iPad Pro 2 release date rumours UK | iPad Pro 2017 specs, UK price, new features: Stunning concept video shows iPad Pro 2 with dual-lens camera and purple finish

When will the iPad Pro 2 be released in the UK (or whatever they call the next version of the iPad Pro for 2017)? And what new features will be added to the 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch versions of the iPad Pro 2?

The iPad Pro 2 launch is an exciting prospect – but we may have to wait a bit longer. Apple made a splash in September 2015 when it unveiled its first giant tablet: a device known at the time only as the iPad Pro and equipped with a blockbuster 12.9-inch screen, quad speakers and a super-quick processor chip. The following March a smaller and frankly better 9.7-inch version of the iPad Pro came out, creating mild naming complications (we now call them the iPad Pro 12.9 and iPad Pro 9.7 respectively) and kindling a degree of regret in the hearts of early adopters.

But we are now looking ahead to the future of the iPad Pro line. When will Apple release the new iPad Pro 2 for 2017, and what new features and design changes will this product incorporate? Will there be separate 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch editions of the iPad Pro 2 – will there even be a 7.9-inch model, a sort of iPad Pro mini, or a new 10.5-inch iPad Pro 2?

Our iPad Pro 2 release date & new features rumour roundup weighs up all the clues, hints and evidence about the new iPad Pro models for 2017, as well as our wishlist of new features that are missing from the current generation of iPad Pro hardware. Check back regularly for the latest iPad Pro 2 rumours.

Updated, 9 February 2017, with a stunning concept video showing the iPad Pro with a 10.5in screen, a dual-lens camera and a new ‘wine’ colour option, and predictions that you’ll be able to attach the Apple Pencil to the iPad Pro 2 using magnets; on 19 Jan, with a supply-chain rumour that the iPad Pro 2 will launch in March, along with the Apple Pencil 2; on 9 Jan, with another analyst prediction of a10.5in iPad; and on 14 Dec 2016, with a rumour of a folding iPad.

iPad Pro 2 release date rumours UK: Launch date

When will the next iPad Pro come out in the UK? March 2017, most likely – though it could be later.

In January 2017 the Chinese-language site Wei Feng reported a rumour from Apple’s Asian supply-chain, which claimed the iPad Pro 2 would launch in March 2017 alongside the Apple Pencil 2.

“Wei Feng network through the supply chain that Apple will be held in March this year, iPad new conference, when a new generation of Apple Pencil stylus will also be unveiled,” the site reports, as interpreted by Google Chrome’s built-in translation.

During Apple’s September 2016 event, there was no mention of the iPad line (focusing instead on the iPhone 7 and Apple Watch Series 2), while its October event showcased a smart if costly new MacBook Pro. If it had a new iPad Pro up its sleeve, surely Apple could have found time at one of these events to mention it… which suggests to us that the iPad Pro 2 is being held back until spring 2017. March is generally when Apple holds its first event of the year.

However, DigiTimes believes Apple may have to hold out until the second half of the year as mass production of the iPads hasn’t begun yet. Time will tell, and we’ll keep you in the loop.

iPad Pro 2 release: One iPad launch event, or two?

As with the two strands of iPhone models – the mid-size iPhone 7 and large-screen iPhone 7 Plus, both launched in September 2016, and the smaller iPhone SE, released in March 2016 – there are two schools of thought here. Either Apple will unify the two Pro brands into a single annual update event, or it will continue to update half the models in spring and the other half in autumn.

Both theories have downsides. If, as now looks likely, Apple does a full refresh (9.7-in and 12.9-inch together) in March 2017, then the current hardware will be starting to feel old before then – the original Pro will be 18 months old, which is a long time to be the most expensive tablet on Apple’s books. Then again, the company would have been in almost as tricky a position if it did a full refresh in September, presumably upsetting a bunch of people who just bought new devices. Three major iPad updates in the space of 12 months might just be taking the mickey.

There’s also something a bit messy, a bit un-Apple, about having two press event to announce what would essentially amount to two SKUs of the same product line. I think the company will want to keep things simple.

A final thought, however, is that people don’t update their iPads as often as their iPhones: only 6 percent of the respondents to our poll said they get a new iPad every year.

It’s therefore debatable whether Apple actually needs to bring out new iPads this often. It could probably switch to a biennial release schedule without causing much of a problem.

