Yesterday, Apple made a mistake in unveiling their newest devices on the iTunes. And today, they have officially announced the newest iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 2 through their keynote event.
The iPad Air 2, the successor to last year's iPad Air. You may remember the marketing of the original iPad Air showed how thin the device was by having it lay side by side with a pencil, showing that the iPad was actually thinner. For the iPad Air 2, they've actually made it even thinner, just 6.1mm thin. According to Apple, that's 18% thinner than the original iPad Air.
As for features of the iPad Air 2, it's pretty much all the things you'd expect. A better screen with less problems with reflections, and Apple has even added an anti-reflective layer to the screen to help with that. The internals come equipped with the A8X chip, which is a custom version of the chip in the new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus made specifically for the new iPad. The chip has a 64-bit architecture, 3 billion transistors, a 40% faster CPU and a 2.5x faster GPU. Apple claims the graphics on the iPad Air 2 are 180x faster than on the original 2010 iPad. Coupled with the Metal technology, the iPad Air 2 should be a beast for gaming.
The other new features of the iPad Air 2 are also pretty much expected. It has a better camera with many of the new features available in the iPhone 6 cameras. It has Touch ID which has been a hugely requested feature. It also has the newest M8 chip for tracking your fitness. You'll also be able to use the new Apple Pay feature with the new iPad, though not in retail stores as it doesn't have NFC capabilities, but it'll work for online purchasing, which is cool. All in all it's an expected, but nonetheless welcome refresh of the already fantastic iPad Air.
The other new iPad model unveiled today is the iPad mini 3, also outed by Apple earlier this week. According to the page for the iPad mini 3, it's only rocking an A7 processor, not the A8X of the new iPad Air 2. Sadly, this once again means the smaller iPad is playing second fiddle to the larger one, which is disappointing after last year where the two versions were basically identical except in physical size.
As for the pricing and availability of the new iPads? For the iPad Air 2, which comes in three colors: Silver, Space Grey and Gold, it'll cost $499/599/699 for 16GB/64GB/128GB in Wi-Fi versions and $629/729/829 for cellular versions. The iPad mini 3 will be $399/499/599 for 16GB/64GB/128GB for Wi-Fi versions, and $529/629/729 for cellular versions. Both will be available for pre-order tomorrow, October 17th and will start shipping next week. What's cool is that the original iPad Air and the iPad mini 2 will be sticking around and dropping their prices by $100, and even the original iPad mini is staying put and will start at just $249.
Images via [MacRumors]
Reblogged from: Apple Announces New iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3, Available for Pre-Order Starting Tomorrow