Rumors of Multiple ‘New’ iPads Conflict Too Much to Be True

There will be no home button, and the fingerprint sensor will be beneath the surface of the screen. This is in line with what is apparently planned for the iPhone 8, so perhaps Apple is cutting its teeth on a lower volume device before going full-tilt on the iPhone 8.

It’s worth noting that the 7.9-inch iPad Pro and the bezel-free version, whatever size it turns out to be, both will bring something new to try to enliven flagging iPad sales. The biggest question at this point is whether there will also be an iPad Air 3, or whether that’s somehow getting mixed up with the 9.7-inch iPad Pro.

iPad news cycle

There’s also some question as to when these new iPads will actually be available and the rumors conflict on that one that issue that I’m not even going to guess. The announcement will be in late March, but announcing and shipping are two different things. When the iPad Pro was first announced in September 2015, for example, the actual availability wasn’t until mid-November of that year.

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Meanwhile, there are other rumors of things to appear in March. There is talk of a new red iPhone 7 that will debut at the same time as the iPad announcement. This makes sense because Apple has been supporting the (Product)Red branding campaign to raise money for AIDS research and treatment for some time.

But Apple already has a (Product)Red iPhone 7 case, both in silicon and in leather. Is it possible that these cases are what’s being somehow conflated into a red iPhone? We’ll have to see. There’s also a rumor that Apple will announce a new iPhone SE with 128 GB of memory. But closer examination seems to indicate that the amount of memory is the only thing that has changed, which doesn’t really make it a new phone, but rather the same phone with more memory.

So if we count up the tally of rumored new devices that will allegedly be announced in March, it is now up to five iPads ( assuming that an iPad Air 3 is also on the list) and a couple of new iPhones. That’s a lot of new devices, and if anything, the sheer number makes me suspicious. It’s not like Apple to introduce new mobile products in bunches.

If I had to guess, my money would be on a pair of new iPads and nothing other than refreshes for everything else. And no, a red iPhone does not count as a new product, just a new color. Even if the red iPhone benefits a worthy a cause, it’s not a new phone.

But even if few of the rumors prove to be true, they have stirred up a lot of chatter about Apple, and it’s certain that Apple doesn’t mind that.

Originally published on eWeek

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