We were all anxiously waiting for Apple’s event today to see what the company was going to announce. Given the timing of this event almost everyone knew that we’re in store for some new iPads. Today Apple unveiled the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 3. The company spent a lot of time talking about the former during the event, and merely mentioned the latter towards the end. iPad mini 3 isn’t a revolutionary update by any standard but it does bring one feature that many iPad owners have been requesting for a long time now.
As far as the design is concerned there are no major changes. Its the same 7.9-inch display in exactly the same design. Don’t expect to find too many changes under the hood as well.
There’s no specification parity between iPad Air 2 and the iPad mini 3. It is still powered by the A7 chipset and M7 co-processor that was introduced in the iPad mini with Retina display last year.
Instead it has a 5 megapixel rear iSight camera with HD video recording. There’s support for 802.11n with MIMO. The Touch ID fingerprint sensor is present on the iPad mini 3, which means that it gets support for Apple Pay as well. The company’s payment service can only be used for online purchase through the tablet though, not at point-of-sales at supported retailers.
Like the iPad Air 2 the iPad mini 3 is now available in three colors, Silver, Space Gray and Gold. It starts at $399 for the base 16GB Wi-Fi only model, with 64GB and 128GB going for $499 and $599 respectively. Wi-Fi + Cellular models in all three storage configurations are available for $529, $629 and $729 respectively.
The iPad mini 3 can be pre-ordered starting tomorrow and it will ship next week.
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