The last weeks have been loaded with rumors about the future model of the iPad 2 tablet, many people discovering information in iOS 4.3 or from various suppliers, but a study sent to clients by an American analyst seems to confirm everything that has been presented so far. According to an analysis study sent by the analyst Ming-Chi Kuo to the clients of the company he works for, the iPad 2 tablet will have a dual core processor of 1.2 GHz Cortex A9 (which could be renamed to Apple A5), a screen with a resolution of 1024×768, 512MB RAM, anti-reflection screen 30% thinner than the current model, POWERVR SGX 543 graphic chip (with up to 200% - 300% more powerful than the one in iPhone 4) produced by Imagination Technologies and 2 cameras identical to those in iPod Touch 4G .
"The improvement of iPad 2 display focuses on thickness and anti-reflection, not resolution. iPad 2 display module is 30~35% thinner than iPad 1 and it's helpful for better form factor. Thanks to anti-reflection, iPad 2 could have better sunlight readable experience and it's helpful for Apple to compete with Amazon's fast growing Kindle business. The most important reason why iPad 2 won't have retinal display is yield rate of panel making. At this point, making high resolution and bright IPS/FFS panel is not easy and the production volume and cost could not meet Apple's requirements."
The study continues by detailing a very interesting aspect, the iPad 2 tablet will have double the amount of RAM compared to the iPad, but it will have faster memories because Apple would have chosen to implement RAM modules clocked at 1066 Mhz compared to the 800 Mhz that the current models have. In terms of connectivity, the report claims that the iPad 2 will be produced in 3 versions: CDMA, 3G and GSM, with Apple preferring to make a CDMA version to attract a very large part of the market that it has so far ignored. As for the cameras, we will have a 0.3 megapixel front camera (like the iPhone 4) and a VGA camera in the back, just like the iPod Touch 4G. It was normal for Apple to do this, there was no point in putting a very powerful camera on a tablet with which very few people will take pictures.
"As expected, the report also states "iPad 2 will also have a GPU using Imagination's SGX543 dual core graphics technology which is 200~300% powerful than iPhone 4. RAM is also on the rise, the report says. For making full use of GPU upgrading advantage, iPad 2 needs bigger memory bandwidth. So iPad 2 has 512MB RAM, same as iPhone 4 and twice as much as iPad 1, but running at higher clock 1,066 MHz for getting bigger memory bandwidth (iPhone 4 memory clock is 800 MHz)."
That's about it for the iPad 2, many hardware changes and certainly some new software, but that's all. It was as if I expected something more from Apple, especially since so many tablets appeared on the market.
