iPad 3 rumor round-up: March release, Retina display, iOS 5.1, and a bigger battery

It’s been quite a week for Apple leaks: First, confirmation that the big-screen Apple iTV is being tested and prepared for deployment — and now, if “sources” are to be believed, it appears that the iPad 3 will arrive in as little as three weeks. Apple will hold a special event in San Francisco in the first week of March, and the iPad 3 should be released a week after.

The same sources went on to add that the iPad 3 will indeed have the droolworthy 9.7-inch 2048×1536 Retina-class display — but unfortunately, that’s where the insider information dries up. What about the processor, RAM, and mobile radios?

There are two options as far as the SoC goes: Apple will either die shrink the A5 from 45nm to 28nm for increased battery life (important with the new, power-hungry display), or it will launch the A6. The A6 will likely be a 45nm (or 28nm) quad-core Cortex-A9 chip, or a 28nm dual-core Cortex-A15. There are hints that iOS 5.1, which should accompany the iPad 3 when it’s released, will support quad-core processors — but my bets are on a more power-efficient dual-core chip. iOS 5.1 should also bring some updates to Siri and a fix to the ongoing battery issues that some users are experiencing.

The GPU found in the current A5, the PowerVR SGX543MP2, is technically capable of pushing pixels to a 2048×1536 display, but in all likelihood the iPad 3 will have something newer and faster, the SGX554 perhaps. Bear in mind that 2048×1536 is a higher resolution than most desktop or laptop displays: Delivering games at a decent frame rate will be quite a challenge — and a battery-draining one at that. We can only speculate about the RAM, too; 512MB or 1GB are both possible. Likewise, the iPad 3′s cameras will probably receive an upgrade, but whether the backwards-facing unit will match up to the iPhone 4S remains to be seen.

And now the important bit: Battery life! Rumors point fairly strongly towards a larger battery in the iPad 3, both to make up for the larger screen (which will draw a lot more power than the 1024×768 display in the iPad 2) and the possible inclusion of 4G/LTE radios (though I think this is unlikely; LTE modems aren’t mature enough yet). The iPad 3 should have Bluetooth 4.0, too.

Finally, we should add that there’s one other nagging rumor that just won’t die: There’s an iPad Mini in the works. This is meant to be a 7-inch device that competes with the Kindle Fire, but this seems very unlikely while Apple is enjoying record-breaking revenues on the back of the iPhone 4S and 9.7-inch iPad 2.

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Apple iTV detailed: It’s like a 42-inch iPad

In a rather unexpected twist, Canada’s largest newspaper and newspaper of record — The Globe and Mail — has published details of Apple’s upcoming iTV. According to the paper, Rogers and Bell — Canada’s two largest telcos — are already testing the Apple iTV in their labs.

The Canadian paper, citing two anonymous sources, then confirms the feature set of iTV: Voice control via Siri integration; gesture recognition with a front-facing camera; and an on-screen keyboard, allowing users to surf the web, use social networks, start video chats, and so on. The Globe doesn’t confirm that the iTV will be interoperable with the iPhone or iPad, but in our opinion that’s a given.

In other news, over the weekend Best Buy issued a very short-lived customer survey where it asked customers if it would be interested in a 42-inch “Apple HDTV” for $1,499. The survey confirmed that the iTV would effectively be a 42-inch iPad, with access to the App Store, media downloads through the iTunes Store, and iCloud integration. Best Buy has since issued a statement saying the survey was merely “hypothetical,” but the specs do seem to line up with expectations. The price is excessive if you look at it from a TV point of view, but not when you consider that it has a full computer inside — and possibly the upcoming A6 processor, too.

Ultimately, though, we all know that the Apple iTV will be awesome. These reports merely ratify our expectations — if they did anything else, we’d be miffed. After a slew of almost infallible product launches, iTV has to be good.

The bigger shocker is that we seem to be living through a very rare example of Apple PR losing control of an unannounced product. Apple is famously tight-lipped when it comes to new products, usually managing to secure complete secrecy until the keynote itself.

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