Next Gen iPad with Camera, Video Conferencing

The next gen iPad will come with video conferencing and other camera related features. How do we know this? What happened was that Apple had released the third beta of the iPhone OS 3.2 software development kit for the iPad to developers but later pulled it back. However, some developers had already downloaded beta 3 before it was pulled back, reported MacRumors.

Recently, the icons for video chat and other inferences were reported from the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK for iPad. With the third beta of the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK, more references to the camera and tab in the photos.app application discoveredby 9to5 Mac were made. These too indicate that a camera clad iPad is evidential in future. This camera will come with a flash, zoom and will be front facing.

Do check out this photos.app walkthrough from 9to5 Mac.

Apart from that, the iPhone OS 3.2 SDK also revealed that the iPad uses PowerVR SGX graphics hardware which is from the same family as that of iPhone and iPod Touch. The exact snippet from the beta 3 documentation states:


Using OpenGL ES on iPad is identical to using OpenGL ES on other iPhone OS devices. An iPad is a PowerVR SGX device and supports the same basic capabilities as other SGX devices. However, because the processor, memory architecture, and screen dimensions are different for iPad, you should always test your code on an iPad device before shipping to ensure performance meets your requirements.

After knowing all the above mentioned facts, who's going to buy the current generation iPad that would be released in March?