Read next: iPad Air 3 rumours | iPad mini 5 rumours | Apple Pencil 2 rumours

iPad Pro 2 release date rumours UK: New 10.5-inch iPad Pro

The latest rumour suggests that after the lack of an iPad Pro update in autumn 2016, Apple will make up for this in 2017 by launching an entirely new size of iPad.

Ming-Chi Kuo, a market analyst with a strong track record, has published a report making predictions about Apple’s moves over the next couple of years. Kuo is cautious in his iPad sales predictions – cutting a previous estimate of 45 to 50 million for the year to 35 to 40 million, partly because of a lack of new products in the near term: despite a comparatively strong performance in Q3 2016, iPad sales remain flat – but argues that Apple will sell three sizes of iPad. There will be a 12.9-inch Pro, a 9.7-inch regular iPad and a new 10.5-inch Pro, Kuo predicts, with the smallest offered as a low-cost option with a lower-powered processor as well as a smaller screen.

Kuo’s reasoning is that an ‘inbetweener’ 10.5-inch iPad Pro would sell well to the education and business sectors:

“If the iPad comes in a larger size, such as a 10.5-inch model, we believe it will be helpful to bid for tenders within the commercial and education markets. As a result, we expect Apple to launch a 10.5-inch iPad Pro in 2017.”

These three iPad sizes don’t include the 7.9-inch form factor of the iPad mini. Apple could continue to sell the mini alongside the three other iPads, but the success of the iPhone 6 Plus and the iPhone 7 Plus means Apple may feel that this area is covered by its phablet offerings. But we’ll discuss the prospects of an ‘iPad Pro mini’ in the next section.

This new 10.5in or even 10.9in size is rumoured to come with a bezel-free design, as it will accommodate the larger screen in a smaller form-factor. This might potentially see the end of the home button.

Ming-Chi Kuo has reiterated his prediction in a January 2017 report, once again claiming that new iPad models for Q2 2017 will be 12.9-inch, 10-10.5-inch, and 9.7-inch.

He notes that the 12.9-inch model will be “the second generation of the existing 12.9” iPad Pro,” that the new in-between size will be “the high-end model equipped with a narrow bezel design,” and that the 9.7-inch model will be “the low-priced option.” The first two will run on a new A10X chip, with the latter on an A9 chip.

With that in mind, it looks like the likeliest outcome would be for the 12.9-inch model to be a new iPad Pro 2, the 10-10.5-inch model to be a smaller Pro, and the lower-price 9.7-inch model simply branded as the iPad. Once again, there was no mention of a successor to the 7.9-inch mini, adding fuel to the speculation that it will be phased out by Apple – unless it plans to stick the ‘mini’ name on the 9.7-inch model.

Kuo also notes that while he expects another decline in the volume of iPads shipped in 2017 – down to 35-37 million – this is set to be a smaller decline than seen in 2016, and will be offset by a rise in the average selling price of the devices, leading him to conclude that the “worst has passed for Apple’s iPad.”

iPad Pro 2 release date rumours UK: Will there be an iPad Pro mini?

Following the launch of the 9.7-inch Pro it’s now firmly established that the Pro brand doesn’t just refer to Apple’s biggest tablets – instead, it refers to a set of specs and features and, in a way that’s hard to define, any tablet that sits at the top of Apple’s range. If we accept that a 9.7-inch tablet can be an iPad Pro, could we get a 7.9-inch Pro as well?

The truth is that there’s no concrete reason why there can’t be a 7.9-inch iPad Pro 2, but for various reasons we still don’t expect Apple to do this. For one thing, unlike the Air line-up, the minis are still being updated; the mini 4 came out at the same event as the first iPad Pro, which suggests that Apple plans to keep both brands going at the same time. And besides, the Pro brand has always existed in opposition to a lower-end alternative: the MacBook Pro sits opposite the MacBook Air (and plain MacBook); the Mac Pro opposite the iMac; and so on. Apple can’t just call every tablet a Pro.

We’re starting to suspect that the Air brand may be phased out across Apple’s laptop and tablet departments, but there still needs to be two lines left in each of these areas. Apple still sell a MacBook Pro and a 12-inch MacBook, we expect; in the same way, we’d expect there to be iPad Pro models and iPad mini models.

To read more about the iPad mini 5 – or the iPad Pro mini – then take a look at our iPad mini 5 rumour roundup.

iPad Pro 2 release date rumours UK: Design

What design changes can we expect from the new iPad Pro 2?

