Third-Gen Apple TV Sports A Custom Designed Single-Core A5 Chip

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Apple’s new Apple TV appears to be the first product to come packed with a single-core A5 chip, according to reports.

Apple’s big announcement yesterday may have been about the fancy new iPad we’re all fawning over right now, but the latest tablet wasn’t the only thing to be announced by the Cupertino company’s CEO yesterday. Tim Cook and his band of cohorts also took the wraps off a newly redesigned Apple TV, too.

While the new Apple TV – not to be called the Apple TV 3 officially, but we need a way to differentiate somehow – may look identical to the model which came before it, but this new version brings with it improved support for streaming video. Namely, 1080p content is now watchable on the little black box, whereas previously users had to make do with just 720 lines of vertical resolution.

In order to power those extra pixels though, Apple apparently needed to add a little extra oomph to the device one famously called ‘a hobby.’ According to Apple Insider, that oomph is provided by a custom chip based on the Apple A5 architecture.

The A5 is what powers the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S, offering two cores and all the bells and whistles expected of a modern mobile processor. The interesting thing about this new Apple TV is that it apparently sports a single-core A5, a chip which has not yet been used in any other Apple product. Did the company have to make a chip just for the Apple TV? Obviously the dual-core A5 could have been used – the company cannot be running short on the chips used in its flagship smartphone – but cost may well have been an issue in the decision to reduce the number of cores used.

It is also worth remembering that having a dual-core chip in a box that simply receives video and then pushes it to a TV screen may have been a little OTT at the best of times. When you’re trying to keep the price to below $100, dropping a core makes more sense than not.

The A5's big brother, the A5X is the chip that is now going to power Apple’s new tablet, the iPad 3. Just don’t let Apple hear you call it the iPad 3, will you?

(via AppleInsider)

You may also like to check out:

• Introducing The New iPad With Retina Display [VIDEO]

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New iPad Third-Gen Announced – Price, Features, Availability – Everything You Need to Know!

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The day has finally come. Apple has finally pulled the curtain on what they are calling as the “new iPad”, and we finally know for certain what the device has in store. Some of the more sensible rumors about the iPad 2's successor – most of which were outlined in an earlier post – have come to fruition, and we have a roundup of everything new in the third-gen iPad as announced at this morning’s San Francisco press event right here.

Price and Features

Price

As many have anticipated, the storage tiers – and their respective cost – remains the same as the previous-generation iPad, even factoring in the new 4G LTE support; basically, there are WiFi models, and there are WiFi + 4G + 3G models. Coming in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB flavors, the new iPad starts at $499 at the base model and goes up to $829 for the 64GB WiFi + 4G + 3G model.

4G LTE

As rumored, the new iPad now has support for 4G LTE. 4G-enabled devices will be available through both AT&T and Verizon in the US. Advantage of LTE? Blazing fast download and upload speeds, therefore you can rest assured that your webpages, tweets, emails etc. will fly off in a snap! It supports HSPA+ for up to 21Mbps, and dual-carrier HSDPA for up to 42Mbps. LTE for max up to 72Mbps.

Form Factor

Third-gen iPad “remains amazingly thin at 9.4mm and light at 1.5 pounds”. The design remains unchanged, and looks exactly like its predecessor which is the iPad 2. Battery life also remains same at 10 hours, and 4G is at 9 hours.

Retina Display

Retina Display – a feature that, to some criticism, was not implemented in the iPad 2 – has made its way into the new iPad. While the screen is still 9.7 inches in size, it certainly packs more pixels than that of its predecessors with a notorious screen resolution of 2048×1536. As everything on the screen will be far more crisp, things such as browsing the web and reading an iBook will be far more pleasant. This will also appease those of us who were spoiled by the Retina Display on the iPhone 4 and 4S; it will be nice to no longer notice the pixels starting at me. We’re guessing that the Retina Display will be an instant hit in high defers who crave for 1080p movies on a tablet.

Quad-Core A5X CPU, Improved Graphics

We’re also seeing improvements being made to the device on the hardware front. As rumors suggested, the device packed a new A5X processor. This new CPU will provide greatly-improved performance over the already-phenomenal A5 chip. The iPad third-gen also offers 4 times the graphical performance of the iPad 2, while still maintaining the same battery life that the iPad is known for. On top of these improvements, the new iPad also likely sports 1GB of RAM, which is double the amount currently inside the iPad 2.

Improved Optics

One flaw with the iPad 2 has been its sub-par camera. The new third-gen iPad now sports an 2MP front-facing camera and a 5MP rear-facing camera, allowing it to take far better pictures than its predecessor, and it also supports 1080p video recording. The iPad 2's lack of a proper camera is something that I didn’t mind as I never use my iPad for photography purposes – holding one up to take a photo in public has been the source of quite a few funny pictures on the Internet – but improvements are welcome nevertheless. The front-facing camera improvement is surely great for users who frequently use FaceTime on their device.

iOS 5.1

An incremental update to iOS, iOS 5.1 will be bringing Siri dictation to the third-gen iPad, among various other improvements. There have been quite a lot of people that have wanted Siri on the iPad, but at the moment, it look like they will have to settle with dictation feature only.

Availability

Pre-Ordering

If you’re itching to get your hands on the new iPad, you better act fast; it’s sure to be extremely difficult to purchase physically, so your best bet is to pre-order. You’ll still have to act fast though; pre-orders are available starting today. If you don’t put in your order early, it’s likely that you’ll have to wait longer for your iPad to ship. However, if you plan to pick your iPad from a physical Apple Store, then the official date given by Apple is March 16th, be sure to be early otherwise you’ll be facing an ultra long wait in line.

For more information on the newly announced iPad, head over to the official iPad page on Apple’s website.

[images credit: GDGT]

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