iPad – Hi Tech Beyond The Screen

When Steve Jobs did his presentation on iPad, there was a tremendous response to one of the spectacular finds of the day – the touch screen. This 9.7 inch wonder tablet has been built on a technology called In-Plane Switching Display. This technology is new and has been adapted for the first time.

In-Plane Switching (IPS) is a fabulous LCD technology which was pioneered by Hitachi. It is found in high end desktop monitors because of its ability to give excellent color reproduction and wider viewing angles. This has been among the best refinements to light transmissive characteristics of TFT panels. This technology addresses the problems of color and viewing angles that are faced by standard Twisted Nematic (TN) TFT display. Twisted nematic technology is popularly found in Netbooks and is also cost-efficient. It doesn’t have the right quality (6 bit color support) and hence has been replaced by IPS technology.

The specialty of IPS is that the crystals are aligned to the screen horizontally rather than vertically and the field applied between the ends of the crystal molecules. This is termed as the lateral electric field. Initially IPS adoption was not possible due to the high cost, but over a course of time with costs balancing out, it became a part of many Apple products, including the latest iMacs.

Other LCD technologies have narrower viewing angles when seen in the vertical direction. The design of iPad is such that not only the viewing angle but the modes of viewing (Portrait, Landscape) are also flawless. Multimedia viewing has been perfected in iPad, producing rich and crystal clear quality of images which can be viewed from all angles.In all, IPS has made the iPad a stunning visual experience.

Now let’s check out the technology behind the processor that iPad uses. iPad has a 1GHz Apple A4 chip. The company PA semi bought by Apple proved to be useful in getting the chip. Since most of the iPhone applications run on iPad, it can be assumed that the ARM architecture is being used.

As far as the storage is concerned, it is 16, 32 or 64GB flash. On the connectivity front, it supports 802.11nWi Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR (Enhanced Data Rate). Models with 3G are planned through AT & T, but users can also use new GSM micro SIMs.

Does all this hi-tech combined with high performance come at high cost? At $499 for the basic iPad model – no way!

(Steve Jobs unveils the iPad video)