7 inch Mini iPad for early 2011, plus upgrades for the current 9.7 inch line

There seems to be a lot of activity from the guys at Apple lately, hence the increased number of rumors on their next moves. After we’ve seen that there might be an 11.6 inch Apple netbook on the go for September,  it’s now time for some details on their sucesful iPad tablet.

Smaller 7 inch Mini iPad to be announced next year

According to Digitimes.com, we’re going to see a smaller 7 inch iPad from Apple, early into 2011, built around a new Cortex-A9 processor and offering and IPS display with 1024 x 768 px resolution. The same hardware platform will be adopted by the bigger 9.7 inch iPad, plus 512 MB of memory (existing version comes with only 256 MB). Also, we might see some other improvements, which are still unknown for now.

Of course, this is not the first time I’ve heard of this mini iPad, there were some rumors last month month speaking of 5 and 7 inch such tablets to be available in 2011. I doubt there’s going to be a 5 inch one, but we’ll for sure see the 7 inch Apple iPad. iLounge also announces that the plans for a 7 inch iPad are already finished and the device will be unveiled in Q1 2011. Actually, it seems that the guys at Apple planed it for a while and have been developing it even before the new iPhone was launched.

Having a smaller device comes with advantages and disadvantages. It is going to be more compact, lighter and theoretically cheaper. Thus more of us will be able to afford it will be more suitable for carrying around. But, at 7 inches, it already gets small. Web-browsing or watching clips might  become slightly unpleasant, although you get the same resolution, only things will look more cramped on the smaller display.

All in all, having a pocketable iPad might seem like a great idea, but take it with grain and salt. I for one would still love the bigger one for multimedia, browsing or reading books. But hey, who knows what kind of magic will these guys at Apple going to get out of the hat. A compact and light tablet with a narrow bezzel screen for around $300 would for sure be great.

So let’s just wait and see. More details about the iPad and its mini relative will be available on this siste, so stay tuned.

Via Netbooknews.com

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Tags: 7 inch tablets, Apple iPad, touch tablet

Last updated: August 13, 2010 | Published: August 9th, 2010 | See the comments or add yours!