January 24th in iPad 2, iPad News by

Only a 1 megapixel rear camera for iPad 2?

We’ve discussed the notion that Apple’s  iPad 2 may have one, if not two, cameras.  Unfortunately, a new rumor from  9to5 Mac indicates one of the cameras on iPad 2 may be less than impressive.  

After diving into the latest SDK it appears iPad 2 may only have a rear-facing camera, but it will only pack 1, yes 1, megapixel.  This is only slightly higher quality than the camera in the current-generation iPod touch. The front is suppose to be a VGA camera, just like the one in the iPhone 4 and iPod touch.

Sources have told the site that K94, the name of the folder where the listing was found in the SDK, is the iPad 2′s codename.

Why  only 1MP on the rear-facing camera?  Perhaps the back camera might simply be for better augmented reality apps, or for use in Facetime to take a quick casual shot of your surroundings. In the alternative, the 1MP camera may be useful for taking inventory in a retail environment or scanning any number of barcodes, something which doesn’t require any more than 1MP.

We must caution all that this is still just a rumor. Until iPad 2 is announced, any camera idea is simply speculation.

That said, would an iPad 2 with only a 1MP rear-facing camera disappoint you?  Why/why not?


The author of this post is

Creator of Digital Deconstruction, write for The Next Web, iPadFan, and more. Animal, music, literature, history lover, law school graduate. http://about.me/jffcrmr

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  • bigdog

    sounds cool to have any rear facing camera.

  • Blomberg

    1 MP camera on the rear makes more sense and sounds more realistic for a device the size of ipad. Seriously who is going to be taking pictures on beach holiday with a high def camera fitted on an ipad. All that both the camera would be used is for video chat or the rear camera at the most for the purposes mentioned in this article. For all the rumors that have been doing rounds for ipad this one seems to be the most credible.

  • Marie

    When wil new ipad with camera be released. Will video chat be able to be used with new ipad

  • Miguelkooreman

    An iPad will only justify itself when it can also be used for skype, video conferencing and creating web content.. For that it should have come with a camera in the first place… Fitting a camera in the new iPad is great -but late- but it should offcourse pack a little punch, so you can create video content and take some decent quality pictures… Why not fit the iphone4 front camera?

  • Anonymous

    One thing is for sure: whatever resolution the rear camera is will be the maximum resolution the screen will be.

    Why? think about it: how does a 640×480 image look on a 1280×1024 screen? Fine, when it’s small, but full screen it looks like crap. Apple is not going to put a wimpy 1 megapixel camera on a device with a HD 1080p (2mp) screen. You’d either have this small image in the middle of the screen, or you’re looking at a full screen pixelated piece of junk. Either way it doesn’t look good, and Apple ALWAYS looks good.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_NTRKIQBIY3AGEOG2JMPS3P6HRI Dan

    I’ve read elsewhere from iPad suppliers that the camera module for the iPad2 will be identical to the iPhone4 AND will support 720P recording at 30fps. Rumour I know but until the iPad2 is announced, it is all just speculation.

    I would like to add that if Apple is going to be developing an iPad version of iLife, a 1MP camera doesn’t make sense. Especially considering that competing Tablets from HP, Adam, Dell, Viewsonic & Lenovo all have 5MP+ cameras.

  • Brian

    If apple did something that lame, I might actually start considering other tablets. I would be very disappointed. I’m excited about the possible release of an upgraded iPad with better user features. As a business person, the idea of shooting video with the iPad for site visits, etc. is super awesome.

    There are a lot of tablets coming on strong – I’m an iPad lover, but a poor camera (or no camera) might be the final straw for going elsewhere for me.

  • Absolute_Harmony

    Jeff do you have other posts that you’ve written ?

  • Wes

    I would be very disappointed, having a camera that is really nice on the back of the iPad would just make it ten million times better!

  • http://claimid.com/aggieben aggieben

    One problem is that the rear camera on the iPad 2 would be very useful for document scanning. 1MP would limit the usefulness of the camera for such an activity.

  • Hrhcollection

    yes, it totally would. i opted to wait for the 2 in hopes of a cam. how in the world am i supposed to vlog with a crap cam like that? whyyy are they pushing me to go for the android version??? ugh.

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  • http://twitter.com/gnomehole The Gnome

    Wasn’t this news last week?

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