News coming of Taiwan suggests that Apple’s third generation iPad will have a battery that’s both thinner and lighter than the battery used in the current iPad 2. Said battery will also have a longer “service life”, which we assume means it’s able to go through an increased number of charge cycles before giving out and needing to be replaced. It’s believed that the suppliers of this new battery, Simplo Technology and Dynapack International Technology, will charge 20% to 30% more than what Apple currently pays for the iPad 2 battery. Whether or not Apple plans on passing that cost down to consumers remains to be seen, but we have huge doubts that the entry level $499 price tag is something Apple will want to deviate from; they’ll take the hit on the margins. If you’re wondering how battery life will be impacted by having a smaller battery, then note that Apple’s iPad 3 will likely have a new processor, probably called the A6, that’s rumored to be built on a 28 nanometer process. For comparison, the A5 in the iPad 2 is built using a 45 nanometer process. The smaller process, and thus smaller transistors, mean less power consumption.
The news we’re really waiting to hear about the iPad 3 is whether or not it’ll ship with a “retina display” that doubles resolution of the current iPad, 1024 x 768, to 2056 x 1536. In order to push a display with 4x the number of pixels, the graphics processor in the A6 will likely receive a substantial upgrade, which of course means fancier graphics for those videogames you can’t stop buying.
Back to the battery, the news report detailing the news of a thinner and lighter battery goes on to suggest that volume production of the component will begin in Q1 2012, which is line with Apple’s traditional spring launch date for their tablets.
[Via: Boy Genius Report]