The so-called "March events" that the Cupertino giant holds are not usually as big as their September-October counterparts, and in some years they were not held at all, but the rumor mill had accumulated too much information in recent months, and yesterday was the day chosen to clear up doubts. One of the novelties is none other than the new 9.7-inch iPad Pro, thus establishing a "return" to that classic screen format and the incorporation of new functions.
Once again, Apple is going through curious times. Both its profits and its market capitalization remain monstrous, but that doesn't change the fact that it must obey its customers' demands. On the one hand, the first response comes with the brand new iPhone SE, essentially an iPhone 6S inside the body of the 5S, with a four-inch screen. According to Tim Cook and his battalion, 30 million people opted for the iPhone 5S last year, confirming something Cupertino had suspected for a while: Not everyone wants a "phablet" in their pocket. The debut of the iPhone SE (March 29) allows Apple to finally retire the 5S, and its price in Spain for the 16 GB version without a contract will be 489 euros (you can get discounts if you trade in your previous iPhone). Apple's second response reaches its tablets, and the new toy is an iPad Pro.
A Familiar Size with Upgraded Hardware
The first thing to note about this model compared to the previous iPad Pro is obviously its size. The 9.7-inch iPad Pro adopts an extremely similar format to the iPad Air 2, keeping the height, width, thickness, weight, and screen resolution (2,048 by 1,536 pixels). However, the most notable differences can be seen in the hardware.
The new iPad Pro incorporates a feature called "True Tone", which actively measures the brightness and color temperature of ambient light, providing something like a dynamic calibration of the display to respond to its surroundings. The SoC is identical to that of its bigger brother (A9X dual-core with the M9 coprocessor), but its main camera is now 12 megapixels, making the iPad Pro 9.7 the first in the entire family to support 4K recording. Something similar happens with the front FaceTime camera, which goes from 1.2 to 5 megapixels. Touch ID hasn't gone anywhere, and another aspect borrowed from the 12.9-inch model is the four-speaker configuration.
Pricing and Availability
Finally, it is necessary to mention that the iPad Pro 9.7 also has an Apple Pencil as an optional accessory, and the launch of a new Smart Keyboard was confirmed, probably to combat the advance of the Surface Pro. The official price of the iPad Pro 9.7 across the pond will be $599 for the 32 gigabyte (WiFi) edition, and €679 in Spain. A secondary fact to consider is that the appearance of the new iPad changes the prices of all previous models. For example, the iPad Mini 2 now costs a very interesting €289 in its WiFi version, a price that will put a lot of pressure on the Android tablet market.
