Marco Arment, developer of the popular Instapaper App, found a few new devices in his logs: iPad2,5 and iPad2,6. He didn’t say where these devices were geo-located but the fact that he’s now totally convinced that these are new Apple products and not an easy jailbreak faking lead us to believe that he found them on Apple’s Cupertino network (or his logs don’t record geo-location and he’s taking a leap of faith).
It should also be said that Apple’s newest 2,4 iPad, the new die shrunk version of the iPad 2, could also be expanding to GSM+CDMA versions which would naturally follow 2,5 and 2,6. But ignoring that possibility, and adding of the other evidence and rumors of the upcoming iPad Minis, let’s assume these are new iPad Minis.
The two versions mean that there is likely a 3G or 4G version and a Wifi version. That goes along with many of the iPad Mini case assemblies we’ve found (right) in which some have gaps at the top where Apple traditionally uses cell radio transparant plastic in its iPads.
Arment assumes there is a 2,7 version out there somewhere that does CDMA. But he’s assuming here that the iPad Minis will use the older 3G chips and not the newer 4G LTE Qualcomm GOBI chips that do both CDMA and GSM as well as many versions of LTE.
We’re inclined to believe that Apple, if all of the above is indeed true about the iPad mini, will build in 4G LTE chips into this device. With the iPad 3 and now the new iPhone both utilizing LTE chips, Apple will have the type of scale and cost reduction down on these devices to make them cost effective enough to put in a lower cost Mini. Expect a $100-ish premium for an LTE iPad Mini – perhaps $349 with 32GB of storage?
Take my money!
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