Digitimes once again revives talk of a 7.85-Inch iPad. According to the site, Apple is likely to launch a 7.85-inch iPad prior to 4th quarter of 2012 in addition to a new iPad at the end of the 1st quarter. Apple reportedly is looking to take on the increasing number of competitors such as Android's 7-inch Kindle Fire:
However, in order to cope with increasing market competition including the 7-inch Kindle Fire from Amazon and the launch of large-size smartphones from handset vendors, Apple has been persuaded into the development of 7.85-inch iPads, the sources indicated.
There's been enough talk of such a device that it seems certain that Apple has at least been prototyping one over the past year. This previous mockup of such a device was discussed a year ago as a possibility:
Previous rumors have suggested that a 7.85-inch iPad would carry the same resolution (1024x768) as the current iPad. This would open the door to Apple differentiating their new iPad with a much higher resolution Retina display, while offering the old resolution on a physically smaller device.
Given the number of ongoing rumors, it seems certain that Apple has been experimenting with a 7.85-inch iPad. We'd guess its ultimate arrival will depend on how the market responds to the Kindle Fire and similar tablets in the coming year.
Monday October 26, 2026 6:05 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple today announced a new iPad mini with a larger 8.5-inch OLED display, a nano-texture display option, a thinner and lighter design, an A20 Pro chip, a new Acoustic Display audio system that eliminates speaker holes, IP67-rated water and dust resistance, a landscape front camera, Apple's N1 chip with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 support, and more. Altogether, Apple says this amounts to the iPad...
Apple has begun inviting selected members of the media to a product launch experience in Los Angeles on Wednesday, October 28, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
In a post on X, Gurman described the gathering as an "all-day product launch experience" for touchscreen MacBooks, a new iPad mini, and Macs equipped with M6 chips.
Gurman previously reported that Apple would introduce the...
Thursday October 29, 2026 1:47 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
While the new iPad mini has an OLED display, the device does not support ProMotion, meaning the display's refresh rate is limited to 60Hz instead of 120Hz.
ProMotion support would have allowed for the iPad mini's refresh rate to automatically adjust from 10Hz to 120Hz depending on the content being displayed, but evidently Apple has kept the feature exclusive to the iPad Pro among iPad...
However, in order to cope with increasing market competition including the 7-inch Kindle Fire from Amazon and the launch of large-size smartphones from handset vendors, Apple has been persuaded into the development of 7.85-inch iPads, the sources indicated.
I'm not sure if this is a joke, but what you just listed is hardware and has nothing to do with the OS of the phone. Hardware is always evolving and most of it is not researched/made by the phone manufacturers themselves.
Phones running Android have been having the lead on that kind of things mainly because a new phone is released around every week, because they have different price segments (lower and higher end phones) and because they have to make hardware features selling points given the amount of competing manufacturers offering phones with the same software.
Anybody could predict that quad-core and 5G phones are coming someday. You're not a genius for putting them on the market slightly before the others. They're just numbers and don't change the concept of a phone.
iPad 3 will be launched for what iPad 2 retails for right now (about $499) and iPad 2 will go on sale after launch for about $299 to compete with the prices of Amazon Kindle Fire and Nook.
