LITTLE KNOWN FEATURES OF THE IPAD

The soon to be
released iPad (rumoured to be called iPad 3) isn't even in customers' hands
yet, but Apple recently posted up tutorial videos showing off some more of the
device's features in detail. Many of them will be familiar to people who
watched Steve Jobs unveil the iPad in January, but some of them appear to be
quite new. It’s a pretty stunning device and critics are already arguing that
it offers new enhancements that will change the tablet game all over again.

It’s been due to
the current eagerness in the mind of Apple fans that prompt me to take a review
on some of the desirable features that's bound to be included in the next
generation of iPads. 

Here are a few
ipad features that you may have not known about. They'll be instantly familiar
to anyone who's ever used a Mac or an iPhone, but also intuitive enough for
non-Apple enthusiasts to grasp easily.

5-MEGAPIXEL CAMERA WITH 1080P HD VIDEO RECORDING

 Plenty — and I mean plenty — of other devices
already offer 5- megapixel cameras, even 8-megapixel cameras, with 1080p HD
video recording. But it’s nonetheless one of the newer and more appreciated
features on the new iPad. It remains to be seen how great the images and videos
turn out, but we know for sure that the iPhone 4S offers among the best
recording and photo snapping cameras on the market today. Aside from, perhaps,
Nokia’s freshly announced 808 PureView phone, which has an incredible
41-megapixel camera!

BUILT-IN DICTIONARY

The iBooks
application and the Pages word processor both have a built-in dictionary for
quick definitions. The iBooks application can also search the contents of
e-books by keyword, just as you would a Web site.

BROWSER DASHBOARD

The Safari Web
browser in the iPad is capable of opening multiple pages at once. Instead of a
tabbed browser, Safari brings up a dashboard showing thumbnail images of all
sites currently opened in the browser. It's a single tap to switch between them
or to close one.

WI-FI SYNC: Moving files, apps or songs to your iOS
device used to be a pain of hooking up via a USB cable. Now WiFi can do the
dirty work for you, but large file transfers will be more quicker if you use
the cable instead. 

QUAD-CORE GRAPHICS

Apple’s new iPad
is equipped with a dual-core A5X chip, but it also supports quad-core graphics.
That means those of us who are game freaks can expect some killer games,
including Epic Games’, Infinity Blade: Dungeons. NVIDIA has killer games for
its Tegra 3 quad-core processor in the pipeline too, and that chip offers 16
graphics processing cores, but at this point I think Apple’s going to beat it
to the market with the amount of games available.

iMessage: Like the popular BlackBerry Messenger,
this app lets you send free text messages to other iOS 5 devices over cellphone
carrier's connection or WiFi. If you try to send an old fashion text message to
another iOS 5 device, the device will automatically convert it to an iMessage
to avoid possible charges from the carrier.

CAMERA AND PHOTOS: Users will be able to launch the
camera app directly from the lock screen and control the shutter with the
volume buttons. Photos also can be edited, including red-eye reduction, making
photos you share cleaner.

PHOTO STREAM: Photos taken are automatically copied
to Apple's new free iCloud service, which then shares them with your other iOS
devices and computers connected to iCloud. Photo Stream on devices holds the
latest 1,000 photos, while iCloud will keep the past 30 days of photos. Those
photos can be moved to albums to keep them permanently. No more need to email
good shots to yourself.

NEWS-STAND: If you subscribe to newspaper or
magazine app, they will be organized in this app. The latest issues can automatically
be downloaded in the background.

OVER THE AIR UPDATES: The iOS 5
update should be the last one that requires users to hookup to a computer via
USB. Future updates will be delivered over carrier's 3G connections or WiFi.
Also, new devices no longer need to be connected to iTunes on a computer to be
activated.

SMART LINKS IN MAIL

When using the
Mail application, the iPad can recognize names, numbers and addresses and link
to relevant information. For instance, tapping on a name will bring up contact
information from the contacts list, and tapping on an address will bring up a
map and directions.

PHOTO SORTING

To help keep
pictures organized, the iPad can automatically detect faces in the images and
sort the pictures by person. Tapping on each stack will bring up all pictures
with that person in it. The iPad can also sort photos by the time or place they
were taken and display a map of the location.

MULTITOUCH PRODUCTIVITY

The productivity
software included on the iPad (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) can take advantage
of multi-touch gestures to improve the interface. For instance, when
rearranging slides in Keynote simply tap and hold a slide to drag it, and then
while your finger is still on the display; use another finger to tap another
slide to add it to your drag pile.

YOUTUBE APP

Even though the
iPad can't view Flash-based media, such as YouTube videos, the iPad has a
YouTube application that allows you to view and interact with YouTube videos
anyway. It includes all the standard functions of the YouTube site, including
the ability to rate and comment on videos. Rotate the iPad horizontally, and
the video fills the entire screen.

KILLER BATTERY LIFE

Apple included a
42.5-watt-hour rechargeable lithium-polymer battery in the new iPad. Despite
adding a better GPU, a faster processor and support for 4G LTE networks,
there’s little to no sacrifice on battery life. The Cupertino-based company
still promises 10 hours of battery and 9 hours of juice on 4G LTE networks. The
iPad 2, by comparison, offers the same 10 hours of battery life and 9 hours of
battery life on 4G LTE networks. Usually, we see a sacrifice in usability time
when it comes to 4G but that appears it won’t be the case with the new iPad. 

The new ipad is
bill to be release on the 21st of September, 2012 and you can bet I’ll be doing
an in-depth text reviews of the new device as soon as I get my hands on one,
so be sure to stick around!