New rumors have surfaced suggesting that Apple will host an event in February where they will announce their next revision of their famous iPad line of tablet computers. Some have suggested that an unveiling event may happen on February 24th as it would then coincide with the late Steve Jobs’ birthday.

Additionally, the rumors suggest that iOS 5.1 will be introduced alongside the iPad 3 and presumably be shipped with the devices. Recent inclusions in developer builds of iOS 5.1 have alluded to support for a next-gen Apple A6 chip. Indeed it is expected that the iPad 3 will ship with an improved A6 chip with quad-core capabilities.

The rumors come from a japanese website that claim the announcement will come in early February while actual shipments of the device will come in March. The delay seems reasonable as production of a third generation iPad would be halted during the Chinese New Year.

Last year, the iPad 2 was made available for purchase starting at 5PM on March 11th.

Reports have surfaced indicated that Foxconn, Apple’s manufacturing partner largely responsible for building its iPhones and iPads, have begun manufacturing a next generation iPad.

Those same reports corroborate earlier rumors suggesting that the device will include a high definition retina display and a faster processor. The processor will reportedly be a quad core. The Apple A5 incorporates the Cortex A9 processor by ARM. To facilitate a quad-core architecture, the Apple A6 will need to leverage a modified Cortex A9, or perhaps an A15. Little more than speculation exists over what the actual clock speed of the cores will be.

The report also adds that the new tablet will offer 4G LTE connectivity. Currently Apple sell two different classes of iPads: those including only WiFi as a means of internet access, and those which offer WiFi and 3G connectivity. It is presumed that this scheme will continue to hold with WiFi + 4G LTE replacing the WiFi + 3G model.

iPad 3 is also said to bring higher performance graphics processing. The iPad 2, released last March, boasted graphics capabilities 9x more powerful than the original iPad of 2010.

Finally, the new model is expected to be slightly thicker than its predecessor. This is due to the higher pixel density of the retina display and the need for an additional backlight, and more powerful battery to sustain it.

Amazon’s highly competitive, $199 tablet / e-reader Kindle Fire has only been available for a few months and already users are speculating about its successor. 

The Kindle Fire is the first of Amazon’s Kindle product line to feature a full-featured implementation of Google’s Android OS as well as a full color touchscreen. It sells for an astonishingly competitive price of $199 USD. And for that not-so-hefty chunk of change, you get a decent set of hardware.  The current model clocks in at 1GHz via the very power efficient TI OMAP 4 processor, and the 512 MB of RAM put it right on par with some of the higher end tablets. All this leads the curious consumer to wonder, “How much more can we expect from the ‘budget’ tablet computer?”

A similar entry into this market is, of course, the Nook Tablet by Barnes & Noble, the successor to its decently successful Nook Color. The Nook Tablet uses the same processor as the Kindle Fire, has a comparable screen and form factor, comes equipped with twice the internal storage (16 GB), and can be expanded even further (the Kindle Fire has no expansion capabilities) and costs only $49 USD more.

Prior to the introduction of these two devices, the best tablet experience users could be offered in this price range were often poorly made Chinese knockoffs; Things like the ePad which featured grossly underpowered and obscure processors, very little RAM, and unresponsive, resistive touch panels. So, given this evolution of the budget tablet market, what can we expect to see in the Kindle Fire 2?

The future.

One of the biggest problems users of the Kindle Fire have reported has been the speakers. Despite being among the few tablets to have stereo speakers, at times the sound coming from the Fire is almost inaudible. With the thicker than average girth of the device, users can certainly expect to see some improvements in this area.

Just recently, Amazon released a software update to address some issues users were experiencing with the user interface. Reportedly, those with “fat fingers” found navigating the heavily modified interface Amazon placed on top of the standard Android interface somewhat difficult. Users can expect that future software revisions will further improve the user experience and continue to correct bugs.

The Kindle Fire is one of the few tablets to be comfortable seated in the increasingly popular 7″ tablet market. The “big players” like the iPad, Xoom, and Transformer all play on the 10″+ field. It is conceivable, given how much Amazon has begun pushing its digital media delivery services, that a larger Kindle tablet may show up to either replace, or to complement the existing 7″ model.

Finally, the most painfully obvious inclusion we will undoubtedly see in future revisions is increased storage options. Currently, the Fire houses just 8GB of internal flash storage (only 6GB available to the user) which, when compared to the other similarly priced options, is inexcusably small. Additionally, Amazon, certainly in order to keep costs down, did not include any way to expand that storage further by way of a microSD card slot. In order to remain competitive at all, Amazon certainly must either include a substantially increased amount of on-board storage, or provide a external media expansion slot.

