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iPad mini How stupid to buy a mini 2 for a kid at this point?

ssledoux

ssledoux

macrumors 601
Original poster
Sep 16, 2006
4,416
4,245
Down south
My grandson's mini 4 battery went kaput. I'd love to pick up another mini 4, but Idk if I'm willing to do another eBay purchase (this was bought 6 months ago from eBay, and, of course, warranty up after 90 days - lesson learned), and Apple only has 128s for $300 right now in refurb - just don't need all that storage.

He's just a toddler, and the iPad is mainly for car rides, but I don't want to waste money buying something that will do NOTHING.
 
They only sell new devices, and a mini is $379 on there. They can definitely use that because they all home school, but typically not buying brand new from Apple anyway.
 
ssledoux said:
My grandson's mini 4 battery went kaput. I'd love to pick up another mini 4, but Idk if I'm willing to do another eBay purchase (this was bought 6 months ago from eBay, and, of course, warranty up after 90 days - lesson learned), and Apple only has 128s for $300 right now in refurb - just don't need all that storage.

He's just a toddler, and the iPad is mainly for car rides, but I don't want to waste money buying something that will do NOTHING.
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Why not replace the battery? I think that's $50-100 at Apple. Still better than buying a mini 2.
 
I am currently typing this on a iPad Mini 2.

I would advise to replace the battery of the Mini 4.

The Mini 2 was great under iOS 8, but iOS 9 killed the performance and battery life. It made safari completely unusable.

It behaved like the OS was not optimized for the Mini 2, it was out of RAM as soon as you turned on the device, and it had to page-swap everything.

I regretted updating to iOS 9 every time I attempted to use my Mini 2. I did every iOS 9 update, hoping that one would fix the issues, but none never did.

I updated to iOS 10 at launch, and this did fix the Mini 2, but it was never as fast, nor smooth as iOS 8.

Under iOS 10, Safari is still the worst performing app in the Mini 2, it acts like it is page-swapping a lot, but not nearly as bad as iOS 9.

I could update to a newer iOS, but I don't want to take the chance that it might kill my Mini 2 again.

I would just stick with the Mini 4 and get a new battery for it.
 
vertical smile said:
The Mini 2 was great under iOS 8, but iOS 9 killed the performance and battery life. It made safari completely unusable.
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Interesting. I don't have the mini 2 but do have the original Air with A7+1GB. Didn't notice a performance difference between iOS 8 and 9 on the Air. I actually found Safari to be faster on iOS 9 and overall better behaved. Hated the endless reload loop crash I often got on iOS 8.
 
rui no onna said:
Interesting. I don't have the mini 2 but do have the original Air with A7+1GB. Didn't notice a performance difference between iOS 8 and 9 on the Air. I actually found Safari to be faster on iOS 9 and overall better behaved. Hated the endless reload loop crash I often got on iOS 8.
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One thing about Apple that has changed over the last 6 years is that the user experience can vary greatly, even with similar devices. Some people love certain iOS versions, while others say that they had a horrible experience with the same version.

Just from the forum posts, it seems like people have more issues with the odd number iOS versions, iOS 9, 11, and 13. But again, some people love those versions.

I know I am not the only one to have issues with iOS 9. I seen many forum posts with complaints about it. It might be anecdotal, but when people post where they are looking for an older iOS device to buy with an old OS on it, it is usually iOS 6 or 8. I don't think I have ever seen anyone looking for iOS 9.


About the HW comparison, while the Air and Mini 2 had the same amount of RAM and both had a A7, it would be probably more accurate to compare the HW and user experience of a Mini 2 to a iPhone 5s, with the exception of battery life.

The original Air had a better HW design which enabled it to run at a higher clock speed than the Mini 2 and iPhone 5s. Although, I would think that there shouldn't be too much of the difference between all three devices.
 
vertical smile said:
One thing about Apple that has changed over the last 6 years is that the user experience can vary greatly, even with similar devices. Some people love certain iOS versions, while others say that they had a horrible experience with the same version.

Just from the forum posts, it seems like people have more issues with the odd number iOS versions, iOS 9, 11, and 13. But again, some people love those versions.

I know I am not the only one to have issues with iOS 9. I seen many forum posts with complaints about it. It might be anecdotal, but when people post where they are looking for an older iOS device to buy with an old OS on it, it is usually iOS 6 or 8. I don't think I have ever seen anyone looking for iOS 9.


About the HW comparison, while the Air and Mini 2 had the same amount of RAM and both had a A7, it would be probably more accurate to compare the HW and user experience of a Mini 2 to a iPhone 5s, with the exception of battery life.

The original Air had a better HW design which enabled it to run at a higher clock speed than the Mini 2 and iPhone 5s. Although, I would think that there shouldn't be too much of the difference between all three devices.
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I'm with you on that! Before my X I had a iPhone 4S for many years as I hated the 6, 6S, 7 design so I wasn't buying! I loved iOS 7 but made the terrible mistake of going to iOS 8 and that absolutely killed it along with iOS 9. 5 seconds to load a basic app like music or open message etc.
Out of interest in August 2016 I bought my Fiancé a rose gold SE. I update the OS every year and damn, that A9 is well suited to it - never ever any slow downs going from iOS 9 to 10 to 11 to 12 and now to 13. Remarkable and she gets 2 or 3 days battery life from it :)
 
BODYBUILDERPAUL said:
I hated the 6, 6S, 7 design
Click to expand...

