Apple iPad 2

I bought the original iPad 2 on the day it was released (which was just after the Fukushima earthquake in 2011). Still have it. Still use it occasionally to play retro iOS games. Still runs great on its original battery and iOS 6. Still connects to my WiFi and Bluetooth devices! (Although the Safari is so ancient it’s pretty useless for the modern web) But I always swore I would never buy another iPad until Apple added one key feature: support for multiple user profiles. Can’t understand why they’ve never done this. Even Apple TV has user profiles now. Perhaps they think they will sell less iPads if family members can share them.

My mom still uses my iPad 2. 11 years. It must have stopped receiving updates a couple of years ago. But they won’t upgrade. The only reason they upgraded their phones was that their storage ran out and they wanted more pictures of their grandkids.

We had an iPad 2 onboard our boat for almost 2 years. I'd get a waterproof case like a Lifeproof. Sea spray can be especially harsh on electronics. It was one of the best purchases we made. We use Navionics, not only were the charts cheaper for the iPad than our chartplotter. We could also connect to the boats AIS, charging equipment, navigation, and satellite phone. Easily saved us hundreds of dollars on charts. Each component had an optional screen addition (ie. small screen for the AIS) that easily was the cost of an iPad. For our next boat we're going to drop chartplotters completely and do all our navigation and planning directly on the iPad. Just one 10" chartplotter could buy 4-5 10" iPads.

I agree. My iPad 2 could last a month or more in standby. My iPad 8 maybe one to two weeks.

Perhaps with some tablets, but the iPad 2 and first gen shipped with an adapter (20W?) that didn’t allow that to happen, in my experience.

To be fair, your iPad 3 is an iPad 2 with a retina screen; I remember buying an iPad 3 and it was glacially slow even at launch on the original iOS. I would imagine the best use of this device post eReader is a photo stand given the gorgeous screen... or something else that wouldn't need any interaction (it will be too slow to want to have touch interactions with). I use an iPad 2 as a IPcam monitor. The battery doesn't last long, but I'm able to grab it off the charger and take it around the house if I'm watching something going on. It doesn't support my new AI smart cams, but it still functions.

Yeah all the fit and finish stuff was what I meant by build quality. Besides the stuff you mentioned, the back of the Touchpad was made of plastic and I was able to flex it by pushing on it, so it definitely didn't feel as premium as the iPad 2. Agreed that WebOS was fantastic from a software standpoint, the UI was years ahead of where iOS/Android were back then. Sadly, developer support dried up after a few years so my Touchpad spent the rest of its life flashed to Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

Most batteries are made in China (or even cheaper places) now, so they simply do not last. I have iPad 2s that still last for MONTHs without charging. Nowdays iPhone batteries start heavy degradation about 2 years in. That 20-25% loss means all day battery to needing to charge at least once before going to bed for many. Source: I replace more batteries now than screens.

Nice, the excellent open source android app RadioDroid also uses radio browser. https://github.com/segler-alex/RadioDroid In my experience I haven't found it to be lacking any stations. But the nice thing is I think anyone can just submit missing stations. You should see if they will list your app on their page for visibility: https://www.radio-browser.info/users I have an old iPad 2 that is perfectly functioning. However my old apple ID I have on it, I known the password but have no way to unlock the account as I've forgotten the password. There's nothing Apple can do for me, so it may just become ewaste. Perhaps something like this would be a good use. Either that or maybe I can jailbreak it and give it a breath of new life. Though I'm not too familiar with IOS, my experience is more with android. So sad to see a perfectly good piece of hardware being obsolete due to software.

This is tangentially related, I guess, but older iPads essentially rendered useless. I have an iPad 2 that could absolutely be used for zoom calls, but the zoom software will not install because apple forces them to require a newer iPad. Whereas I have an old MacBook from 2013 that still works pretty good - AND I could put Linux on it if I wanted to.. Hrm. Can I put Linux on an iPad?

I got an iPad 2 for $5 recently :p Not bad for the price

I use an old ipad2 as a music controller. I have my music stored on a [subsonic server]( http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp ), and then use one of the subsonic player apps on my ipad, connecting to my old skool amp via a bluetooth adapter.

I dont like the apple ecosystem. I dont like the iphone and I do think it is overpriced. My wife uses the iphone X/apple watch/mac book air. Apple hardware lasts a long time. We still have original ipod minis, iphone gen 1, ipad gen 2 in service as docked mp3 players, picture frames, etc. I find the case on iphones to be too slippery, requiring you to cover it with another case. My android phone does not need a case and the phone wasnt that expensive so if I drop it, it isnt a big deal. I find very annoying things like text messages to my wifes phone showing up on all apple devices. turning off the feature hasn't helped. Apple periodically makes me reauthenticate to icloud on my macbook. However I have no other apple device so it sends the codes to my wife's phone. very annoying. I used the first iphone but switched to android for my next phone because the iphone lacked T9 search which android had/has. The iphone still doesnt have T9 dialing. It matches letters/numbers in any portion of the name. This is helpful when I cant remember someones first or last name. It is also helpful when I have lots of people with the same name, but I know a portion of their actual #. It never takes me more than 3 taps to dial. The iphone didnt have the capability to override calendar notifications. I use an app on android that lets me snooze reminders until an arbitrary number of minutes before the event (for me it is 2 minutes before). I started missing meetings constantly because of the lac

We've got four iPads in the house, and we're only now replacing the iPad Mini (first generation) with a new iPad 2017; we've also got an iPad 2 that's next in line for a replacement, but since it's still handling Netflix et al almost acceptably the 4yo can use it a while longer. These things have survived three kids, I don't think we've had any other thing they've used live this long. Pretty darn impressive.

I have the opposite problem, my Android stopped getting updates 2 years ago. Meanwhile my iPad 2 is still getting the latest iOS version multiple times each year...

I used to work for Gazelle, a company that buys used iPhones, iPads, etc. from consumers. We found that the iPads we bought were generally in much worse shape than the iPhones. We believed this suggested that people were using their iPads quite a bit. Anecdotally, among my friends and family iPads are in almost constant use. So even if we don't know what iPads are good for we seem to use them a lot. I wonder how much of this is just that people are not upgrading their iPads as often as they upgrade their phones. I'm still relatively happy with my iPad 2 and I've had three different iPhones during the time I've owned it. A lot of my friends are in similar situations. I think we all kind of agree that iPads are too expensive to justify frequent upgrades, especially when they're still useable. I bought an iPhone 6 Plus thinking it would replace the iPad but found that, while I still really like the 6 Plus' size, it doesn't really work that well for prolonged reading or the lazy internet surfing the author mentions in the article.