Apple’s iPad mini is pretty much the undisputed king of the small tablet market at this point, and with good reason. Small, light, powerful and above all backed by the App Store, the iPad mini has a lot going for it. Even with all the good though, there’s one tick in the bad column that many still find impossible to ignore: the lack of a Retina display.
Back when the iPad mini launched, it got away without packing the super high resolution Retina display of other Apple devices, but with a new model expected sooner or later, everyone expects the iPad mini 2 to feature that much hoped for, and almost required Retina display.
With an iPad mini 2 expected some time within the next few months, one report now claims that it may not feature the Retina display that we all long for, at least not this year.
According to one report out of Taiwan, a shortage of Retina displays of the required size is set to push Apple’s Retina iPad mini back from the fourth quarter of 2013 and into 2014. Whilst disappointing, it’s not the first time we’ve heard rumors that the iPad mini may not get a high resolution display in its 2nd generation, but we’re still going to hope that they’re wrong by a long shot. Hence, you can imagine how much we long for a Retina display on the next-generation iPad mini here at Redmond Pie.
Also of interest is the claim that Apple will ship two versions of the iPad mini when the Retina display does become available; one with, and one without. It’s unclear right now how that would work, and how the specifications would pan out across such a split in the range. It would suggest that Apple is perhaps struggling to meet its current price point when including that Retina panel, though, which is a concern for those of us not wanting to splash too much cash on the latest mini tablet to come out of Cupertino.
The iPad mini has been a runaway success for Apple, and any replacement for the current model is almost guaranteed to sell well. Throwing a Retina display into the mix would just seal the deal.
(via: EconomicDailyNews [Google Translate])
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