Even though the iPad 4 launched just two months ago, it’s never too soon to consider what the next-generation iPad may deliver.
That’s the thinking of Jeremy Horwitz of iLounge who reported on Friday that talk of iPad 5 isn’t premature in the least. According to him, the device has already been designed.
“Earlier this month,” Horwitz revealed this morning, “I had the opportunity to inspect a supposedly accurate—and seriously intriguing—physical model of the completely redesigned fifth-generation iPad.”
But “unlike the iPad 2 and third-generation iPad,” he admits, “the casings for which were basically complete as of the Januaries before they launched, the iPad 5 didn’t seem to be finished yet.”
Nonetheless, Horwitz says that calling the iPad 5 a “stretched iPad mini” is “very close to entirely accurate.” In other words, the “fifth-generation iPad will be smaller in every dimension than its predecessors.”
Based on what Horwitz has seen and heard, the iPad 5 will launch this October and not sooner. Why? The knowledgeable Apple watcher says that the screens and processors needed to make the iPad 5 Apple’s thinnest and faster tablet to date “are going to be hard to come by for a while.”
