Australian technology news, reviews, and guides to help you
Australian technology news, reviews, and guides to help you

iOS 12 code points to fullscreen iPad with FaceID

The bezels on the iPad may not be here in the next version, with iOS potentially giving away that the iPhone X will inspire the next iPad Pro.

There’s little doubt that Apple’s iPad is one of the most popular tablets today, if not the most popular, and certainly as Android tablets disappear, it points to the success of the Apple tablet. But just because Apple has reached success, doesn’t mean the company is done and dusted with development.

Far from it, in fact, and with the beta of the next mobile operating system in iOS well and truly sent out to developers — not to mention that public edition that has made its way out into the hands of everyone else — well, let’s just say people are discovering things inside.

Over on the iPad, one developer has discovered something rather interesting, suggesting an iPhone X influenced iPad is likely on the way thanks to an inclusion of code.

This week, Steve Troughton-Smith shared on Twitter that the next version of iOS includes AvatarKit, the technology that runs both the Animoji and Memoji animated avatars that respond based on the facial gestures you throw to the iPhone X’s camera.

https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/1013958667409018886

The technology needed for Apple’s moji is based in Apple’s Face ID technology, with the imperceptible array of infrared dots mapping your face and tracking characteristics alongside the TrueDepth camera, and right now, that is only found in the iPhone X.

While we don’t doubt we’ll see the technology in more than one iPhone model by September, including it in the iPad makes sense as well, since it would bring what exists on the mobile to tablets, too.

Doing that would likely bring about a screen change, and given the inclusion of Apple’s Face ID likely means the death of the fingerprint sensor on the iPad, we’d say that’s on the cards. That means a full-screen iPad is likely going to be announced when iOS 12 is finished in September, likely alongside whatever new iPhones will be announced then, as well.

We’d hazard a guess and say this will be a 10.5 inch iPad Pro design with an even bigger screen inside, since it’s unlikely Apple would change the physical design of the iPad Pro one more time, but we can always be surprised.

In any case, that gives you one more thing to look forward to in September when Apple finishes up with iOS 12, and whatever else it brings to the market. As always, we’ll let you know more when we do.

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