I do too, I really dislike the round edges.

I remember the day of the iPhone 6 event, I was pretty busy that day and did not have a chance to check out the new iPhone until a few hours after the event was over.

I looked on MR and was scrolling through the event updates and saw the iPhone 6 for the first time. I thought it was an Android phone, and remember thinking that it was weird that they would show an Android phone during an iPhone event, thinking maybe they were comparing OS adoption rates or market share.

Then I realized I was looking at the new iPhone.
 
I just got an air 3 from a mini 2. I had all but stopped using the mini 2 because under modern iOS it is a complete dog. It is exceedingly slow to the point that it becomes frustrating. That said, my 6 year old son doesn’t seem to care, and he’s pretty much the only one who uses it any more.
 
I’m starting to find my kids iPad mini 3s are beginning to slowly out. Gonna need to upgrade them soon. There’s no way a mini 2 would work. Update the battery for $99 I say
 
parker5011 said:
I’m starting to find my kids iPad mini 3s are beginning to slowly out. Gonna need to upgrade them soon. There’s no way a mini 2 would work. Update the battery for $99 I say
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IIRC, there wasn't any HW differences between the iPad Mini 2 and Mini 3, with the exception of Touch ID.

Back when I purchased my Mini 2, I was considering the Mini 3, but it was $100 more (I think). It had the same exact specs, and I didn't think just having Touch ID was going to be worth an extra $100 on a device that I would keep in my home most of the time.

So I went with the Mini 2.
 
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ssledoux said:
My grandson's mini 4 battery went kaput. I'd love to pick up another mini 4, but Idk if I'm willing to do another eBay purchase (this was bought 6 months ago from eBay, and, of course, warranty up after 90 days - lesson learned), and Apple only has 128s for $300 right now in refurb - just don't need all that storage.

He's just a toddler, and the iPad is mainly for car rides, but I don't want to waste money buying something that will do NOTHING.
Click to expand...
Getting the battery on the Mini 4 replaced by Apple is, by far, the best option.
 
My 4 year old daughter loves her Mini 2. The only reason I’d upgrade it would be if it died completely or when I decide to upgrade to the Pro 11” and I pass down my Pro 9.7 to my wife and she then passes on her Air 2.

She has everything she needs on it for the time being.
 
My kids still have access to my old mini 2 from time to time (when batteries are out on their ipod touches). iOS 12.whatever the latest one is - can't do iOS 13. Most of the time, it is fine. Doesn't appear to be unable to keep up with kids games. However... when it is slow, MAN it is slow and frustrating. Waiting for popups for family sharing etc. can take ages, it feels at least 2-3x as long as on more modern devices. Today took me around 5 minutes to begin the download of two apps, much of that was waiting ages for the app store pop up to appear, and even longer waiting for it to disappear again.

I'd do as others have suggested and replace the battery of the mini 4. The ipad mini 2 is at this point even more likely to come with a useless battery.
 
ssledoux said:
My grandson's mini 4 battery went kaput. I'd love to pick up another mini 4, but Idk if I'm willing to do another eBay purchase (this was bought 6 months ago from eBay, and, of course, warranty up after 90 days - lesson learned), and Apple only has 128s for $300 right now in refurb - just don't need all that storage.

He's just a toddler, and the iPad is mainly for car rides, but I don't want to waste money buying something that will do NOTHING.
Click to expand...
Replace the battery. Don’t get an iPad mini 2.
 
ssledoux said:
Any reason to choose Apple over 3rd party? How long would it take for Apple to do it? How does that work? My local third party place costs the same.
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Afaik, Apple doesn't do battery replacements for iPads in store. I believe Apple will just exchange the iPad mini 4 with a refurb.
 
Depends on how much.. our 2 year old rotates my wife and mine iPad mini 2s and they run fine on iOS 12 after resetting from scratch. Primarily streaming YouTube. Would recommend if you can find for under $100.
 
funkiejack said:
Depends on how much.. our 2 year old rotates my wife and mine iPad mini 2s and they run fine on iOS 12 after resetting from scratch. Primarily streaming YouTube. Would recommend if you can find for under $100.
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But a brand new battery for the significantly better performing iPad mini 4 the OP already owns is only $99, so spending nearly that much on an iPad mini 2 which probably also has a less than perfect battery makes no sense at all.
 
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Its a shame they don’t re-authorize old iOS builds for old hardware. I‘ve ruined so many Apple products by “over-updating” the OS and then getting stuck on a version that feels crippled. And to make it worse, I usually end up selling a perfectly good device that I could have repurposed if it only had an OS that fit its generation.

(Yeah, I know its all about “Security” or whatever. But I’d rather have an offline iPad Mini 2 running iOS8 than have it be “modern” yet barely usable on IOS11)
 
chrfr said:
But a brand new battery for the significantly better performing iPad mini 4 the OP already owns is only $99, so spending nearly that much on an iPad mini 2 which probably also has a less than perfect battery makes no sense at all.
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Ah sorry got distracted by my kid 3 times while writing my reply and just put my experience of my iPad mini 2. In your case it doesn’t make sense, third party battery costs under $30 to replace yourself or have Apple do it. Or buy mini 2 cheap and sell mini 4 without battery to make a profit.
 
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