New iPad Pro Arrives with No Home Button, Face ID, and Zero Notches
Today at Apple’s October event, the company has announced a new iPad Pro that brings it up to spec alongside the iPhone X, XS, and XR as far having Face ID, no home button, a rounded display, but thankfully no notch.
The new Liquid Retina display is one of the biggest features here for both the 11-inch and 12.9-inch models. Just like with Apple’s latest iPhones, there’s no home button anymore, which means the thick bezel on the top and bottom are gone. And instead of a home button, it uses Face ID. There’s also still a front-facing camera, but all that is carefully hidden at the top in the remaining bezel area.
It’s also 15% thinner and takes up 25% less volume than the previous iPad Pro.
One new feature with Face ID that’s being introduced on the new iPad Pro, however, is that it will work in both portrait and landscape modes, whereas it currently only works in portrait mode on the iPhone.
As for gestures, you’ll find many of the same gestures that are on the iPhone, but on the iPad Pro, you swipe up from the bottom to bring up the dock when you’re within an app. Otherwise, you’ll still continue to swipe on the bottom to switch between apps and then swipe up and pause to bring up the app switcher.
Running the whole show is the new A12X Bionic 8-core processor with a 7-core GPU, which is even more powerful than the A12 that’s currently in the iPhone XS and XR. Apple’s says this makes the new iPad Pro 92% faster than all portable PCs on the market, and it can deliver graphics performance on par with the Xbox One S.
As for connectivity, the new iPad Pro gets rid of the Lightning connector in favor of USB-C, which will allow you to easily connect the device to an external display, as well as use the port to charge other devices.