Apple Officially Unwraps The iPad Mini And A 4th Gen iPad

During today's "a little more to show" event, Apple unveiled the long-rumored iPad mini along with a major surprise, a new fourth-generation standard model iPad. Today's release comes just six months after unveiling the third-generation iPad which marks a major step up for Apple's traditional release cycle.

The iPad mini features a 7.9-inch Multi-Touch display with a 1024-by-768 resolution. It runs on Apple’s dual-core A5 chip which is the same chip that also runs not only the iPad 2 but also last year's iPhone 4S. It has a FaceTime HD front-facing camera and a 5 megapixel iSight camera on the back. It gets the same LTE capabilities as the fourth-generation iPad with LTE and faster Wi-Fi. For adapters it uses Apple's new Lightning connector.

Apple says that, like the other iPads in the lineup, it still offers ten hours of battery life; the company boasts that the iPad mini uses the largest and thinnest battery Apple’s ever made.

“iPad mini is every inch an iPad. With its gorgeous 7.9-inch display, iPad mini features the same number of pixels as the original iPad and iPad 2, so you can run more than 275,000 apps designed specifically for iPad,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “iPad mini is as thin as a pencil and as light as a pad of paper, yet packs a fast A5 chip, FaceTime HD and 5 megapixel iSight cameras and ultrafast wireless―all while delivering up to 10 hours of battery life.”

The iPad mini will be available in a variety of configurations. The 16GB model will cost $329, the 32GB model will cost $429, and the 64GB model will cost $529. If you add in the option for cellular connectivity, those prices increase by $129. Pre-orders for the iPad mini will start on Friday, October 26. The Wi-Fi versions will ship starting on November 2, in many countries. Two weeks later, they’ll start to ship the iPads with cellular—first in the U.S., and then later around the world.

The new fourth generation iPad features only minor upgrades. It has a 9.7-inch Retina display and includes a new Apple-designed A6X chip that Apple says delivers up to twice the CPU performance and up to twice the graphics performance of the A5X chip. Other new features include a FaceTime HD camera, twice the Wi-Fi performance when compared to previous iPad models and support for additional LTE carriers worldwide.

Like the third-generation iPad, the fourth-generation iPad comes in black in white. It keeps the same pricing: The base 16GB model starts at $499, with 32GB at $599 and 64GB at $699. Cellular-ready models are available for $130 extra, at $529, $629, and $729 for 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB respectively.


Source: Apple - Press Info - Apple Introduces iPad mini