I would recommend going to the apple store and sit down and use both the 9.7 and the 7.9 models and see which one you like personally they didn't put the newer chip in the mini and that bothers me for what you pay I want the most advanced tech for my $ but the good thing is if you choose now and,down the road want to upgrade the newer the device the better re-sale value
Hmm....if you compare the 16GB iPad mini LTE version, the price is $458USD. The off-contract price if a 16GB LTE iPhone 5 is $649. A difference of $191.
If you put the latest tech in the iPad mini, that would mean you need to be making 7.9-inch screens with 326 ppi...that tech is not ready yet. And if it were ready, there should still be issues with cooling and battery life, as the bright retina display should suck down a lot of juice.
Note that buying the top end iPhone 5 off contact is $849. The top end iPad 4 is $829. With the iPhone, you get a phone, but a retina display at 300+ppi). With the iPad, you get the larger screen (at lower 250-ish ppi, BTW).
If you buy a retina iPad mini, top end, you pay $529. If there was a version of the mini with a retina display, it would have the same resolution as the iPhone 5, but the bigger screen would drive the price over $849.
I don't know why people are expecting a retina iPad mini at the current prices. It will never happen. Even if they offer it next year, that 300+ ppi screen will drive the price up.
I think Apple priced the iPad mini fairly. Also, given the current state of tech, I think they had to offer it without the retina screen. Putting in an A6X chip or even an A6 chip would have been a total waste of money because with the 163 ppi screen, the mini plays all games well. There is no point of putting in more chip than is needed to get top performance. With the iPad 3, there was a point because on some tasks the cpu was not powerful enough to update the screen quickly enough. Apple solved that issue with the iPad 4.
When Apple releases a mini with a 2048 x 1536 pixel screen, there could be technical issues. That's more pixels than on an iPhone 5, but the same as the iPad 4, so the performance will be the same. But the mini is smaller, so heat dissipation will be a problem compared to the larger iPad. Also, because the mini is smaller, there could be battery-life issues, too. The mini's battery is a good bit smaller than that in the iPad 4. All of this has to be considered when bringing a device to market. If not, then what results is a poor end user experience. So people talking about specs without regard to the impact of what tech goes into the device are just wrong headed. Apple knows this business far better than the most consumers do. They always try to offer the best tech to create the best experience, no matter what people say (oh, they are holding off until next year so they can milk more money -- if that were true, then why update the iPad with an A6X chip?).
