I purchased an iPad 10th Gen and think it might be too big to take around during the inspection, so I am considering switching to an iPad mini since it is smaller. Does anybody have any suggestions and whether it would be beneficial to switch to the mini? Would the camera quality may suffer?
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Best thing is to ditch the ipad and use a low resolution digital camera. The one I use is 6 megapixels and I still downsize the pictures to make sending the report easier. You see a defect, take a picture. This gives you more freedom as you move about the property. You still have to touch all the bases but I don’t have to stop and make entries. The whole deal is polished at the office where I see a picture and know the defect.
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The field vs office report writing is a common debate, and I think most of the substance here is a potatoe-potahtoe kinda thing. Partly because of the time you “save” on site is later spent at home, and partly because younger generations are simply more efficient with technology. I genuinely mean no offense by that, but I impress/scare myself sometimes at how quick I am at using my phone. My fingers know where to go on the next screen before the screen appears. I’ve been relying on a phone for my social life my entire adult life and then some.
Plus I hardly ever actually type on my phone, I almost always use speech to text. And I’ve been working on my template efficiency like a detective obsessed with a cold case. I don’t think it slows me down too much at the end of the day, after considering how much extra time I would have to spend at my computer searching for and inputting all the images.
But I have been tempted to do this before, and it’s actually how I used to do it when I used HIP. One thing that has stopped me is the spectora summary button for the debriefing that I love. It makes the walk through really easy because it shows the comment next to each image that I can show the client and/or read from. I don’t want to go back to just scrolling through my image library to show my clients stuff.
But I agree with OP, if you do report from the field, iPads are too big. Nice for walkthroughs, but that’s it. I like my iPhone.
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But also much less effective with their observation and defect recognition skills.
Just look around this MB and see the types and frequency of questions being asked, and by whom!!
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Even an 8inch tablet may be clunkier than you want. Most phone cameras are significantly better than the iPad ones and will give more framing options (wide area, normal, telephoto). Phone cameras are also significantly better than point and shoot cameras these days.
A good system some people here use is to shoot their pictures and drop them into the report with the phone. Then share them to a tablet for a final review and clean up, as well as having a big screen to show the client what you saw in the attic or crawlspace etc. Basically all the software you can buy now is mobile/cloud centric and the apps are built to run well on modern smartphones.
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Oh absolutely, I made that clear this morning while talking to @mwilles about expansion tanks 
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And in case anyone thinks that I think my thumbs are special for some reason, I fully expect my nieces and nephews to develop their fine motor movements in ways that I had not, because of novel technology they were forced to become adept at, at such a young age.
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Do you do this with a hotspot or do you have data on your tablet also? I think I’ve always assumed the push/pulling a complete report would take too long to load.
This isn’t something that I do in practice, but many others do. Doing a kitchen table review vs a walk around depends on your inspection style and regional expectations. Personally I walk people around to see important stuff. Very rarely do I pull out my phone to show a picture and screen size it has never seemed an issue. Iphones and pads can connect directly to each to share data and images, and Airplay let’s you turn an iPad into a big display for your phone.
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Oh wow I didn’t know that. Bingo, I’m gonna get an iPad just for the debrief. I think it would really give clients a warm and fuzzy feeling to see the images larger. People are always leaning in to see my phone.
Yea, that’s what I meant by walk through. I go through everything with my phone and if there’s something hard to explain or just close by, I’ll point it out.
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We always had a few on the job who were “all thumbs.” Not a good thing.
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Oh that’s me. I stubbed my toe on a doorframe last Friday and fractured it.
I was getting pretty good at using T9 texting without looking at the phone, years ago!
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Thanks for that reminder! I totally forgot about that feature 
Edit: This feature looks like it can only be used if both devices are on a wifi network, is that right? Is it not possible on the cellular network as well?
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That’s the way “AIRDROP” is on my Apple devices. Great feature BTW.
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You can apparently use Bluetooth? Or hardwire.
How to Mirror iPhone to iPad Without Wi-Fi.
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“AIRPLAY”is different than what I was thinking…”AIRDROP”.
So, I’ll have to check the “sreen mirroring” out. Thanx.
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Thanks but mirror wont recognize my ipad mini 5. The ipad is a couple years old…maybe thats the issue. Hardwire looks possible but it looks like 2 separate adapters and a hdmi cable. I might try that route if I feel like ordering the adapters. Might be more of a pain than useful. Thanks for the help
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When I was training for this profession, another trainee was using an ipad pro that was always hanging around his neck. It flopped around when he climbed ladders or into attics or crawlspaces, and he was constantly adjusting it around his neck.
I figured I’d just use my phone for convenience, but the ipad mini fit nicely in my cargo pants side pocket. I can climb ladders, crawl under a home, and do pretty much everything else without worrying about the ipad banging around or anything. I used the wifi only version for the first 2+ years, but then decided to change to the newest version with it’s own wireless service several months ago. The newer one has a flash, but I do sometimes wish it took better photos in lower light situations. Even still, it does make it easier to show pics during my summary than using a much smaller phone. I only show pics of things in crawls or attics, or other things that are in areas that are not feasible to take a client during a walkthrough summary. When it’s 150 degrees outside like it sometimes is here, I’ll show them pics around the kitchen counter, but they usually still appreciate the actual walk through.
Wow, Daniel, that’s hot!
I have the iPad 12.9 and it’s big. I will likely get a smaller one soon. As for the field/home writing, I use my software to capture all of the images and collect basic info and log defects. I then go back and clean up data entry at the end when I get to my car. Then after submitting, I usually spend 45 minutes to an hour on expounding on the defects. I should note my reports don’t look anything like the canned packages, and the output is in Word so it’s readily editable.
