It’s been a while since fresh rumors about the upcoming iPad Air Plus have made their way to the public, but there are some new bits of information roaming around lately, pointing at a potential release date for the device. According to the rumors, the new iPad will be launched sometime during the spring of 2015, and will feature a 12.2” screen.
There has been a lot of speculation about the screen of the device in particular, and now it seems that Apple are aiming to bring their tablet slightly closer to Microsoft’s Surface models. In addition, the new iPad seems to have received various changes to its physical design, such as extra speakers with special stereo functionality, as well as a Retina HD display. The speakers can be seen in schematics reportedly coming straight from Apple, and the news about the new speaker configuration also matches previous rumors about the upcoming tablet.
Beneath the screen, Apple are rumored to be using an all-new A9 processor with even more processing power, delivering a smooth user experience all across the operating system, and making the tablet quite more powerful than other offers from Apple’s competitors.
Bloomberg previously reported that Apple are aiming for a release date in early 2015, and these latest rumors seem to coincide with those claims. It’s not known what date exactly Apple are looking at, but various sources seem to point at anywhere between April and June 2015.
None of this has been confirmed yet, of course – if Apple had made an official announcement about the iPad Air Plus, it would be big news already. But the way the rumor cloud is coming together seems to be quite consistent so far, and most of the popular stories are lining up. It seems that Apple really are aiming at a slightly increased screen and a more powerful tablet – although there have been concerns from some critics regarding Apple’s desire to increase the device’s processing power.
The iPad Air follows a thin design philosophy, and if Apple want to make the device significantly more powerful, they should be prepared to deal with the additional cooling challenges that this would pose. However, Apple are a company known for their clever approach to such problems, and if the rumors are true and the company really is trying to do something like this, then they likely already have a clear idea for how they’re going to implement it exactly. It remains to be seen what Apple are going to reveal about the new iPad Air Plus in the coming months, although the most prominent rumors are starting to shape up really nicely, and are forming a great picture.