Apple Unveils New iPad: Retina, Quad Core, 4G

Apple held the media event at the Yerba Buena Center for Arts in San Francisco at 12:00 AM IST on Thursday. The media, Apple executives and other guests were all seated and chattering excitedly when the lights started dimming as Tim Cook took the stage.

The Announcement

Before the actual unveiling Tim Cook talked about how the 100+ tablets that were released in 2011 failed to make a mark or even affect the iPad sales that climbed feverishly through all four quarters in 2011. He even went on to explain why.

The Why

Comparing Twitter on Android to Twitter on an iPad, he showed how the UI was modified to 'take advantage of the large canvas'. The screen then showed the Yelp app with lots of white space and tiny, hard to read text. Finally he compared it to the iPad saying, "This is a reason momentum on the iPad continues to build."

"iPad"

And then came out the new iPad. The new iPad does not have any numbers following it like in 'iPad 2'. The reason in Tim's words: "We've taken it to a whole new level, and we are redefining the category that Apple created with the original iPad."

The new iPad has a home button and the much hyped Retina Display. Media who were able to view the device remarked that the brilliance of the display cannot be understood until you actually see it. Of course, we still have the specs which look extremely promising: 2048 x 1536 resolution on a tablet screen. That is way higher than a 1080p HD display: it has got 3.1 million pixels scoring 264 pixels per inch - meaning you wont be able to see a pixel during normal use. Moreover, the specs also point to a 44 per cent greater colour saturation.

Under the Hood

A normal SoC would wrinkle up and die when exposed to powering a display like this, which is why Apple also unveiled the upgraded A5X processor along with "Quad Core" graphics. We are talking serious graphics horsepower here: it also features ISP built into the A5X chip and you can expect brand new games coming out that will exploit this.

The camera has also been tuned with a new iSight camera. On the rear, we have the 5MP camera with 5-element lens, IR filter, auto-exposure and auto-focus. It also features full HD video recording at 1080p.

The new iPad also has the ability to work in new 4G network standard. As of now, it supports LTE by AT&T, Verizon in the US; Telus, Rogers, Bell in Canada. Of course, all the handsets are 3G ready and you can use them to roam world-wide.

Pricing

The WiFi only model is available at $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB and $699 for 64GB. The 4G versions come at $629/ $729/ $829 respectively. The iPads will be available in stores on 16 March while pre-orders have already  started at all Apple online stores.