Apple has finally announced the launch of the second generation iPad at an event held at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco earlier today. The second iPad comes in just about a year after the debut if the iPad that has since then gone on to become the highest selling tablet ever.
Surprising everyone assembled at the venue it was none other than Steve Jobs who unveiled the device. It was not long ago that there were talks about Steve Jobs health concerns. Some papers even reported about him being on his deathbed.
In his typical style, Steve started off by talking about the iPad numbers claiming that they managed to sell 15 million iPads last year that left most of Apple’s competitors “flummoxed”.
The new iPad gets a new curvier design as well as an Apple A5 dual core processor, an upgrade from the A4 on the old iPad. The graphics chip is 9 times faster than the one on the existing iPad. It is “dramatically thinner” than the original iPad – almost 1/3rd times thinner. At just 8.8 mm thin – it is thinner than the iPhone 4! It gets front and rear cameras as well. You can use the front camera for FaceTime calls now. The battery life has been retained at 10 hours. The iPad 2 features HDMI mirroring using a HDMI video out port. Users can use a dongle to connect the HDMI cable as well as the charging cable to the supplied “HDMI video out, via dock accessory cable”. The best thing is that both of this can happen simultaneously! The iPad 2 will run iOS 4.3 at launch.
The iPad 2 comes in white as well and would be available on both Verizon and AT&T. The price has been retained starting at $499 for the base 16 GB, Wi-Fi version going up to $829 for the 64 GB Wi-Fi plus 3G version.
It will start shipping on March 11 – just about a week from now in the US. In other markets, the iPad would be available starting March 25.
