Apple has announced a new iPad, the iPad mini, today in San Jose.
The iPad mini is 7.9-inches diagonal and runs at a resolution of 1024×768, the same as the first two generations of iPad.
It’s 7.2mm and 308g, which is light enough to hold in one hand. There is a very small bezel around the sides of the screen because it is easy to grip in one hand from edge to edge. For comparison sake, the Nexus 7 is 340g and 10.4mm thick.
Apple is touting the iPad mini as a fully-formed product, with 275,000 existing apps that will already work on the device. Despite the lower-resolution screen than competing Android tablets, Apple claims that the screen is of higher quality than its closest competitors, and that apps will give a better overall experience than any other product on the market.
It has a 5MP iSight camera, much like the existing Retina iPad, as well as a HD front-facing camera.
Surprisingly, the iPad mini comes with only a dual-core A5 chip, the same one that powers the iPhone 4S and new iPod touch line. There’s LTE connectivity (for an extra price) and it comes with a Lightning dock connector, like the 4th generation iPad also announced today.
There’s also a new line of SmartCovers, in multiple colours, that wrap around the iPad mini in a more secure way than the original.
As for battery life, Apple is promising 10 hours, the same as the existing iPad lines.
The iPad mini starts at $329CDN so it definitely won’t appeal to the same market as the $199 Android tablet demographic. The prices are the same as the US version, which means that they will be slightly cheaper to us when compared to their American counterparts.
The iPad mini will go on sale in Canada on November 2nd, with pre-orders starting this Friday, October 26th. The cellular versions will ship a couple weeks later, with an extra $130 price tag tacked on, and compatible with Rogers, Bell, TELUS, SaskTel, MTS.
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