The New iPad 3

New iPad. Yes, the folks back at Apple don't call it iPad3 but New iPad.

The company is so confident about the device that they have done away with traditional numbering and see this year as an all new starting for the iPad.

So let's see what devil lies in the details of the New iPad -

First to catch your eye, very literally, will be the new Retina Display technology. In a 9.7 inch form factor, the Retina Display has a 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution. That adds up to 3.1 million pixels, approximately 1 million more than you'd see on an average 1080p HD TV. Such high display res makes catching an individual pixel impossible. In simple words, it's a pleasure for your eyes. You can see a significant improvement in display vs the iPad2.

Well, good 3.1 million pixels and all.. isn't that supposed to make the hardware grumble? Yes. So, there's a new A5X chip onboard the new iPad. Offering quad-core graphics capabilities, Apple stated that the A5X performs 4X better than the NVIDIA Tegra 3 mobile GPU. This one will be a pleasure for the gamers as Apple is claiming the new iPad is good for 10 hours worth of use from a single battery charge. This means they may lose a lot of hours here. Though the device did hang few times and, also, showed no significant improvement in app load time, A5X still seems to be a step ahead.

Camera - Apple took a lesson from the Blackberry boys and introduced the iSight camera onto the rear of the tablet, capable of shooting 5MP stills. It's more or less the same as you'd find in the iPhone 4S, offering a five element lens, a hybrid IR filter, backside illumination, and Apple's own ISP. There's also 1080p recording onboard now. The pictures had a significant upward quality shift in comparison to the ones taken on the iPad2. Another good addition is iPhoto which basically is a simple software which gives a run for money to photoshop and is simple enough for even a novice to churn out some expert images.

4G LTE support - Yes, the company made a lot of noise about this technology which basically enables high speed downloads to the device but unfortunately, with the network band specification, it has come to light that this technology can't be used in any of the Asian networks (forget India as we do not have the 4G networks here).

Initial Verdict

Lets go through the checklist most of us set for the iPad 3 -

Retina Display? Check. Faster processor? Check. Better cameras and image editing options? Check. 4G mobile downloads? Check.

It's hard to fault the new iPad in this regard. So if you were planning to buy a tablet, well time has come. Though an up-sell from iPad 2 to the new one is not a very strong proposition yet, Apple is helped by the competitors. While Kindle is no match for the iPad, the only tablets standing are Galaxy and Playbook and both of them have at-least one more generation to cover before they can mount an attack on the New iPad (although we don't bet that both Samsung and RIM will stay calm). So let the storm brew.