Last night I spoke with an insider in Taipei who claims that Apple are set to adopt a new high resolution screen for the upcoming iPad 3. Those people who have skipped over on the iPad 2 release will be happy to hear the latest news. Of course, I can't claim this is 100% the case, but the source is very reliable.
The iPad 3 was heralded to be released later this year, but it doesn't look until it will hit retail until the summer of next year. The production will start Q1 if the timeline we have been shown stays true. While the iPad 3 will bring other improvements to the successful range for Apple, the biggest talking point has been the updated screen.
Earlier reports indicated that the iPad 3 would launch end of 2010 with a screen resolution 6 times higher than the iPad 2. While this is not likely to happen we have been told that a new super high resolution screen with a 2048×1536 resolution is most likely with productions of the screen already in the making. Other rumors circulating are that Apple are looking at a 3D screen, but from what we hear, this is not accurate.
A screen with this resolution will greatly enhance the iPad's overall viewing quality, with four times the pixels on offer. Obviously this will cause a substantial hit on the video rendering performance for gaming, so Apple are looking at various options, to ensure that the performance is still strong. Getting the balancing act between performance and battery life is tricky and this is something they are looking into in great detail right now.
The iPad 2 was due to get a higher resolution screen, but the time frame and production issues caused them to force a cancellation. It hasn't affected sales in the least, with the iPad 2 flying off the shelves. When the iPad 3 is released however with the new high resolution panel we can imagine that ebay will be flooded with cheap iPad's and iPad 2's.
Kitguru says: Would you jump on board the Apple train for a tablet panel with this resolution?
im all for it myself, but the problem is powering such a high resolution.
I suppose they could put a fallback resolution reduction for the more intensive games. they do it with Playstation 3, no games run at 1080p etc.
I suspect that they might add a quad core apple A6 based on the cortex A9. The NGP has it so why can’t this? This can provide good gaming performance and give the extra oomph for a tablet retina. I also hope for thunderbolt, NFC, LTE, and 1GB RAM. And I suspect that Apple can do this with still maybe 9 hours of battery.
Oh come on. First it was “IPad 2 will have the uber resolution!!!” Now its “iPad 3 will have the uber resolution!!!” Next year if its not on the iPad 3 they’ll say “iPad 4 will have the uber resolution!!!” Year after year until at some point they get it right. A rumor is only credible if they do it once, this just seems some desperate attempt at one.