Apple iPad Air 4, iPad 8th gen launched; India price and more

Besides the new Apple Watches and new services, Apple unveiled the next generation iPad Air (4th gen) and the standard iPad (8th gen) at the fall event streamed live from Steve Jobs Theater, Apple Park, Cupertino.

Apple's best selling iPad Air 3 series got a successor, which is coming with a boat load of upgrades along with a new design and A14 Bionic System-on-Chip (SoC), the most powerful Apple processor to date.

The first noticeable change in the new iPad Air 4 is the form factor. It takes inspiration from the powerful iPad Pro series. It has an all-screen design with uniform slim bezels around the edges. But, unlike the Pro, which boasts FaceID, the new iPad Air version has a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, which also doubles up as the power button.

It flaunts a 10.9-inch LED-backlit Liquid Retina display with multi‑touch, True Tone Display, IPS technology, up to 500 nits peak brightness, 2360x1640 resolution and a pixel density of 264 ppi (pixels per inch) and comes with fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating. It also supports Apple Pencil (2nd gen).

Apple's new six-core A14 chipset is the world's first 5nm class architecture. Apple has packed 11.8 billion transistors in the CPU and with this, it can deliver 40-percent faster, 30-percent faster graphics, 2X graphics performance, which is more than enough to play power-intensive games, do video editing, and other heavy work on the iPad.

The new powerful A14 Bionic chipset. Credit: Apple

It is backed by a 16-core Neural engine and can perform 11 trillion operations per second. Rest assure, iPad Air 4 will work smoothly in any demanding functions without fuss.

As far as the camera hardware is concerned, it comes with 12MP Wide snapper with ƒ/1.8 aperture, Live Photos with stabilisation, Wide colour capture for photos and Live Photos, Backside illumination, Five‑element lens, Hybrid IR filter, Autofocus with Focus Pixels, Tap to focus, Exposure control, Smart HDR for photos, HDR for photos, Panorama (up to 63MP), Burst mode, Timer mode, Photo geotagging, 4K video recording at 24 fps, 30 fps or 60 fps, Slow-motion video support for 1080p at 120 fps or 240 fps, Time-lapse video with stabilisation, Cinematic video stabilisation, Continuous autofocus video, 3x video zoom, Backside illumination and Video geotagging.

On the front, Apple iPad Air 4 features a 7MP FaceTime HD camera and supports Live Photos, Retina Flash, Wide colour capture for photos and Live Photos, 1080p HD video recording, Smart HDR for photos and videos, Backside illumination, Burst mode and FaceTime video calling over Wi‑Fi or cellular.

Apple iPad Air 4 features. Credit: Apple

Also, it promises to offer up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi‑Fi or watching videos up to 9 hours of surfing the web using a cellular data network. Like the iPad Pro, the new iPad Air too, supports Type-C USB cable, Magic Keyboard, and Smart Keyboard Folio.

The new iPad Air (4th gen) Wi-Fi models will be available in prices-- Rs 54,900 (64GB) and Rs 68,990 (256GB) and the Wi-Fi + Cellular models costs Rs 66,900 (64GB) and Rs 80,900 (256GB), respectively. The new iPad Air will be offered in five shades-- silver, space gray, rose gold, green, and sky blue in October in India.

Also, Apple is offering the Pencil (2nd generation) stylus for Rs10, 900.

Furthermore, the company is offering Magic Keyboard and the Smart Keyboard Folio for iPad Air, which has to be purchased separately for Rs 27,900 and Rs 15,900, respectively. They both come with layouts for over 30 languages, including simplified Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.

Customers can also go for the simple Smart Folios for Rs 7,500 and it is available in black, white, and three new seasonal colours including deep navy, cyprus green, and pink citrus colours.

Apple iPad (8th Gen)
Even the generic iPad (8th gen) is coming with a considerable upgrade over the predecessor iPad 7.

The new iPad sports a 10.2-inch LED-backlit Retina display with multi‑touch and IPS technology, 500 nits max brightness and fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating. Also, it comes with a TouchID sensor at the base, which also doubles up as a home button. It supports Apple Pencil (1st gen), lightning cable, and smart Keyboard only.

Inside, it comes packed with an A12 Bionic chip with 64-bit desktop-class architecture backed by Neural Engine, iPadOS 14 and a big battery. It can offer up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi‑Fi or watching video up to 9 hours of surfing the web using a cellular data network.

The new iPad 8th gen launched. Credit: Apple

Apple iPad 8 also features an 8MP wide-angle camera (ƒ/2.4 aperture), Live Photos, Backside illumination, Five‑element lens, Hybrid IR filter, Autofocus, Tap to focus, Exposure control, HDR for photos, Panorama (up to 43MP), Burst mode, Timer mode, Photo geotagging, 1080p HD video recording at 30 fps, Slow-motion video support for 720p at 120 fps, Time-lapse video with stabilisation, Video stabilisation, Tap to focus while recording, 3x video zoom, Backside illumination and Video geotagging.

On the front, it comes with 1.2MP FaceTime HD camera, Live Photos, Retina Flash, 720p HD video recording, HDR for photos, Backside illumination, Burst mode, FaceTime video calling over Wi‑Fi or cellular.

With the iPadOS 14, both the iPad Air 4 and the iPad 8 will offer new features that advantage of the unique capabilities of iPad, its large multi-touch display, and versatile accessories.
The new iPadOS 14 will improve the better note-taking capabilities and new ways to work with handwritten notes. "When taking notes on iPad, Smart Selection uses on-device machine learning to distinguish handwriting from drawings, so handwritten text can easily be selected, cut, and pasted into another document as typed text using the same familiar gestures," Apple said.

Apple iPad 8 features. Credit: Apple

Also, the shape recognition capability of the iPad allows users to draw shapes that are made geometrically perfect and snap right into place when adding diagrams and illustrations in Notes. The Data detectors can easily recognise the handwritten text, recognising phone numbers, dates, addresses, and links, making it easy for users to perform actions like tapping a handwritten number to make a call.

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Apple added that the iPadOS 14's Scribble feature allows Apple Pencil users to handwrite directly in any text field, making actions like replying to a quick iMessage or searching in Safari fast and easy — all without ever needing to put Apple Pencil away. Scribble uses on-device machine learning to convert handwriting into typed text in real-time, so writing is always kept private and secure.

Apple iPadOS 14 will be released as free OS update to all eligible iPads from September 16 onwards.

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The new iPad (8th gen) Wi-Fi models will be available in prices-- Rs 29,900 (32GB) and Rs 37,990 (128GB) and the Wi-Fi + Cellular models costs Rs 41,900 (32GB) and Rs 49,900 (128GB), respectively. The new iPad Air will be offered in five shades-- silver, space gray, rose gold, green, and sky blue in October in India.

Also, Apple Pencil (1st generation) will be available for purchase separately for Rs 8,500.

Also, the iPad 8 compatible Smart Keyboard is available for purchase separately for Rs13,900 with layouts for over 30 languages, including simplified Chinese, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. Customers can also go for Smart Covers for iPad for Rs 4,500 in black, white, and three new seasonal colours including deep navy, cyprus green, and pink citrus.

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