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In Pictures: First look - Apple iPad mini

12 Photos John Cox (Network World)

The small iPad is just what the official name – indeed called iPad mini – suggests. It’s recognizably the iconic iPad tablet, only it’s smaller. Here's a closer look at what you get.

  • Thinking small The small iPad is just what the official name – indeed called iPad mini – suggests. It’s recognizably the iconic iPad tablet, only it’s smaller, as Apple announced on Oct. 23. The iPad mini goes on sale Nov. 2, at $329 for the 16GB Wi-Fi model, $429 for 32 GB, and $529 for 64 GB. The LTE/3G option adds $130. Here’s a closer look at what you get.

  • Dimensional reality Yep: it’s smaller. The dimensions are 0.28 inches thick, 5.3 inches wide and 7.87 inches tall, weighing 0.68 pounds. The touch screen is 7.9 inches diagonally. Compared to the newest iPad: 0.37 inches thick, 7.31 inches wide, 9.5 inches tall, weighing 1.44 pounds; a 9.7-inch screen. The itsyPad is in two colors: black with slate back, and white with silver back.

  • And it's thinner As the photo shows, pencil thin. Apple re-engineered completely the interior for the iPad mini to make it thinner as well as smaller.

  • Near seamless edge As with the iPhone 5, the new tablet has a diamond cut chamfer on the edge of the housing. The glass has been fitted nearly seamlessly into the aluminum unibody.

  • Big impact in a smaller screen, Part 1 At 7.9 inches, the iPad mini display is nearly two inches shorter diagonally than the full iPad. It offers the same resolution as the iPad 2: 1024x768 pixels, or 163 pixels per inch, well below the 264ppi of the third-generation iPad’s Retina display.

  • Big impact in a smaller screen, Part 2 The iPad mini screen is nearly an inch longer diagonally than rival 7-inch tablets. But that translates into about 35% more screen area, according to Apple. The smaller margins at left and right make the screen image seem even more prominent.

  • The shrinking dock connector iPad mini is the second iOS device, following iPhone 5, to use Apple’s redesigned, much smaller 8-pin dock connector, dubbed Lightning. It creates more room along the bottom edge, and inside. Your existing 30-pin peripherals will work, provided you shell out $29 for Apple’s Lightning-to-30-pin adapter.

  • The shrinking CPU iPad mini runs Apple’s A5 chip, first introduced for iPhone 4S and later iPad 2. But for the smaller tablet, this chip version uses a smaller, 32-nanometer fabrication process to shrink the overall package. That reduces heat and boosts power efficiency also.

  • Wireless: dual-band Wi-Fi and LTE/3G Apple upgraded its single-stream 802.11n Wi-Fi to support the 5GHz band in addition to 2.4GHz. That’s a cleaner, less crowded band. The data rate is 150Mbps, though throughput is much less. For another $130, you can have an LTE/3G cellular radio included.

  • Battery life Whatever you want to do with the iPad mini, you’ll be able to do it a long time. Apple says the small tablet gets the same 10 hours of Wi-Fi Internet activity as its big brother. The company designed its largest yet thinnest iPad battery so far to exploit the available space in the smaller body: a 16.3-watthour lithium-polymer battery. You’ll get 9 hours of cellular data Web use, according to Apple.

  • Cameras The FaceTime front-facing camera takes 1.2 megapixel snaps, and 720p HD video. The rear-facing iSight camera, with a f/2.4 aperture, takes 5 megapixel photos and records 1080p HD video.

  • Smart screen The iPad mini screen is smaller but smarter: It can figure out when your thumb is simply resting on the screen or interacting with it.

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