Tech

iPadOS 15 mini-review: Playing catch-up with the iPhone

Widgets on iPadOS 15's home screen.

Enlarge / Widgets on iPadOS 15’s home screen. (credit: Samuel Axon)

Last year, Apple released a meaty iOS update for iPhones, but some of the biggest changes didn’t make it over to the iPad. This year, the iPhone update is modest—so does that mean that the iPad update is the big one this time around?

Well, that depends on your point of view. iPadOS 15 brings almost everything iOS 15 brought to iPhones, but it also brings those major iOS 14 omissions from last year to the tablet. As a result, iPadOS 15 feels like a significant update if you haven’t been using an iPhone lately, but if you’ve already used iOS 14’s new home screen and app library features, it instead ends up feeling like it’s late to the party.

We published a lengthy, iPhone-focused review of iOS 15 earlier this week. Consider this a short addendum to that review that puts the spotlight on the iPad. Refer to the earlier review for details on new features like Focus that aren’t iPad specific or for a list of iPads that are supported by iPadOS 15.

Read 38 remaining paragraphs | Comments