Apple just announced the iPad Air 2, the second generation iPad Air at an event. It has an improved 9.7-inch Retina display with anti-reflective coating on the glass, reducing reflections by 56%, powered by Apple A8X, a new chip that is based on 2nd generation 64-bit architecture. It has 3 billion transistors compared to 1 billion on the A7. The CPU is 12 times faster than the first iPad and the GPU is 180 times faster. It has M8 co-processor, similar to iPhone 6.
It also has a Touch ID fingerprint sensor on the home button and runs no runs on iOS 8.1. It is just 6.1mm thin, making it the thinnest tablet in the world. It is 18% thinner than the last year’s iPad Air. It has a 8-megapixel iSight camera with 1.12 micron pixels, f/2.4 aperture and 1080p video recording and a new FaceTime HD camera with new sensor and f/2.2 aperture. The LTE version now has support for 20 LTE bands, similar to iPhone 6.
Apple iPad Air 2 specifications
- 9.7 inch Fully laminated Retina Display with 2048×1536 resolution at 264 ppi, Antireflective coating
- 6.1 mm thick, weighs 437 g (WiFi) / 444 g (WiFi + Cellular)
- A8 chip with 2nd gen 64-bit architecture and M8 motion coprocessor
- Touch ID fingerprint sensor
- 4G LTE (optional), Wi‑Fi (802.11a/b/g/n/ac); dual channel (2.4GHz and 5GHz) and MIMO, Bluetooth 4.0
- 8 MP iSight 1080p camera, f/2.4 aperture, Panorama (up to 43MP)
- 1.2MP HD front-facing camera, f/2.2 aperture
- 16/64/128GB variants
- 27.3-watt-hour battery with up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video or listening to music
The Apple iPad Air 2 comes in Silver, Space Gray, and Gold. It is priced at $499 for the 16GB version, $599 for 64GB and $699 for the 128GB for WiFi. The WiFi + LTE variant costs $629, $729 and $829 for 16GB, 64GB and 128GB variants, respectively. It’ll be available for pre-order starting October 17th and starts shipping next week.