Apple Unveils iPad Air And iPad Mini 2: Lighter And Slimmer With A7 Chips

After boasting that it had sold over 170 million iPads in the past and that there are about 475,000 custom-designed iPad apps, Apple went on to unveil its latest tablets, the iPad Air and the iPad Mini 2, at its launch event last night.

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iPad Air

Lets start with the iPad Air. Talking about its form factor, the new slate is only 7.5mm thin, which is about 20 percent thinner than outgoing model (iPad 4). It features a slimmer bezel, meaning that you get more screen real estate. Its also lighter at just 450 grams, down from about 700 grams (previous iPad).

As expected, it uses the brand new A7 chip that we saw in the iPhone 5S, thereby meaning that it features 64-bit architecture. There's also the M7 motion coprocessor, another component that we saw in Apple's latest flagship phone. Apple added that all this will translate into 8 times better performance and 72 times faster graphics performance when compared to the original iPad.

For imaging, it uses a 5 megapixel iSight camera in the rear and a 1080p FaceTime camera. The slate will also features dual mics. It will be able to offer a 10 hour battery life and will be available in silver and white, space gray and black. It will start shipping in the US from $629 (Rs.38,777) As with past models, the iPad Air will come in both WiFi and cellular versions that support LTE.

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iPad Mini 2

The Apple iPad mini 2 still uses a 7.9" screen with a 4:3 aspect ratio. However there has been a serious improvement with the resolution, which has quadrupled to 1536 x 2048 pixels, with the pixel density doubling up to 324ppi. Finally, an 8-inch slate that can compete with Google's gorgeous Nexus 7 (2013) tablet that has 323ppi.

It uses an A7 chipset, a huge improvement from the previous lowly dual-core Cortex-A9 processor. There is also 1GB of RAM and a better GPU, PowerVR SGX 6th series. And yes, there's an M7 coprocessor on board as well. The Apple iPad mini 2 will be available in the US from November starting at $399 (Rs. 24,000 aprox).

Expect the shiny new slates to hit the Indian market sometime later this year.

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