Over the past few weeks, and more so this past weekend, there have been tons of rumors about the upcoming iPad 2. Guesses, rumors, and leaks. Call them what you want, but they are here to stay and some have more validity than you think. Apple has released to developers a beta of iOS 4.3, the newest operating system update for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. iOS 4.3 will include several feature upgrades including the addition of Wi-Fi hot spots, new multitouch gestures for iPad, and customizable messaging alerts.
At CES 2011, Chinese manufacturers clearly could not wait for the real iPad 2 to come out so they showed off their peripherals. They Showed a mock-up tablet claiming this is how the final iPad 2 will look based on the Apple redesign. The ports and cameras are also stated as being correct. The Mock-up had “iPad 2″ Written with “128GB Solid State Drive”. There’s no suprise that the device will remain at 10 inches but will now feature both front and rear cameras(Again rumors) . Initially, we heard Rumors about iPad getting an UBS Port but it seems there’s an SD Card slot.
On January 14 , an unnamed but “reliable” source of Engadget reported that, “Apple is going to ditch the current Infineon chipsets used in both devices and move to Qualcomm instead”. The report seems entirely plausible. It’s very likely that this will be for its CDMA network, and not LTE. The current iPad model only works on GSM networks. Apple probably doesn’t want to make two different iPads the way it’s currently making two different models of iPhone, so switching to a chipset that allows the device to connect to both networks would be smart. Qualcomm has that, or is going to, very soon. It’s long been rumored that Apple would eventually start shipping a dual-mode iPhone–a report that the iPhone 5 would work on GSM and CDMA networks hit,back in October, 2010 –so going that way with both of its flagship mobile products makes a lot of sense.
It had been previously rumored that Apple’s second-generation tablet will inherit the critically-acclaimed Retina Display from the iPhone 4. The problem is that a 300 DPI, 9.7-inch iPad would need a resolution of 2560 x 1920 – more pixels than Apple’s top-of-the-line 27″ LED Cinema Display. Ironically, it appears that the new iPad will be competing on good old-fashioned tech specs, with a new A5 chip,1 GHz dual-core Processor, that will include dual-core graphics via the SGX543MP2 core. It’s supposedly, twice as fast as the SGX535 that’s in the current iPad, and can support four times the pixel count. That means a “Retina Display” iPad could be the works, with a resolution of 2560 x 1920, or twice than that of the first-generation iPad.
New information suggests, that the upcoming iPad 2 will in fact get a 2048 x 1536 panel running at 260 DPI — double the amount of horizontal and vertical pixels as the iPad 1. Apple may still brand it as a Retina display because the iPad is held further away from your face than an iPhone, resulting in the same effect. MacRumors reports on January 15, the discovery of pixel-doubled bookmark graphics in Apple’s iBooks app. MacRumors also spotted another tell-tale graphic in iBooks 1.2, a 1536 x 800 pixel wood-tile background. The previous Wood Tile.png in iBooks 1.1 was half of that – 768 x 400 pixels. The so called resolution “doubling” should be easy for developers to support, allowing legacy apps to run in a pixel-doubled mode until developers can re-write them to support the iPad 2’s larger panel. Apple did the same thing with the iPhone 4, increasing its resolution from 480 x 320 to 960 x 640.
Rumor also has it that Steve Jobs didn’t want any physical buttons on the original iPad. And, as we know, Steve Jobs tends to get what he wants–eventually anyway. The anonymous source told BGR that, “Apple, at some point in time, will remove the home button from the iPad’s design. Instead of button taps, you will use new multitouch gestures to navigate to the home screen and also to launch the app switcher” . When the iOS 4.3 beta 1 was released earlier this month, there were addition of new multitouch gestures that would allow iPad users to use four- and five-finger gestures to pinch out of an app to the Home Screen, swipe up to reveal the multitasking bar, and swipe left and right between apps. The multitasking gestures are still present in iOS 4.3 beta 2 for developers to test, but will not, according to the release documents, be enabled in iOS 4.3 for consumers. It’s possible that Apple plans on further refining the feature, perhaps saving it as a marquee feature for iOS 5 down the line–or, if the feature is deemed too confusing to implement properly, it could be killed off altogether.The source also went on to note that this change will eventually make its way over to the iPhone and that Apple employees were already testing iPads and iPhones with no home buttons on the Apple campus, and it was possible we’d see this new change materialize in Apple devices set to launch this year.
According to Apple Insider, “a Chinese accessory supplier is floating” around a flexible silicon case dubbed as the “iPad 2nd generation” case. This new case sports a few usual open spots for familiar ports like the 30-pin connector and a headphone jack. But there are several more open spots, which are predicted to be for a camera , an SD card and a mini Display Port . Unfortunately, it looks like HDMI and USB were left out of the party on this generation, but there’s only so much space around the edges of this 9.7-inch tablet
On January 20, 9 to 5 Mac reported that second-generation iPad will not feature some fancy 5 megapixel camera, but will instead shoot your flicks and take your pics with something close to a 1 megapixels. That’s awfully close to the fourth-generation iPod touch’s 0.7 megapixel back camera so we speculate they could be the same thing. That means you’ll be able to take some unwieldy 720P video with your iPad. As for the front, they predict it to be a VGA, just like the iPhone 4 and fourth-generation iPod touch. The front-facer for FaceTime and taking pictures of yourself will do video recording too. Their sources have told that ‘K94′ is the iPad 2′s codename and interestingly enough, they found a K95 in the latest SDK. Is this the 3G version of iPad 2, or Something else?
Even more evidence, that the next generation iPad will be equipped with cameras was discovered in the iOS 4.3 beta 2 by MacRumors, on January 20. To be effective, the iPad’s Camera and FaceTime apps would require both back- and front-facing cameras just like the iPhone 4. The Photo Booth app is new to iOS but already ships on Macs running OS X — it could, presumably, use either camera to record snapshots (with filters) and video. And really, at this point, with such overwhelming evidence the only surprise would be for Apple to announce a new iPad without a camera.
GALOBJ DB FAIL
01.27.11
great article but the picture looks fake
01.28.11
@iPad 2 Accessories It’s the mock-up tablet Displayed by Chinese manufacturers, at CES 2011!