With Apple’s Wednesday introduction of the third-generation iPad, many of the questions people and pundits have spent the past few months obsessing over have been answered–but not all. We know it has a nicer screen, a faster processor, better cameras, 4G networking, and voice dictation. Here are all the details we’ve been able to dig up about Apple’s newest tablet.
Like the iPhone 4 and 4S, the new iPad has a Retina display–a term Apple uses to describe a screen with a high-enough pixel density that you can’t discern individual pixels at normal viewing distances. The Retina display for the iPad boasts a resolution of 2048-by-1536 pixels–over 3.1 million pixels in total–at the same 9.7-inch (diagonal) screen size as before, for a pixel density of 264 pixels per inch. (For a point of comparison, a 1080p TV has a resolution of just 1920 by 1080 pixels.) Apple also says the new iPad’s display offers 44 percent better color saturation than the screen on the iPad 2.
The new iPad is a bit bigger than the iPad 2.
Though the new screen’s 264-ppi pixel density is lower than that of the iPhone 4 and 4S (326 ppi), Apple argues that both are Retina displays because you generally hold an iPad farther from your eyes than a phone. This blog post by astronomer Phil Plait, who did the math, seems to agree.