Ipad Mini 4 Screen Refresh Rate

Mockups of the new iPhone and iPad Mini. (Courtesy of John Anastasiadis)

Apple is gear up to unveil a new iPhone and possibly a new smaller iPad on Sept. 12, according to pundits. Apple tree has previously dismissed the vii-inch form factor for tablets because it's too small, but the recent successes of the Kindle Fire from Amazon and the Nexus 7 tablet from Google, manufactured by Asus, have slowly squeezed the nine.7-inch iPad'southward marketplace share, so Apple is expected to hit dorsum.

Rumors of an iPad Mini, or iPad Nano, or basically the full general idea of a smaller, cheaper iPad take been floated pretty much since the original iPad came out in 2010. Needless to say, it hasn't materialized. But and then again, Apple tree is known for taking its time to perfect products before they are launched, pregnant the visitor could have a surprise upwards its sleeve.

The Timing

Traditionally, Apple has held a special fall outcome since 2001, when the iPod was launched. Fall used to be reserved for introducing the latest iterations of its music products, my ComputerWorld peer Jonny Evans explains. This changed final year when there was no dedicated summer iPhone launch event, and it got moved into the fall, as iPod sales are slowly declining in favor of Apple's iPhones and iPads.

The Sept. 12 launch date for the newest iPhone and a smaller iPad was offset floated around by Mac site iMore, later confirmed by sources of AllThings D, Apple pundit Jim Dalrymple of The Loop and then The Verge — all reputable sources.

However, only iMore mentions that a smaller iPad might be unveiled at the effect, while the others just talk virtually the launch of a new iPhone. So whether Apple tree volition announce a smaller iPad this fall, along with the new iPhone, or await until side by side spring, the usual iPad release cycle, remains to exist seen.

What nosotros do know from Apple's latest quarterly filing is that the company is ramping up for a big fall product cycle, every bit figures show a spike in prepayment for inventory components, suggesting one or more products are existence mass-produced.

The Specs

Steve Jobs said in the by that Apple is not looking into making seven-inch tablets because users would accept to sand downwards their fingers in order to accurately tap on buttons on the screen, compared to the screen area of a 9.7-inch iPad. Merely Apple could take found a way around this upshot.

This nautical chart from Twitter user Trojankitten shows that Apple's smaller iPad would not take the same aspect ratio as the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7, but more like the iPad. This would mean that the smaller iPad's display would exist every bit tall as the electric current iPad's width, given reports from Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal indicating the size of the brandish would be between seven and viii inches.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball did the math and reached the conclusion that in guild to maintain the aforementioned aspect ratio as the big iPad (thus making it a small-scale iPad, and not a large iPod), the smaller tablet would have a 7.85-inch screen diagonally, with a resolution of 1024 past 768 pixels.

All in all, this would actually mean that at 7.85-inch diagonal and 4:3 aspect ratio, the smaller iPad would take almost forty percent more than screen manor than 7-inch tablets like the Nexus 7 or Kindle Burn down.

Since the screen size debate has been the master focus on the smaller iPad, piddling is known about the other specs. Boy Genius Report reports via Chinese-linguistic communication site MyDrivers that the smaller iPad would cost between $249 and $299 at launch, some $50 more than the starting price of the Nexus vii and Kindle Burn down. In a split up report, the site as well showed purported instance renderings for the smaller iPad, indicating it would be 7.4 millimeters thin (new iPad is 9.3 millimeters thick), a pilus over the 7.3 millimeters thin iPod touch.

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