Apple Pencil changes

Mac Observer has reported, via Weibo, that the Apple Pencil 2 might include a magnet to attach to the side of the iPad Pro – much like with Microsoft’s Surface Pro models.

This rumour was backed up in January 2017, when a report by the Czech-language website LetemSvetemApplem also claimed that magnets will enable you to attach the Apple Pencil to the side of the iPad Pro 2, citing “information directly from suppliers in China”. The site also predicts that the next Apple Pencil will have a clip on the side, like a pen, which would stop it from rolling away across the nearest table – and also mean you can clip it to your pocket.

Folding iPad

We’ll start with the most out-there rumour. Analyst Gene Munster – he of the relentless and widely mocked ‘Apple television’ predictions, who in my opinion was somewhat vindicated when it turned out that Apple had been developing a telly but gave up on the plan – has predicted that Apple is going to make a foldable iPad.

The prediction, reported by Apple Must, cites recent patent activity that shows Apple is exploring the idea of a foldable iPhone, and extrapolates this concept to the tablet sphere (where, because of the larger form factor of the devices, a folding design probably makes more sense).

The timing of the prediction is interesting, coming as it does shortly after the end of the first series of Westworld, HBO’s violent and disorienting TV series based on the 1970s Yul Brynner film of the same name. In Westworld, the human programmers who set the behaviours and personalities of the park’s western-themed android inhabitants do all their programming on slick foldable tablets. The foldable tablet designs on the show make a lot of sense and look fantastic. (The idea of programmers working exclusively on tablets presently seems less plausible.)

Bezel-free screen

Macotakara, a Japanese-language Apple site, predicts that the iPad Pro 2 will have a largely bezel-free screen and no Home button, citing sources in Taiwan.

The bezel (the non-screen area around the edge of the screen on an iPad, which you hold while using the device) will apparently be removed from the bottom of the iPad Pro, meaning the Home button will disappear, and Touch ID will have to be integrated into the screen itself. Oddly, the site predicts that the bezel will remain at the top of the iPad Pro 2, and will continue to house the front-facing FaceTime camera.

Thicker design

Macotakara also believes that the 12.9-inch model of the iPad Pro 2 will be 3mm thicker than its predecessor, and says the middle-size model of the iPad Pro will have a 10.9-inch screen, not 10.5-inch as has been rumoured elsewhere.

iPad Pro 2 release date rumours UK: Leaked photos & videos

This is where we will post the best and most convincing leaked photos and concept designs and videos created by artists and designers.

Concept video of iPad Pro 2

We’ll start with this stunning concept video showing the iPad Pro 2 in all its (imagined) glory. The iPad depicted here has a 10.5-inch, 4K screen and a dual-lens rear-facing camera, and comes in six colours: adding white, purple (‘wine’), and the black and Jet Black options from the iPhone 7 to the currently available gold and Rose Gold.

Photos of iPad Pro 2

AppleInsider has published two photos ostensibly showing the iPad Pro 2, which were sent into the site by an anonymous reader.

The images, like most Apple hardware leaks, are said to originate from the Asian supply chain; in this case it’s said to be an employee at a Chinese supplier who has taken and leaked the photos.

Both photos show the same onscreen imagery – the General > About tab of the Settings app, chosen presumably because it includes model number designations and other details that can corroborate the photo’s legitimacy. (But, as AppleInsider observes, such details are not difficult to spoof, so the photos may yet be fake.)

The About page says the depicted iPad is model MH1C2CD/F: that certainly sounds right, since that designation hasn’t been given to any publicly known iPads, while broadly following the conventions of earlier Pro models. (The 128GB cellular 12.9-inch iPad Pro, for instance, is designated ML3K2B/A. By contrast, the iPad Air 2 uses a slightly different format: the 128GB cellular model is MH332B/A.)

Although, we should note that spoofing the model number can be changed relatively easily. More so, the model shows only 12GB of available storage – this can however be a test version, where 12GB of internal storage is more than sufficient.

As one would expect, the depicted iPad is running a version of iOS 10 – you can tell because Siri gets its own top-level tab in the Settings app rather than a sub-category within General.

Unfortunately – or conveniently, if you’re cynical – it’s virtually impossible to deduce anything else about the device from the shots, which don’t show hardware ports or buttons, and have nothing else in frame with which to compare size of screen and so on. About all this tells us is that a new iPad Pro is probably on its way in the next few months.

