So now we can see a couple of things have been revealed about The New iPad. Firstly, I was wrong about the guess on the components. Obviously timeline were tight for Apple’s engineering team and they chose devices they had access to at the time vs the more advanced components available now. Firstly they use the MDM9600 instead of the MDM9615. The advantages of the MDM9600 are increased power thriftiness due to the process shrink to 28nm from 45nm  is capable of LTE R9 and is VoLTE enabled. So strictly speaking the VoLTE not important for iPad but the power savings would have resulted in either slightly less battery required or more battery life. 

The other major component difference is the use of the RTR8600 vs the WTR1605. There are more bands supported with the WTR but the RTR is no slouch either, oh yeah there are some power and size advantages to this component too. Oh so maybe that’s where this VZW vs ATT iPad thingy comes from, but I highly doubt it.

So a very ugly fact, the operators are not allowing FaceTime in LTE mode. It’s stupid. It would be a major selling point for using their LTE services and it’s only a drop in the bucket throughput hit. People are measuring their iPad LTE throughput at 20MBps down and 14Mbps up and Verizon and ATT are worried about a 64-128kbps stream? WTF??

Seriously, this is ANOTHER case of the consumer getting shanked. They could charge more or throttle more in the future (PCRF!) why not feed the addiction now?? 

Update: I forgot about the Over The Top (OTT) apps like Skype. Looks like only consumers that like FaceTime are penalized.

Net Net, The New iPad is a major step forward but there are some less than all out pieces that the competitors will now pile on (since they are fast followers) and leave us wishing for an update…

Happy Friday!