Build
Launched alongside the new Apple TV, the new iPad 3 looks much the same as the Apple iPad 2. The Home button remains, despite the big tease of the launch invite’s imagery, but where successive iThings of the past have been thinner, lighter and the proud owner of new monikers, Apple’s latest tablet is thicker (by
0.6mm), heavier (by 50g) and has no identifying numbers or letters to its name.
Screen
Android aficionados will find 2048x1536 reasons not to buy, but a bitch of a screen ain’t one. Some 3.1 million pixels at 264ppi are now crammed into the 9.7-inch display – the leading Android tablets, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the Asus Transformer Prime, come in at 1280x800.
Put the new iPad 3 side by side with the iPad 2 and the improvement is, quite visibly, clear. On the older iPad, apps in folders are just blobs of pixelated colour; on the new one you can almost make out text.
The Apple Retina Display smooths out edges and renders text pin-sharp so ebooks, websites and documents are so much easier on the eye. There’s better contrast, greater definition with still and moving images, and better colour saturation – an improvement of 44 per cent over the iPad 2, Apple reckons.
1080p HD
Another Retina reward can be seen with HD video now up to 1080p – yes, Apple is updating its iTunes movie catalogue to full HD – and stills up to 19 megapixels, though you’ll have to import the latter as the onboard camera only boasts five. Both look stunning in terms of reproduction clarity, mind.
Performance
To power this next-gen display the new iPad needs extra processing grunt, and it’s provided by an improved dualcore chip, the A5X, with a quadcore GPU. While HD video and menu swiping don’t appear any smoother than before – they were already plenty smooth – gaming, as you’d anticipate, really benefits.
Playing the upcoming Infinity Blade: Dungeons, the polygonal-pushing experience is exceptional, with quality not far off what we’ve seen so far on the Sony PS Vita. There are multiple layers, complex shading, frenetic action and minimal slow down.
Camera
A lesser upgrade is the rear-facing iSight cam. Its f/2.4 aperture optics are pinched from the iPhone 4S, but with a five-meg resolution rather than eight. Images are better than the iPad 2’s but tablet cams are still hardly the last word in convenience – one-handed tap-to-focus is mission impossible – and results remain away off dedicated compacts, especially indoors or in overcast conditions.
4G
One of the most exciting additions to the new iPad is 4G. Except, er, there is no 4G in the UK, so it’s actually 3.5G here. Or, erm, at least it is in some parts of the UK.
One thing’s for sure: in its current state, the third-gen iPad won’t work on true UK 4G networks when they arrive this year or next as the mobile frequencies supported by the iPad and the spectrums about to be auctioned by the government don’t match.
What the new iPad can take advantage of right now is HSPA+, which isn’t 4G but has a theoretical top download speed of 21Mbps.
In practice, we achieved around 4-6Mbps and 1-2Mbps upload on the 3 network. Browsing, downloading and streaming all seemed brisker than on iPad 2. It’s possible we’ll see a greater speed hike when 42Mbps dual-channel HSPA (DC-HSPA) hits the UK this summer.
A welcome addition is the iPhone-esque Personal Hotspot feature, although this will have to be activated by your provider. Bluetooth has also been upgraded to the low-power-consuming 4.0 standard, as used in the Nike FuelBand.
Connecting the iPad to other Bluetooth devices is still rather hit and miss, it must be said, Wi-Fi is, as you’d want it to be, still N standard and, as you might not want it to be, but there it is, single-band.
Battery
In testing we noticed a quickening in battery drain with the new iPad when browsing, viewing and creating content when compared to iPad 2. Watching a two-hour HD movie on both devices reduced 10 per cent more of the third-gen’s battery, while overnight energy seepage clocked in at six per cent, compared to zero from iPad 2.
General, non-intensive use reduced the battery by about 10 per cent per hour, which is bang on Apple’s claimed drainage. Our major gripe, though, is that the new iPad still takes an excessive amount of time to reach full charge.
*source : www.T3.com
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