Even the iPad Air 2 will get iPadOS 15
Every year, Apple more or less ensures to indirectly highlight how grim the situation is on the Android tablet side of things.
Last week, during WWDC 2021, Apple announced iPadOS 15, its latest iOS version honed for large displays. And while it may not be as big of a change as many were expecting thanks to the M1-powered iPad Pro series, it still highlights why the iPad remains the best tablet around, both for iOS and Android users.
Take a quick glance at the number of iPads getting the latest iPadOS 15 update and you cannot help but be impressed by the fact that even the iPad Air 2 from 2014 will be getting it. The more I think about it as an Android user, the crazier it gets. You see, the most sought after Android tab of 2014 was the original Samsung Galaxy Tab S, and it’s stuck on Android 6 Marshmallow!
You might argue that Samsung is making bold promises of 3 major Android updates for Galaxy Tab S6 onwards, but even that is less than half of the updates which Apple is already providing to its iPads.
Then, many people argue that foldables are about to replace tablets, but I beg to differ. At this point, not only are foldables expensive and quite fragile, but they also cannot quite match the fantastic battery life of iPads because they have to power 2 displays from a smartphone-sized battery pack.
The thing is that you don’t buy a new tablet every year or two like a smartphone. A tablet is a supplementary device that is much less abused than a smartphone, and therefore, must stay secure and relevant for an extended period of time. This is where Apple has made the iPad pretty much unbeatable.
And this is just one part of the comparison between the iPad and Android tabs. The latter has been plagued by poor app availability and optimisation issues since time immemorial, so much so that Google itself seems to have kind of given up on Android tablets. They’ve tried merging ChromeOS and Android tablets but the execution has been pretty poor.
For someone like me who primarily uses Android and Windows, iPadOS has its own set of issues. I’ve been using an iPad Pro 9.7 for the past 4 years at this point, and transferring data to/from my phone or PC always poses a challenge – it is nowhere as seamless as it should be in 2021.
So, every year, I hope that Google will wake from its slumber and inject some much-needed life into Android tablets so that I can trade my iPad for one. But as it turns out, not only Google disappoints every year, but Apple also does its best to ensure that the iPad remains the undisputed king of this category!
Here’s a quick Youtube Shorts video on this topic:
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