Apple’s New iPad 3: 10 Reasons Why Many Customers Are Not Happy

During a conference call March 19, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced that the new 'resolutionary' iPad has sold in record numbers and the same claim has been supported by Phillip Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide marketing, who posted a statement on the same day on company's website, claiming that the first weekend sales produced the strongest iPad launch yet.

While the latest iPad is undeniably one of the best devices produced by the Cupertino-based company, feedbacks about the same are not always positive.

Check out the list of issues that has been bothering the users:

1.   Heating issues

Heating is perhaps the biggest complaint against the tablet. According to Engadget, which has cited a report from a Dutch company Tweakers.com (translated), the latest device runs 10 degree warmer than its predecessor when its GLBenchmark runs for five minutes.

Tweakers.com measured that the new iPad reached 33.6 degrees centigrade (92.5 Fahrenheit), compared to 28.3 centigrade (82.9 Fahrenheit) with the iPad 2.

The claim has been supported by US-based consumer advocacy group Consumer Reports. A thread on Apple's support forum also shows increasing complaints about the new iPad getting hotter while playing GPU-intensive games.

One must remember that the latest Apple tablet comes with a Retina display, a dual-core processor with a quad-core graphics processor, and a 42.5-kWh battery with 3G/4G/Wi-Fi radio, which ends up with excess heat. And that heat cannot get dispersed due to the absence of fans.

Apple, however, maintained that the device operates well within thermal specifications. The company representative Trudy Muller told The Loop:

The new iPad delivers a stunning Retina display, A5X chip, support for 4G LTE plus 10 hours of battery life, all while operating well within our thermal specifications. If customers have any concerns they should contact AppleCare.

CNET  confirmed that even if the new device runs warmer than its predecessor, the temperature is still less than any average laptops such as Toshiba R835 or Dell Inspiron, and insists that the issue is not extreme enough to change the opinion of the device.

2.       Wi-Fi Issues

While Apple was trying to handle the complaints about the device's uncomfortable heating up under certain conditions, new waves of testimonials about the tablet's Wi-Fi connectivity problems are now making things more complicated for the company. Apple has confirmed that the original iPad also had the same issue.

While one user reported receiving good reception only within six feet of a router, another called it a disappointment.

9to5mac, however, reported that the Wi-Fi problem is software-related and rebooting the device or toggling Wi-Fi on and off can be temporary fixes. Apple Intelligence hopes for a future software update to fix the poor Wi-Fi issue.

3.       Sleep/Wake Problem with 3rd Party Cases

The new iPad has some wake/sleep issue with its smart cover.

The story posted by Mashable on smart covers, which attach to the iPad's built-in magnets, are supposed to turn the tablet on automatically when you flip them open, noted that dozens of iPad users reported in the Apple forum that the smart covers of iPad 2 and other third-party companies do not work properly on the new iPad.

A perplexing post found in the Apple discussion forum says when one user used Piel Frama case, it did not work. But when he changed that to ZooGue case, that one perfectly fitted the iPad.

Apple, however, has maintained that its existing Smart Covers will work fine with the new iPad. According to a report published on CNET, Belkin, the smart cover makers for iPad, released a statement saying that it had identified an issue with the auto awake feature on select folios for the iPad 3rd Generation due to a change Apple made in the iPad's sensor.

A new report also suggests that iPad's incompatibility with its smart covers is due to a change in the sensor used to sense magnets and not due to a change in placement.

4.       Third-party Docking Cables

Another report indicates that the third-party dock cables, which used to work perfectly with iPad 2, create problems with the iPad 3's new power demands. The post reports that the third-part cable charged iPad 3 up to 85 percent and stopped. More report on the same is yet to come to us.

5.       Takes Much Longer to Charge

The new iPad takes a very long time to charge and this problem is a more acute one than that of the heating, believe experts.

According to Dr. Raymond Soneira of DisplayMate Technologies, the new Apple iPad keeps charging for more than two hours after it says it has a full battery. Soneira, a leading display analyst, identified this problem as an inaccurate battery-charge display algorithm.

PCMag reports that while the previous iPad 2 took about four hours for complete juice up, the new iPad took about seven hours to show a 100% charge. Now Soneira suggests to add two hours to be sure.

6.       Heavier Apps

The enhanced apps are eating up the storage up to three times as of the iPad's storage space thanks to the HD screen. MacWorld's review notes that while Apple's own apps ran smoothly, several third-party apps had glitches, including unresponsive interfaces and stuttering scrolling.

In his review, MG Siegler mentioned that the enhanced apps and high-definition movies will take up precious iPad storage space. On the iPad I'm testing out, I have three pages of apps, a few hundred photos, one HD movie, and one music album. It's really not that much stuff, but it takes up over 20 GB of storage. The apps alone are over 10 GB of that, he says. 

According to a great number of reviewers, while the enhanced apps and HD movies look stunning on the iPad's Retina display, the standard goes down for the non-HD content. Because of their high processing-power requirements, games are the quickest way to eat up the battery and generate more heat. 

7.       More Fragile

According to USA based warranty provider 'SquareTrade,' the latest Apple tablet is more fragile than the iPad 2 and shatters when dropped from shoulder height. No more reports are found to support this claim.

8.       A Heavier and Thicker Device

The third-generation iPad is heavier than its predecessor. The Wi-Fi-only version of the new iPad weighs 1.44 pounds and 1.46 pounds for the 4G version, which is a slight but noticeable increase compared to iPad 2.

The reason for the increased girth of the new iPad may be to accommodate the new iPad's bigger battery, its 4G radio (on those models), and the Retina display. But the weight is on the higher side when compared to its competitors, including the iPad 2, which weighs 1.33 pounds for the non-3G version and 1.35 pounds for the 3G version and the lightest of the 10-inch-class Androids, such as the 1.12-pound Toshiba Excite 10 LE (this one is also the slimmest tablet available) and 1.29-pound Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime. However, experts believe its best-in-class display will trump any apprehension over the weight and thickness issue.

9.       Quick Depletion of 4G

It is a widely accepted fact that devices with LTE connectivity get burnt up through data quicker than the 3G device data burn. But the present scenario with the new iPad is more complicated as users are reporting about how quickly they are reaching their 2GB monthly cap in a matter of hours of streaming video.

10.   FaceTime Does Not Work with LTE

FaceTime works only on the Wi-Fi and not over 4G.

[A]ttempting to initiate a FaceTime call over LTE fails out with a message exhorting you to connect to a Wi-Fi network, Verge's Dieter Bohn states.

TechCrunch's MG Siegler also reported the same issue despite the fact that the LTE networks are so much faster (faster than my WiFi even), Apple says that FaceTime will still be WiFi-only for now.

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