Hidden iOS 9 keyboard hints at existence of larger iPad

If you’ve used the iPad for any amount of time, the below screenshot will look a bit off to you.

That’s because it shows a completely new keyboard for the iPad. It was discovered by Steve Troughton Smith, a well-known and respected iOS developer, when he went looking through the contents of iOS 9’s developer preview build.

According to Smith and others, iOS 9’s new first-party keyboard is much more adaptable, and what’s shown above is what it supposedly looks like at higher resolutions.

Take a good look and you’ll notice that this new keyboard features many of the buttons that are found on physical keyboards. Most notably, the tab and caps lock keys are included, though there’s also a new symbols row that features the following characters: @ # S % ^ & * ( ) _ +.

The alternative keyboard also features a new layout. The most important additions here are the new “undo” and “redo” buttons, which should make fixing mistakes a lot easier.

However, the most welcome change here is actually the removal of the iPad’s third beyond. As a result of the first two keyboards featuring more buttons, there’s no longer a need for it.

Several publications, including 9to5Mac, are speculating that these keyboards all but confirm the existence of a 12-inch iPad. Rumours of Apple working on a larger iPad have percolated for the last several months. The company is said to be preparing to launch the device, referred to in most rumours as the iPad Pro, in the fall, and is said to be targeting the enterprise and education markets with it. With this new keyboard in tow, the iPad Pro has a good chance of actually being useful to users in those markets.

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