LITTLE KNOWN FEATURES OF THE IPAD

The soon to be released iPad (rumoured to be called iPad 3) isn't even in customers' hands yet, but Apple recently posted up tutorial videos showing off some more of the device's features in detail. Many of them will be familiar to people who watched Steve Jobs unveil the iPad in January, but some of them appear to be quite new. It’s a pretty stunning device and critics are already arguing that it offers new enhancements that will change the tablet game all over again.

It’s been due to the current eagerness in the mind of Apple fans that prompt me to take a review on some of the desirable features that's bound to be included in the next generation of iPads. 

Here are a few ipad features that you may have not known about. They'll be instantly familiar to anyone who's ever used a Mac or an iPhone, but also intuitive enough for non-Apple enthusiasts to grasp easily.

5-MEGAPIXEL CAMERA WITH 1080P HD VIDEO RECORDING

 Plenty — and I mean plenty — of other devices already offer 5- megapixel cameras, even 8-megapixel cameras, with 1080p HD video recording. But it’s nonetheless one of the newer and more appreciated features on the new iPad. It remains to be seen how great the images and videos turn out, but we know for sure that the iPhone 4S offers among the best recording and photo snapping cameras on the market today. Aside from, perhaps, Nokia’s freshly announced 808 PureView phone, which has an incredible 41-megapixel camera!

BUILT-IN DICTIONARY

The iBooks application and the Pages word processor both have a built-in dictionary for quick definitions. The iBooks application can also search the contents of e-books by keyword, just as you would a Web site.

BROWSER DASHBOARD

The Safari Web browser in the iPad is capable of opening multiple pages at once. Instead of a tabbed browser, Safari brings up a dashboard showing thumbnail images of all sites currently opened in the browser. It's a single tap to switch between them or to close one.

WI-FI SYNC: Moving files, apps or songs to your iOS device used to be a pain of hooking up via a USB cable. Now WiFi can do the dirty work for you, but large file transfers will be more quicker if you use the cable instead. 

QUAD-CORE GRAPHICS

Apple’s new iPad is equipped with a dual-core A5X chip, but it also supports quad-core graphics. That means those of us who are game freaks can expect some killer games, including Epic Games’, Infinity Blade: Dungeons. NVIDIA has killer games for its Tegra 3 quad-core processor in the pipeline too, and that chip offers 16 graphics processing cores, but at this point I think Apple’s going to beat it to the market with the amount of games available.

iMessage: Like the popular BlackBerry Messenger, this app lets you send free text messages to other iOS 5 devices over cellphone carrier's connection or WiFi. If you try to send an old fashion text message to another iOS 5 device, the device will automatically convert it to an iMessage to avoid possible charges from the carrier.

CAMERA AND PHOTOS: Users will be able to launch the camera app directly from the lock screen and control the shutter with the volume buttons. Photos also can be edited, including red-eye reduction, making photos you share cleaner.

PHOTO STREAM: Photos taken are automatically copied to Apple's new free iCloud service, which then shares them with your other iOS devices and computers connected to iCloud. Photo Stream on devices holds the latest 1,000 photos, while iCloud will keep the past 30 days of photos. Those photos can be moved to albums to keep them permanently. No more need to email good shots to yourself.

NEWS-STAND: If you subscribe to newspaper or magazine app, they will be organized in this app. The latest issues can automatically be downloaded in the background.

OVER THE AIR UPDATES: The iOS 5 update should be the last one that requires users to hookup to a computer via USB. Future updates will be delivered over carrier's 3G connections or WiFi. Also, new devices no longer need to be connected to iTunes on a computer to be activated.

SMART LINKS IN MAIL

When using the Mail application, the iPad can recognize names, numbers and addresses and link to relevant information. For instance, tapping on a name will bring up contact information from the contacts list, and tapping on an address will bring up a map and directions.

PHOTO SORTING

To help keep pictures organized, the iPad can automatically detect faces in the images and sort the pictures by person. Tapping on each stack will bring up all pictures with that person in it. The iPad can also sort photos by the time or place they were taken and display a map of the location.

MULTITOUCH PRODUCTIVITY

The productivity software included on the iPad (Pages, Numbers and Keynote) can take advantage of multi-touch gestures to improve the interface. For instance, when rearranging slides in Keynote simply tap and hold a slide to drag it, and then while your finger is still on the display; use another finger to tap another slide to add it to your drag pile.

YOUTUBE APP

Even though the iPad can't view Flash-based media, such as YouTube videos, the iPad has a YouTube application that allows you to view and interact with YouTube videos anyway. It includes all the standard functions of the YouTube site, including the ability to rate and comment on videos. Rotate the iPad horizontally, and the video fills the entire screen.

KILLER BATTERY LIFE

Apple included a 42.5-watt-hour rechargeable lithium-polymer battery in the new iPad. Despite adding a better GPU, a faster processor and support for 4G LTE networks, there’s little to no sacrifice on battery life. The Cupertino-based company still promises 10 hours of battery and 9 hours of juice on 4G LTE networks. The iPad 2, by comparison, offers the same 10 hours of battery life and 9 hours of battery life on 4G LTE networks. Usually, we see a sacrifice in usability time when it comes to 4G but that appears it won’t be the case with the new iPad. 

The new ipad is bill to be release on the 21st of September, 2012 and you can bet I’ll be doing an in-depth text reviews of the new device as soon as I get my hands on one, so be sure to stick around!