However, we're now seeing a report published by Reuters, which suggests - based on info gathered from Taiwanese website Economic Daily - that Apple is, in fact, planning to launch the iPad 3 in the fourth quarter of this year.
What's really interesting in this report is that the Taiwanese source says the new iPad "would have image resolution 5-6 times higher than iPad 2." Ok, let's think about this for a bit. Both the original iPad and the iPad 2 have the same 9.7 inch screen with 1024 x 768 pixels, so a new iPad with higher resolution shouldn't be such a big surprise.
But a resolution 5 times higher than 1024 x 768 (786,432 pixels in total) means something like 2400 x 1600 pixels or higher. And that would be insane for a tablet, right? Well, yes and no.
You see, the iPhone 4's 3.5 inch screen has a 960 x 640 pixel resolution, thus 326 PPI (pixels per inch). A 9.7 inch screen - assuming the iPad 3 will use one, and I'm pretty sure it will - with 2400 x 1600 pixels would still have a pixel density lower than the one the iPhone 4's display has - 297 PPI. In the light of this, a new iPad with a huge resolution like that (2400 x 1600 or so) doesn't seem to be such an insane idea. An iPad with Retina Display - why not?
Unfortunately, we'll probably not find out any clear details about the iPad 3 until the day Apple decides to officially unveil it. And this may happen in Q4, as the Taiwanese website reported, since that's also when iOS 5 (which includes more than 200 new features) should be released, too.
Apart from a bumped display resolution, I'd expect Apple's next-gen tablet to feature a better rear camera, as the current model's camera has a surprisingly low resolution, namely 0.7MP (960 x 720 pixels).
source: Unwired View
