iPad 3 release date: retina display, A6, LTE race for March inclusion

February 3, 2012 by Bill Palmer

by Bill Palmer

With the iPad 3 all but confirmed for a March 2012 release date, the days are counting down until Apple finalizes the product’s design and sends it into production. Several potential “iPad 3″ prototypes are likely floating around Apple’s inner campus circle, and one of them will be tapped to become the official next-generation iPad. That means that any hardware features which Apple has been attempting to make work in the iPad 3 will have to be completed within a matter of days – or axed until next time around. Purportedly on that list are an upgraded “retina display” screen to match the one already in the iPhone, which would make the iPad 3 screen as dense as the human eye can see, effectively the highest resolution screen possible in a device of its size. Apple is also rumored to be flirting with 4G LTE behind the scenes, and while LTE antennas are still too bulky and power hungry to go into a normal sized smartphone while providing acceptable battery power (witness the string of failed 4G LTE Android phones with unacceptably short battery life), but the roomier insides of the iPad might allow the iPad 3 to gain 4G LTE nonetheless. And Apple’s own in-house quad core A6 microprocessor, which would give the iPad 3 unprecedented internal speed for a tablet, is also a logical inclusion. But Apple’s secretive nature means that none of these has been externally confirmed or ruled out, and it’s possible that one or more of them is coming down to the wire as we speak. Whether Apple would be willing to postpone the release date of the iPad 3 in order to make sure each is included is another matter…

Apple has, like clockwork, released every iPad and iPhone about twelve months apart going back to the first iPad in 2010 and the first iPhone in 2007 – with the singular exception of the iPhone 4S which didn’t arrive until nearly a year and a half after the iPhone 4. Just what precisely it was that held up the 4S has never been revealed, although some have posited that the iPhone 5 was the product which was running late and the iPhone 4S was merely released to buy time. That begs the question of which component(s) held up the new iPhone, and what Apple ultimately considered to be so crucial that it sounded the alarm rather than simply launching the new iPhone without it. In terms of the iPad 3, Apple could easily launch the device with a lower quality screen or a current generation A5 processor if either component is lagging behind, and 4G LTE could be left out entirely without too much controversy. The bottom line, then, is that the iPad 3 should launch on time – which by Apple’s calendar means a March introduction and a late March or early April release date.