty annoying in the summer to carry it in my hands or in a separate bag, one more separate thing to remember and lose (unlike a phone which can be slipped into a pocket easily).

Cheap Android phones are getting very, very good too. The additional cost of getting an iPad with mobile data ($130) is basically the cost of a cheap but usable Android phone (Moto E); or just slightly less than a pretty good Android phone like a Moto G, or last year's flagship.
posted by meowzilla at 2:05 AM on November 11, 2014


Best answer: I don't think it is reasonable to use an iPad mini for anything but casual note taking without some sort of external keyboard. One might say the same of the full-sized iPad, but I've found that I can actually enter text pretty quickly in landscape mode. The iPad Air and Air 2 are also lighter/thinner than your old iPad, which should make a difference.

Regarding a dumbphone, I wouldn't do it. It is not clear why you are considering a dumbphone, but I'll suggest that if money is part of the concern, you'll get more utility out of a smartphone with a tethering plan + a WiFi only iPad. That will save you over $100 on the iPad, which will offset some of the cost of a smartphone.

I have a iPad Retina + LTE, which replaced an original iPad + 3G. I loved having the ready internet access on both devices. When the new iPhones were released though, I finally admitted that holding on to my unlimited dataplan on my iPhone was wasting money. I switched to a newer plan with free tethering and dropped my iPad data plan. Its a little annoying that I have to go the the personal hotspot settings on my phone to allow the iPad to connect via the phones data connection, but it isn't that big a deal. Plus, I'm pretty sure that with a newer iPad and iPhone, they will automatically use bluetooth to initiate a tethering connection.

Oh, another thing, I still have some bad feelings about the size of the iPhone 6 (non-plus) when I'm not using it, but I definitely appreciate the larger screen when I am using it. So, I'm using my phone more and my iPad less than I used to.
posted by Good Brain at 6:14 PM on November 12, 2014


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