I have to admit, I am in love with this incredible piece of technology. Steve Jobs wasn’t lying when he said the iPad is magical; it truly is in my eyes.

The build quality of the iPad is solid. I’ve had my iPad for about 48 hours and when I first pulled it out of the box, it was at 96% battery and, 8 hours later of heavy use, it was down to only 52%. That sure lives up to my standards for mobile device battery life. Also, the inclusion of a rotation lock on the iPad is very convenient, especially for reading  iBooks or browsing the web while lying on your side. This is something that’s been available to iPhone jailbreakers for a while, but was never made available in the iPhone OS until now.

The built-in speakers are very clear and have a good amount of bass for stock speakers. It’s not tinny at all; and a large departure from the iPhones speaker system. Apple has worked some acoustic wonders to pull this off on a device that is only half an inch thick.

The iPad’s operating system is version 3.2 (build 7B367) of the iPhone operating system; hence some critics calling the iPad a giant iPod touch.

As Phil Schiller, Vice President of World Marketing, said to Time Magazine, “There’s a negative way of saying that, and a positive. ‘Hey, it’s like a big iPhone….boo!’ or ‘Hey, it’s like a giant iPhone…yay!’ “ Oh course my vote is Yay!

Because the iPad is based on the iPhone OS, you’re able to use all your existing iPhone apps either letter-boxed, or pixel-doubled. This is a very handy feature if you don’t want to purchase iPad specific apps you already own for your iPhone or iTouch. Also a great feature if your favorite app is not yet available specifically for the iPad. Some of the other things I really like about the improved version of the iPhone OS are the new interface features and redesigned apps. I especially enjoy the drop down menus and nearly full sized virtual keyboards.

Although it would be nice for the iPad to have things like a video camera for video chatting or a USB port for direct camera transfer I still really like the iPad. If you want an iPad to be your only computer, you’re going to be disappointed. The iPad is designed to be a secondary device, a device between a smartphone and laptop. Overall, I am very I impressed with iPad and would recommend it to you as long as you have the understanding that this won’t fill the need of a primary computer.

Pros:

• •Large screen
• •Comfortable to type on
• •Broad app selection (150,000+)
• •Great build quality

Cons:

• •No Flash (but full HTML5 support)
• •No built-in physical keyboard (bluetooth keyboard support and Apple keyboard dock available though)

Did you pick up an iPad? What do you think about it?

Life On My Mobile occasionally invites a guest blogger. We would like to thank Branden Flasch for his first impressions of the iPad and taking time away from his beloved device to write this article. This post was written completely on the iPad using Pages. You can follow Branden on Twitter @Branden3112