The New iPad 3: What’s The Hype All About?

So, Apple has finally rolled out its latest flagship in the sea of tablets, The New iPad! And may I say, other tablets should be concerned by the arrival of this new iPad, which is here to pick up the command of the iPad destroyers fleet, from where the iPad 2 left off! Apple created the tablet market with its first iPad. Since then, iPads have dominated their own market.

The iPad has been a remarkable success story. The first iPad sales rocketed to 15 million in the first nine months after its release. The iPad 2 kept accelerating things, and in less than two years, sales reached a record of 60 million worldwide! And now, The Third Generation iPad is here to buff things up even more, judging from the enthusiasm of Apple fans all over the world. As usual, a huge number of sales were made on the launch day, which is expected to sky-rocket in the coming sales days.

So what’s this all about?

If you don’t have The New iPad, or if you’re planning to buy one, you might be thinking: “why should I get one of those?”. Why Indeed? Would it be $499 down the drain? (Or $829 if you’re tech-savvy and opt for the top-of-the range model). Well, the answer is, it’s an iPad! Such is its reputation that, no matter what, you won’t feel your money has gone to waste!

So what’s new with this particular iPad? Well, admittedly, the changes made aren’t much of a quantum leap, so to speak. What Apple has done instead is, focus on improving particular areas to perfection. Which means that though it might not be lighter or faster than its predecessor, it surely is better! And better on almost every front! Let’s take a look at what’s new with this mean tablet!

The Brand New 2048 x 1536 Retina Display!

The New iPad’s main focus is on the display. It features a Retina Display with a staggering screen resolution of 2048 by 1536 pixels, which is higher than an HDTV!  This resolution means four times as many pixels as the iPad 2 had! The 9.7 inch screen makes it a pixel density of 264 pixels per inch.

The effect is profound, especially for pictures, videos, and text. Text is clearer and sharper than it is on a printed paper. And pictures are more detailed than ever. You can see many new tiny features of a picture not visible before. The effect is much more dramatic with videos. While the previous iPads had to scale down, or cut off the sides of a full HD video, the iPad 3 actually has to blow up the videos to fit them across the entire screen.

The enhanced display naturally means that almost all the apps will need to be updated to fully utilize the Retina Display, which can be a daunting task for developers. But the new resolution brings many rewards. You can feel the huge difference is display quality when you pick up the iPad 3. It’s truly a giant leap in terms of screen display.

Graphics and Processing capabilities

The iPad 3 comes with a dual-core A5X Processor, with a new quad-core graphics engine. The processor clock rate is still 1 GHz. Some people might be disappointed by this, because it means that iPad 3 is no faster than iPad 2. Which is not to say it’s slower. Keep in mind that both are one of the fastest devices today running iOS. Apple hasn’t made much changes in that sector.

What it has done is, equip the latest device with a whole new graphics engine running on a quad-core. This, of course, was necessary. The iPad 3 needs to drive four times as many pixels as the iPad 2. And drives them, it does, without breaking a sweat. The iPad 2 had about 786,000 pixels. This one hosts 3.1 million pixels! Naturally, more graphics computing is called for.

Surprisingly, with all the extra graphics wizardry going on, the battery life still isn’t bad! Apple claims a battery life of 10 hours. How near or far from the truth this claim is, remains to be figured out.

The 5 MegaPixel iSight camera

Admittedly, Apple isn’t going for any sort of ‘megapixel race’ (unlike Nokia and other manufacturers). But I think that in the tablet world, as of today, 5 megapixels is the farthest any camera has gone. The iSight camera on the iPad 3 features advanced optics, and is as good as the camera on iPhone 4S. This is a big improvement over the weak cameras on previous iPads.

What’s even great about this camera is, you can film videos in full HD i.e. 1080p. iPad 2 could only record 720p. Hence, this latest camera isn’t that much when it comes to picture resolution, but its video quality is great. Overall, quite an improvement.

Ultrafast 4G Lite

The iPad 3 incorporates advanced 4G wireless network capabilities, allowing you to connect to fast data networks easily. However, the standard model doesn’t come with this option. You will have to pay about $130 extra for cellular networking options.

Voice dictation

You can press the microphone button on your keyboard any time and the iPad will take your verbal orders! All you need to do is speak your command. Surprisingly, the iPad 3 doesn’t use the Siri Artificial Intelligence system. It has its own voice command system. This can be a let-down, especially for iPhone 4S users, and I don’t see why iPad 3 can’t have Siri.

AirPlay! Watch your stuff on your HDTV!

AirPlay is a relatively new feature on this iPad. You can wireless-ly stream videos, images, song albums etc right on your HDTV and speakers using Apple TV or via a Wi-Fi network. Click to learn more about this feature.

Conclusion

The iPad truly promises to be a landmark on the tablet horizon. Whether it will stay there or be toppled over by Android tablets, will be decided by time. But we think this is a great device. Do let us know what you think about it, and share your experiences, so others can learn from them 🙂