Does anyone need a tablet

Against Smaller and harder to use than a laptop if you need to type long pieces of text. The built in keyboard on tablets is OK but can be cumbersome if you need to type a lot. But you can always buy a Bluetooth keyboard to combat this. Quite big to carry around with you on the move compared to a smartphone.

Unless you have really big pockets you would need a bag to carry a tablet around with you. Very few unique features any more. It used to be the case that they were a lot smaller and easier to use than a laptop and bigger and easier to use than smartphones. But now you can get a hybrid laptop or Chromebook which is similar in size and can do a lot more, as well as having a keyboard. There are very few apps specific for tablets, most apps are just a scaled up version of the smartphone app and are a bit clumsy to use.

Smartphones are getting bigger and more powerful with bigger batteries making it entirely plausible to use them to stream videos. Recent posts. Increase of scam messages during the pandemic 11 August We just need the data part of what mobile carriers offer. During the pandemic, a huge number of both in-person meetings and business phone calls were replaced by Zoom and other videoconferencing solutions.

And throughout this crisis, the rise of unified communication tools continued and possibility accelerated. Unified communications — where audio and video calling, call management, instant messaging, threaded messaging, collaboration tools, and mobile communications are integrated into a single solution — replaces the last vestiges of analog communication with digital communication and renders the device type irrelevant.

But wait, you might say. I do phone calls and text messages all the time! In fact, you can do without a phone without anyone else even knowing or caring. Virtual phone numbers are available from 5G and VoIP providers.

Google Voice and Skype are mainstream apps you may already be using, and these will give you a phone number you can share and be reached at. To illustrate my point, consider this basic thought experiment: Which would be more of a disadvantage in business — to never have access to the phone system or to never have access to Zoom? The answer is clear: Not having access to Zoom would be a much bigger disadvantage these days. While you could take and make phone calls on VoIP and other services, not having Zoom means you would have to turn down meetings.

In other words, we have an entire technology, system, and network devoted to functionality that is duplicated by apps. And while the best audio communication apps on any device sound better than mobile calls over the phone networks, Zoom works much better on a tablet than a phone, simply because on the tablet the front camera is the same but the screen is bigger. The iPad Mini 6 is the best example yet of a small tablet that can replace a phone — because the world has moved on from relying on phone networks, and the iPad Mini 6 is the best small tablet on the market.

It arrives next week. What happened with the landline phone is happening with the mobile phone network: How people communicate for business is evolving away from the mobile phone network. In addition to the quality of the screen and elegance of the user interface, my work benefits enormously from the flexibility of usage models.

But I also seamlessly switch to voice and touch and pen or Pencil, if you will. I can use it for a lean-back experience for doing research, and with the Pencil for taking notes and sketching ideas. I carry my iPad almost everywhere I go, and can quickly do work anywhere. I use cloud services in multiple browsers, and both iPhone and iPad apps. The necessity to have an iPhone in order to use an Apple Watch is just an artificial limitation created by Apple, presumably to sell more iPhones.

So before you put down hard-earned cash for a new tablet, ask yourself if you really need it. Here are a few reasons you might want to skip it for something else.

Tablets usually come in 7-inch, 8-inch, or inch screen sizes. But recently, smartphones have also been getting bigger. From fantastic Android phablets to the Plus series of iPhones, when your smartphone has a 5.

Since your phone is with you all the time, you end up using it a lot more than a tablet too. More and more, you get comfortable using it. Your muscle memory builds up, you get used to how apps work, you know the speed at which it will perform certain tasks -- all of this comes together to make the phone "faster" for you than a tablet. Plus, tablets don't support all the same apps that phones do. For example, if you use WhatsApp, you can't use it simultaneously on your tablet and mobile, even with WhatsApp Web mirroring the messages.

A faster device, a big screen, and one-handed operation? If you thought the tablet can be a "bigger and better phone", you're wrong. Tablets are starting to lose in the one area where they used to dominate phones. The big change in the world of laptops recently is their shrinking in size and weight. Manufacturers are trending towards notebooks with to inch screens that focus on being lightweight. For a few years, it made more sense to carry a tablet with you when you're moving around because a laptop was too big, bulky, and weighed down your bag.

But modern, lightweight, small-size laptops make it easy to carry them no matter where you go. Let's face it, when you're on the go, you will always carry your smartphone with you, so the second device is the one you have to decide.

Do you want a tablet, which has the same apps and restrictions as your smartphone, or do you want a laptop, which has a keyboard and a full-fledged desktop operating system? Even now, tablets have longer battery life than laptops or smartphones, but the question isn't, "Which of these lasts the longest? The MacBook Air, which is the best value-for-money laptop right now, lasts for about 10 hours of work on a single charge.

That's plenty for most users, who will be able to get to a charger before that gets close to running out. As for smartphones, these days they're packing upwards of 3, mAh batteries, and with technologies like Quick Charging , it makes your battery problems even less of a worry. So yes, while tablets do last longer, ask yourself if you are likely to actually need that kind of battery life when you can find a place to charge your notebook or phone almost anywhere.

When's the last time you were more than 10 hours away from an outlet?