Blasting through a series of product updates and announcements this morning in San Francisco, Apple CEO Tim Cook wasted no time cutting to the chase by announcing what we all wanted to hear: “The new iPad.”
"Everyone's been wondering... who will come out with a product that's more amazing than the iPad 2?" Apple CEO Tim Cook asked during today’s event at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. As it turns out, Apple is the that company, announcing what’s now simply known as “the new iPad” with their usual dramatic flair.
Apple’s Phil Schiller took the stage to confirm a Retina Display for the new iPad, claiming “to this day, no one has yet matched that display technology.” With 2048x1536 display resolution, the new iPad contains 3.1 million pixels -- more than a 1080p HD monitor at 1920x1080 by more than a million pixels.
"This presents a problem for us in presenting it to you,” Schiller quips. “For the first time an iPad has a higher resolution than this entire display behind you. That's a fun challenge."
Touting the most pixels ever in a mobile device, Schiller extorts the new iPad’s 264ppi, which is “enough to call it a Retina Display,” particularly given that the iPad is customarily held 15 inches away, versus the iPhone 4’s 10 inches.
The new display now offers 44 percent better color saturation than the iPad 2, with an A5X processor and quad-core graphics. Apple claims the A5 is already “twice as fast” as competing Tegra 3 processors used in Android tablets, and the A5X now offers “four times the performance.”
Of course, with a higher-quality display comes a new camera system as well. The new iPad features a five-megapixel backside illuminated sensor on the rear side, complete with a five-element lens, IR filter and ISP built right into the A5X chip. If that sounds familiar, it should -- that’s similar to what’s built into the existing iPhone 4S.
1080p video recording is also part of the new iPad. "Wherever you are, you want to grab a video for work or play or school you've got a great camera to grab that with,” Schiller notes.
Voice dictation also comes standard with the new iPad, supporting U.S. English, British, Australian, French, German and Japanese. Not quite the full Siri experience, but we’re getting there.
The new iPad will also come with 4G LTE from both AT&T and Verizon Wireless, with a demonstration topping out at 73Mbps over competing standards like EV-DO, HSPA, HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA. (Telus, Rogers and Bell will also be LTE partners as well.) The good news is, all of the LTE models will be 3G world-ready. "Whichever one you pick you can roam anywhere around the world,” Schiller noted, also pointing out that the iPad can be set up as a personal hotspot, where supported.
You might be thinking that a Retina Display and 4G LTE would absolutely kill the iPad’s battery life, but Apple claims the new models have the same 10 hours of battery life, with nine hours when using a 4G LTE connection -- all with a slightly heavier 1.4-pound frame and 9.4mm thickness.
The new iPad will be available on March 16 at the same prices as the current iPad 2 models, with preorders starting today and Apple’s biggest rollout ever for the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia, with 26 more countries arriving on March 23.
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