Apple officially announces iPad mini; unexpectedly unveils 4th-gen iPad

Cupertino, CA, United States (4E) – As expected Apple unveiled the new iPad mini this afternoon. Apple senior VP of Worldwide Marketing Philip Schiller proudly announced that the iPad mini is “every inch an iPad.” For weeks, tech blogs and websites speculated that the Cupertino-based company would announce a 7-inch iPad this month to compete against the Google Nexus 7, Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook HD.

The iPad mini starts at a price of $329 and boasts a battery life of 10 hours. It has a 1,024 x 768 pixel resolution and is 53 percent lighter and 23 percent thinner than the third generation iPad. The iPad mini runs on a dual-core Apple A5 processor, has a 5-megapixel iSight camera, LTE capability and Lightning connector.

What surprised many was not the new iPad mini, but the announcement of the fourth generation iPad. The iPad 4 price starts at $499 and boasts double the graphic and CPU performances compared to the previous version of the iPad. Like the iPad mini it has a 5-megapixel iSight camera, LTE capability and Lightning connector.

Apple has unveiled two 9.7 inch iPad models in a span of twelve months. There are two versions of the iPad 4 available — 16GB priced at $499 and 16GB with 4G LTE priced at $629.

The iPad mini will be available on November 2.

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