With your powers combined!

The naming for Amazon’s Kindle Fire going forward has also lead to some creative debating. Apple have their many cats (Lion, Leopard, Tiger, Panther, etc.), Google have their desserts (Cupcake, Donut Froyo, Gingerbread, etc.), Microsoft has their… indecisive naming scheme. And now, apparently, Amazon has adopted an elemental naming scheme. Will the next version of the Kindle Fire be the Kindle Fire 2? Or will it be the Kindle Water? Earth? Wind? Water? Heart (for some reason)? And is this all a build up to a iPad-killing Kindle Planet?

Despite the Droid 3 by Motorola being released just last July, the Droid 4 has already made an appearance at CES to take its place.

The most immediate improvement over its predecessor is the inclusion of 4G LTE network support on Verizon USA. Droid 4 still sports a 4 inch QVGA display which presumably still maintains the less popular pentile sub-pixel arrangement found on the Droid 3 and most AMOLED displays. Increased from the Droid 3′s 1GHz dual-core processor, the new handset will feature a 1.2 GHz dual-core TI OMAP processor. Additionally, the Droid 4 will double the available RAM of the Droid 3 from 512MB to 1GB. There is an 8MP camera on the rear of the phone capable of recording video in 1080 and 16 GB of built-in storage, similar to that of its predecessor.

The slide out QWERTY keyboard is, of course, the Droid’s claim to fame and has been improved upon in every revision since its introduction in 2009. The Droid 4 has a slightly improved design in the backlighting functionality. The keys are edge-lit rather than simply back lit. So, instead of the letter on the key being illuminated only, the entire key’s boarder is illuminated to aid in low-light typing. Another notable feature not found in previous Droid models is the ability to dock to a webtop laptop like the Motorola Atrix.

The Droid 4 will ship running Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread and say that an upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is inevitable. Motorola have not supplied a solid release date, but say the new handset should be available in the coming weeks.

The hype in the blogosphere regarding the imminent unveiling of the next iPad revision is reaching critical mass. Loyal Apple fans and average tablet consumers alike are eager to hear what will be offered in the new tablet, and when they can get their hands on it. In this article we’ll take a look at just a few of the rumors making their way around the net.

Release Date:

The iPad 3 is expected to make its debut early this year. The most prominent rumor being that we’ll see an announcement from Apple by the end of March. However, some speculate that a more likely date is February 24, which would coincide with the birthday of the late Apple CEO and founder Steve Jobs.  Apple are expected to have a press announcement in late January regarding iBooks, publishing, and their ilk, and so information pertaining to new products isn’t expected until February at the earliest.

Additionally, DigiTimes suggests that a second revision, an iPad 4, will be available in October. This rumor, however, has been greeted with a great deal of skepticism.

Specifications

The most notable hardware improvement that just about every rumor seems to agree upon is the inclusion of a high definition retina display similar to those of the 2010 iPhone 4 and the 2011 iPhone 4S. The display is expected to have a resolution of 1536×2048 pixels.

However, many also speculate that the iPad 2 will continue to be sold perhaps as-is, or with minor revisions and adopting the iPad 2S nomenclature used by Apple for its iPhone product line. This lower end iPad 2/iPad 2S is expected to drop in price from $499 for the base, 16GB wifi only model to $299 – $399 for the same model in an effort to compete with lower end, more inexpensive Android tablets available on the market already.

As for the processor, it is widely believe that the iPad 3 will pack the power of a new A6 chip from Apple. The iPad 2 and iPhone 4S carry Apples A5 chip, while the iPhone 4 uses the A4 chip found in the original, 2010 iPad model.

Camera

The iPad 2 is the first iPad model to sport not one, but two cameras. One rear-facing 5 (correction, 0.7)  megapixel camera, and one front-facing VGA camera for FaceTime video chat. Speculation around the net suggests that the next iPad will bump that up a notch and have an 8MP camera similar to that of the iPhone 4S on the back, and a 5MP on the front for FaceTime.

iOS

iOS 5, which made its debut alongside the iPhone 4S last October, is expected to be upgraded to iOS 5.1 before the announcement of a new iPad model. Many iOS 5 users have complained of poorer battery life over iOS 4.3. Apple have acknowledged that some bugs remain in iOS which cause the decrease in battery performance, but as of the latest iOS 5.1 developer builds have not eliminated the problem.

iPad 3 is certainly around the corner and so hype is building fast. As more information becomes available we will be sure to update you all here!