Once we know more information or sent more details on the screenshots we will update this article.

iPad Pro 2 rumours: New features wishlist

The iPad Pro tablets are great, but they’re not perfect. Here are a few new features and design tweaks we’d like to see in the second-gen iPad Pro.

iPad Pro 2 wishlist: Bring the 9.7in Pro’s new features across to the 12.9in model

An issue we’ve addressed several times across this article concerns the disappointment felt by a number of 12.9-inch iPad Pro owners when the cheaper and in many respects better 9.7-inch iPad Pro was launched six months later. So the first thing we’d ask for is consistency. To achieve this the larger Pro model needs to get:

• A 12-megapixel rear-facing camera (up from 8Mp)
• A 5Mp front-facing camera (up from 1.2Mp)
• 4K video recording
• Live Photos
• Display with True Tone and ‘wide colour’
• A 32GB cellular buying option
• A pink colour option

iPad Pro 2 wishlist: Better keyboard accessory (for 9.7-inch model)

The Pros are explicitly aimed at business users, and for this reason it was critical to get some good keyboard accessories.

Apple’s own Smart Keyboard is a strong offering in the larger size – even though it’s expensive, and Macworld is divided on the issue of whether Logitech’s less attractive Create keyboard offers a better typing experience – but the 9.7-inch version is a different matter. As a result of the smaller keys typing accuracy is weaker; the lower weight means it feels less satisfying under the fingers. (The design looks great, however, and is magnificently slim and light from a portability point of view. And the Smart Connector – and the fact that you never have to worry about battery life – is wonderful too.)

We feel that Apple needs to create – or persuade a third-party accessory maker to create – a 9.7-inch keyboard you can really type on. And this may involve some compromises. It may need to have a foldout design (sounds ugly, right?) so that it could fit in larger keys. It might need to be heavier (thereby reducing portability) in order to feel better and reduce movement on the desk. But whatever happens, the smaller Pro needs an updated accessory line-up in order to compete as a business tool.

Read next: Best iPad keyboards

iPad Pro 2 wishlist: More (smaller) Home screen icons

This is a software change rather than a hardware one, but it’s frustrating that Apple doesn’t allow you to fit more app icons on the screen of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. At present you’re allowed 20 app icons (or folders), plus up to six in the Dock, and this is exactly the same that you’re allowed on the 9.7-inch iPads, which feels like a waste of the extra space.

By default, the icons are the same size, so there’s far more empty space on the screen. You can select a zoom view, with larger icons, but we’d prefer the option to have a grid of 5×6 icons, plus a seventh icon in the Dock.

iPad Pro 2 wishlist: iOS 10

We expect the new iPad Pro 2 to ship with iOS 10 pre-installed. Apple’s latest mobile operating system brought more than 100 new and updated features. However, no special iPad-only features that have yet been announced or discovered on iOS 10 – so we hope Apple will address this during their March 2017 presentation.

iOS 11 will come out in autumn 2017; if the iPad Pro 2 doesn’t come out until then – which would be a disappointment, frankly – then it will come with that OS preinstalled instead.

iPad Pro 2 wishlist: Processor

We expect the iPad Pro 2 to be shipped with the A10X, a variant on the A10 Fusion processor found in the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus.

Rumours suggest the A10X will be an upgraded A9X built on a smaller FinFET technology. This would point towards a release date of spring 2017, with a new 10nm processor included within the iPad Pro 2.

Might we also see 4K (3840×2160) recording abilities? Some rumours suggest that the feature will be integrated within the OS, as the likes of the nVidia and AMD mobile-generation graphics cards might make an appearance within the iPad Pro 2.

iPad Pro 2 wishlist: Design & display

There are certain rumours suggesting that the iPad Pro 2 will feature an OLED or a flexible AMOLED display. Both are possibilities, but it’s unlikely Apple will change their display manufacturing process.

Nevertheless, it’s a speculation some have – as Apple is losing its market share in the tablet industry and with ever growing competition, analysts predict Apple needs to react in a drastic fashion to interest consumers to stay or switch to an Apple product. Some say that the next iPad Pro 2 will feature a borderless design, providing a much better user experience and again, a more unique tablet in the market.

It’s also rumoured that the new 12.9in iPad will be 0.3mm thicker, which would be a surprise – especially if it adds better battery life. Through this rumour by Japanese site Makotakara (spotted by 9to5Mac), we could see various design changes, such as the removal of the famous home button – not only on the iPad, but also on the upcoming iPhone 8. Also see: iPhone 8 release date rumours UK.

[Source:-Macworld]