Economic Daily News reports that a new, smaller iPad will be released before the end of the year. Sourcecode of the latest iOS 4.1-beta shows that a new iPad as well as a new iPhone is currently being tested. The fact Apple wants to release a smaller iPad, could indicate the company wants to bring a iPad-line to the market, just like the Macs.
According to the report, the new iPad will have a 7-inch touchscreen. Another report comes from DigiTimes Research and suggests Apple will also release a new 9.7-inch iPad (generation 2) in the first quarter of 2011. The iPad will likely get a Cortex A9-processor and 512 MB of memory. It will also have a IPS-screen with a resolution of 1024×768 pixels.
The current Apple A4 processor in the first generation iPad is already a very economical processor while still offering a lot of power. The Cortex A9 will be even more energy-efficient while still delivering more power then the Apple A4. Though the rumors say the A9 will likely be a multi-core processor, a single core Cortex A9 could be offering a speed up to 2 GHz. Officially the Cortex A9 will have 4 cores. With such a processor in the iPad it becomes pretty easy to perform 3D-manipulation and HD-video editing while still drawing only a small portion of power from the battery.
