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flavr

macrumors 6502
Nov 9, 2011
363
40
Eh...if this is somehow true that's why I bought the mini 16GB...when retina comes out ill sell for a minimal loss and get a 32GB retina mini and hang on to that one for awhile...
 

ljmjag

macrumors member
Jul 1, 2005
71
29
Sure you believe it. Spend anytime with this first mini and it is absolutely apparent that this was/is as close to a "beta" product that Apple has released in years. No retina and a 2 year old chip - c'mon, really? It's the worst kept secret in all of tech that the mini was going to get an early refresh to improve its specs for the overall Apple experience. Especially since Amazon and Google have been advertising how much better their current screens are - and for so much less money. Apple will now bury the rest of the playing field.

Can't wait for the mini2!
 

GreatDrok

macrumors 6502a
May 1, 2006
561
22
New Zealand
Not true. The current mini was designed to retain good quality while lowering the cost. Adding retina wouldn't have met that market need. Worse, the power requirements of the A6X needed to move those pixels would mean the thing would suck too much power and run very hot. The current mini actually gets pretty hot despite the die shrink that the A5 went through in the later iPad 2. They'll need to have another die shrink to get the A6X into it and that isn't going to happen overnight. We might not even see a retina mini within the next year and in fact as others have pointed out, the only real advantage the full size iPad has over the mini is the retina display. The other issue is manufacturing the newer panel without defects - the more pixels the more likely you're going to have dead pixels and that all adds to the cost of production.

Comparing the mini to an original iPad or iPad 2 shows a definite improvement in the pixel density. I was shocked going back to the older iPad to see just how obvious the pixels were by comparison, plus the mini screen is a significant step up in quality over the older screen even though the resolution is the same. It looks substantially crisper. More importantly, don't compare a retina device with a mini in portrait mode because you're not seeing the fonts at their rendered resolution. In landscape the fonts look fine, but in portrait it scales the fonts a little since they're rendered at 1024 wide and scaled down to 768 in portrait. It is site dependent though, for instance the mobile version of MacRumors works well in portrait, but the full desktop version is much better in landscape. Apple should really implement minimum font settings in Safari to improve the experience but for everything else, the screen is good and it preserves battery life and performance.
 

SR71

macrumors 68000
Jan 12, 2011
1,602
365
Boston, MA
I could definitely see this happening. I see the current iPad Mini as a "test" for Apple to see how customerrs would take to a smaller iPad, so instead of going all out on their first gen "tester" product, they used older parts, and a worse screen so they could keep costs down as they wouldn't want to waste money on a product that could potentially fail.. If people like it, they update it with better specs and bring better features to it (i.e. retina display). This is definitely going to happen.
 
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irDigital0l

Guest
Dec 7, 2010
2,901
0
Totally could see this happening.

And not just the iPad Mini, iPhone 5S will be back to WWDC 2013 and June announcement.
 

Batavian

macrumors 6502
Mar 10, 2011
464
38
As I mentioned in another thread, I think the retina Mini goes for $399, iPad stays $499, and iPod $299. Apple boosts their margins on the Mini. And people will line up for a retina Mini.
 

MrGimper

macrumors G3
Sep 22, 2012
8,445
11,689
Andover, UK
Deffo horsecrap....

If the technology existed to do this, then they surely would have delayed the ipad 4 till March 2013 and released a much thinner device thank the current Gen 3.
 

irDigital0l

Guest
Dec 7, 2010
2,901
0
Deffo horsecrap....

If the technology existed to do this, then they surely would have delayed the ipad 4 till March 2013 and released a much thinner device thank the current Gen 3.

It would have been foolish to release an iPad Mini that had more current tech than the larger iPad (better LTE, better cameras, Lightening connector, etc).

So they had to update the iPad along with the iPad mini.
 

Akash.B

macrumors regular
Mar 25, 2010
195
0
The technology isn't there to make it that thin with RetinaScreen /Battery/CPU/GPU on the current battery technology.

Agreed. The Mini is not for the power user, it's for the person looking for a lightweight and small tablet. Retina would be nice but not if it sacrificed form
 
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