Announced at a March 2018 Apple event so heavily focused on education it was held in an actual school, the iPad is nonetheless, iPad 9.7-inch 2018. Far from being scaled down to make it cheaper for schools, it actually adds some features previously found only in its ‘Pro’ big brothers.
Yes, it’s being pushed at launch as an inexpensive platform for school kids, students and teachers to access the “200,000” education-focussed iOS apps available. But it is actually this year’s new iPad for grown-ups, too.
The new iPad has a 9.7-inch Retina Screen that is compatible with Apple Pencil thanks to a higher-resolution touch sensor. Apple’s own productivity apps – Pages, Numbers, and Keynote – have been updated accordingly. Annotations made with Pencil are stored specifically as an addition to the paragraph they’re annotating. So that’s nice.
Another former iPad Pro-only feature carried over is its advanced tilt and pressure sensing.
More standard spec details: 10 hours battery, 9.7-inch, 2048×1536-pixel, 264 ppi screen. 8-megapixel/1080p front camera, 1.2-meg/720p front ‘FaceTime’ camera.
The new iPad runs on Apple’s 64-bit, quadcore, A10 Fusion chip. This is a slightly more powerful version of the A10 that powered the last iPad. You can have either 32GB or 128GB and either Wi-Fi connectivity only, or 4G and Wi-Fi.
Unlocking is via Touch ID fingerprint reading, rather than facial recognition. Weight is about 450g, so young arms may lift it.
A lot of the focus at launch, education and creativity aside, was on augmented reality, which the A10 Fusion chip is supposedly engineered to be especially adept with.
iPad 2018 is the 6th generation of the iPad fam, and comes in silver, space grey or a ‘new’ gold finish that looks rather like the old gold finish.
The base model with Wi-Fi is priced at ₹28,000 whereas the Wi-Fi+Cellular model is priced at ₹38,600. The Apple Pencil can be purchased separately for ₹7,600.
Leave a Reply