by Jason Snell
What will the next iPad Pro look like?
Just this week on Upgrade we were musing about when Face ID might come to the iPad Pro. According to Mark Gurman and Alex Webb of Bloomberg, it’ll probably be late 2018:
Apple Inc. is working on a redesigned, high-end iPad for as early as 2018 that incorporates key iPhone X features such as slimmer edges and facial recognition, according to people familiar with the matter.
Here’s the key iPad Pro info from the story:
- A screen size similar to the current 10.5-inch iPad Pro, but with much smaller bezels at the top and bottom, and no home button.
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Face ID support.
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No OLED screen, because they’re really expensive and only Samsung can really make them to Apple’s standards.
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A faster processor and custom Apple GPU.
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A “new version” of the Apple Pencil.
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An implied release date more than a year after the most recent iPad Pro update—so the second half of 2018.
This report seems pretty reasonable to me. Reducing the size of the iPad Pro’s bezel will make it feel smaller without sacrificing screen size. It will be interesting to see how Apple handles replacing the home button on the iPad—gestures currently exist that allow you to move around an iPad without clicking the home button, but they’re not as discoverable and intuitive as the swipe-up gesture on the iPhone X.