iPad Air 2: What we want to see

    The iPad Air 2 will soon be launched to follow the iPad Air. The fifth-generation slate is a good all-rounder device but there's still room for improvement.



The iPad Air's design and of its specification shares the same fate for the iPad Mini, some of the categories below will likely overlap with what we want to see for the iPad Mini 3.

A larger screen

    The success of some competing tablets shows that there is a market for devices larger than the iPad Air. Do remember that this is the company that clearly said that it wouldn't build a smaller iPad and then went on to design the wildly successful iPad Mini.

    Recent rumors have raised the speculations of a 12.9-inch iPad (dubbed the iPad Pro), larger than the current 9.7-inch display running at 2K or even 4K. The current Retina display runs at 2048 x 1536 pixels could arguably already be defined as 2K or closer.

Bluetooth mouse support

    Let's be honest here, the iPad gets more and more powerful every release and serves as a more realistic proposition as a work machine, with current models inching closer to being dubbed true laptop replacements. The only caveat; touch input isn't as accurate as mouse input for specific tasks.

    Adding support for mice or graphics pen devices over Bluetooth could make the iPad a more usable device for complex tasks, especially when it comes to graphics apps.

Facial Recognition

    iPad's have the front-facing camera for ages, and the Camera app does detect faces when focusing. Wouldn't it be nice to have some means of unlocking your device by simply holding it up as you normally do and having the camera recognize you?. The drawback; Apple needs to do what it did with the success of Touch ID and make the system work instantly.

    This isn't locked in the 'Facial' recognition though, there are other possibilities, such as eye tracking, scrolling pages depending on your eye movements, or pausing movies when you look away.

Touch ID

    A lot has asked why Apple didn't have the common sense to release the Air with a Touch ID fingerprint sensor. This seems a little odd for an expensive flagship device, and in the fututre you can expect to see fingerprint sensing used for more than just unlocking a device.

A memory expansion slot

    We've been over this. We've been asking for this ever since Apple existed. We know there's no way Apple will put a card slot in its sleek machine-tooled surfaces of its iPad but there's no doubt that a way to bring content more easily on and off the tablet is needed.

    There's a wide library of games and music (also videos) that eats up the memory of your device. The base 16GB could quickly fill up, it's wise to add the expansion.

A pressure-sensitive haptic screen

  An interesting way for Apple to turn this level up a notch is to use a pressure-sensitive haptic screen in its iPad lineup. 

   It could generate a whole new level of precision and surely leverage the extra input information for other purposes like pressing hard on a link to open it in a new tab.

A quad-core CPU

    It's true that Apple's dual core A7 performs better than most quad core mobile CPUs in everyday use. So a quad core iPad seems likely, though the timing is less clear. The physically larger battery available would mean the Air likely went quad core before the iPad Mini ever could.

What do you think about the next iPad Air?

via Tech Radar