A new report suggests Apple’s upcoming “iPad mini” will be even smaller than earlier rumors suggested. Venturebeat is one of a number of sites that recently reported Apple’s upcoming next-generation iPad will be named “iPad HD.” The pixel-count certainly justifies the moniker — Apple’s new tablet will supposedly feature a high-definition 2,048 x 1,536-pixel display — and the rumors started with a leaked parts list that surfaced last week. The site also claims that Apple’s often rumored iPad mini, which is expected to launch some time in the second half this year, will feature a 7.1-inch display rather than a 7.85-inch display as we’ve heard numerous times in the past. Read on for more.
A 7.1-inch display would pit Apple’s tiny tablet against the likes of Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet, and it would also be exactly the size Apple co-founder Steve Jobs said Apple would never touch.
“One naturally thinks that a 7-inch screen would offer 70 percent of the benefits of a 10-inch screen,” Jobs said in 2010 on an earnings call. “Unfortunately, this is far from the truth. The reason we won’t make a 7-inch tablet isn’t because we don’t want to hit a lower price point, it’s because we think the screen is too small to express the software.”
This wouldn’t be the first time Apple launched a device with features it had previously criticized, however. There are numerous examples of Apple backtracking over the years, but the most famous is perhaps Apple’s insistance that the iPhone didn’t need to support third-party apps and that web apps were the answer. Fast-forward to March 2012, and Apple just announced that its App Store has now served more than 25 billion downloads.
Apple’s “iPad mini” will reportedly launch in the third quarter ahead of Apple’s next-generation iPhone, which is expected to launch this fall.
