IPad 2 Has Bigger Speaker, Flat Back, Smaller Body
Artist's rendering of rumored iPad 2 speaker grille
Today’s iPad rumor comes courtesy of Japanese blog MacOtakara. According to “sources in China”, the iPad 2 will be smaller, flatter and have a bigger, beefier speaker.
Even MacOtakara is skeptical of the rumors, but – true or not – they sound plausible. The new iPad will shave 3mm off the screen’s bezel, making for a smaller tablet but with the same sized display, dropping the overall dimensions from 242.8mm to 239mm (height) and 189.7mm to 186mm (width).
The back of the iPad will be flatter than the current model, leading to less wobbling when poking at the screen whilst the iPad lays on a table.
Most interesting of all is a new speaker, a bigger, louder unit which crawls around the curve at the back of the iPad. The image above is a rendering by Taiyo Fujii for MacOtakara, showing what it might look like, interior metal gauze and all.
This larger speaker fits perfectly with the leaked iPad 2 case design, which has a large cutout that wraps around the rear in just this spot. In fact, when I saw that case design earlier this month, I immediately assumed it was for a bigger speaker.
Finally, and labelled as “unreliable” by MacOtakara, the new iPad will have two cameras, one front-firing and one rear-facing. The rear cam will be the same as the one in the iPhone 4. These units are, according to the source, already in production, and will ship in January.
This January date is like more likely to mean shipping to Apple, not shipping to customers. Establishing January as the launch date for new iPads would kill all iPad Christmas purchases in future.
Equipped with large speakers ‘iPad (2nd generation)’ is released in January 2011? [MacOtakara]
See Also:
Photos: Are These iPad 2 Cases?
Rumor: Apple's iPad 2 Lands April 2011
Fuente: Gadget Lab
