Latest Evidence All But Confirms iPad 3 Will Have a Retina Display

We don't like to throw around the 'C-word' haphazardly, the C-word being "confirmed," of course. So, while the latest evidence strongly suggests Apple's iPad will ship with an ultra-high resolution Retina display, it's still based on unofficial information extracted from a supposed iPad 3 panel that made its way into MacRumors' hands by means other than a full-fledged iPad 3 teardown.

Be that as it may, MacRumors is so confident that it has its hands on a real iPad 3 display that it considers the matter confirmed, and that's the end of it. According to MacRumors, which literally put the panel under a microscope, Apple's next generation iPad model ups the ante with a 9.7-inch screen that's identical in size to the iPad 1 and iPad 2, but with a much higher resolution.


There was no way to power up the panel, "but even with the relatively poor lighting, you can easily make out the pixels on each display (made up of red, green and blue elements)," MacRumors says. In the photo above, you can see a 4x4 cluster of pixels highlighted on the iPad 3, compared to a 2x2 cluster in the same area on the iPad 2. Double the pixels suggests double the resolution, which works out to 2048x1536 on the supposed iPad 3's display, compared to 1024x768 on the iPad 2.

The real confirmation (or debunking), however, will likely come in early March when Apple is expected to announce the iPad 3.