Leaving aside the name bit, let’s see what actually “the new iPad” is all about.
Apple Launches the New iPad
Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing got the honor to tease the eager media present at the San Francisco event with the taunting question “you want to know about the new iPad?” And luckily he didn’t played with the audience’s feelings for too long. The third generation Apple tablet is taking the user expectations to a new level and Apple’s high level executive was not shy about it. “We are redefining the category that Apple created with the original iPad.”
Retina Display
The long rumored high definition display of iPad 3 is quite as we have expected it to be and even a little beyond. The Retina Display, so far featured only in the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S has been developed for the 9.7 inch screen of the new iPad. “When you turn on that new iPad you’re going to see graphics, text, icons sharper than you can imagine. Everything you do is going to look stunning,” promised Phil Schiller. More precisely, in you are going to read your favorite newspaper on iPad 3, the letters will look sharper than in the printed version. In figures, that means a 2048 x 1536 pixels resolution, meaning 264 pixel density. Showing off this feature, iPad 3 shames its predecessor with four times more pixels. In order to support this impressive graphic performance, Apple created the quad core graphic processor A5X chip. “It’s a graphics powerhouse,” concluded Phil Schiller.
iSight Camera
One of the reason that allowed Android fans to raise eyebrows to iPad users was the modest camera, compared to the top models running on Ice Cream Sandwich. Now Apple closed that gap with a new iSight camera meant to replace the outdated FaceTime camera. The new feature is designed to impress the market with 5 MP sensor, advanced optics and IR filter, auto-focus and white balance, not to mention face detection. The 1080p HD video recording comes with video stabilization, temporal noise reduction.
Voice dictation – Toned down version of Siri
If you long for Siri while you are only stuck on your new iPad, you won’t get it. However, Apple introduced a new feature in the third generation iPad which integrates voice recognition technology. The voice dictation feature is expected to be particularly useful, considering that the virtual keyboard takes up a large part of the screen space. The shiny new iPad comes with support for English, French, German, and Japanese.
4G LTE
“Now the new iPad supports HSPA+ for up to 21Mbps, and if you haven’t heard about dual-carrier HSDPA for up to 42Mbps,” proudly announced Phil Schiller. LTE connectivity can deliver data speeds up to 72 Mbps. The demo clip convinced the audience at the Apple event that the new data speed is five times faster than a 3G model. If the young hot iPad intended to completely humiliate the previous iPad succeeded for the second time in one night. On the US market there are two confirmed carriers with networks able to support these whopping speeds, AT&T and Verizon. However, the customers will be able to chose between a high speed LTE enabled iPad 3 or a 3G model of the latest Apple tablet. Both versions will be able to support 3G networks. In addition, Apple representative announced “We’ve added software to make it a personal hotspot if your carrier supports the personal hotspot feature.”
Battery life span
With so much that the new iPad can do and so many features that can squeeze power out of the device. Apple managed to reassure us that we are not going to be out of battery as soon as we start firing up the games on the high resolution display, or if you prefer as soon as we start working hard. The battery is supposed to last 10 hours, or 9 hours on 4G connection. Photo credits: Engadget
