6-inch iPad 2 / iPad 3 / iPod touch 5G Coming This Fall? [Apple Rumored to Launch Smaller Tablet or Bigger PMP in Fall 2011; Will a 6-inch iPad nano Ship with Sandpaper in the Box?]

Posted on TFTS by Chris Smith on Sunday, 20. February 2011 under: Mobile/Cell Phones, PCs, Notebooks, Netbooks & Tablets

A few months ago we were listening in live on an Apple quarterly earnings call which also featured Steve Jobs. We all remember how he basically bashed Google’s available tablets at the time and how he essentially advised us to get sandpaper in order to deal with any tablet with a display of 7-inch or smaller.

Personally I am happy with a 10-inch tablet format for my mobile computing needs. I do not have big fingers and my eyesight is perfect, but why use a 7-inch, or smaller, device for browsing or watching videos on the go when a 10-inch format is available? Not to mention that I appreciate the size of the virtual keyboard when it comes to writing up notes, emails or any other text, basically.

But a 10-inch device is not always very portable, and it can be quite heavy when reading eBooks or playing games so I can definitely understand why some tablet makers are going to offer you smaller devices. We’ve seen a plethora of tablets at MWC 2011 (check our hands-on previews here) and some of these devices were not iPad-like in size, and I’m referring to the RIM BlackBerry PlayBook, HTC Flyer, the Huawei Ideos S7 family, the ViewPad 7, but also at the original Samsung Galaxy Tab or, for that matter at the Samsung Galaxy S Wi-Fi 5.0 (a 5-inch new Android PMP) which can be also considered a tablet.

I’ll have to say that while I prefer a bigger screen I did like the BlackBerry PlayBook, the HTC Flyer and the Samsung Galaxy S Wi-Fi 5.0. And like me, consumers will appreciate such devices and so many of them will go ahead and purchase them instead of a 10-inch tablet.

The point I’m trying to make here is that whether Steve Jobs likes smaller tablets or not, Apple will have to consider smaller tablet iPad versions for the future in order to stay ahead in the tablet game, a business that Cupertino reinvented last year with the introduction of the original iPad.

The word on the street is that Apple will launch this fall, most likely at their yearly iPod-only event, a 6-inch iPad 2 / iPad 3 / iPod touch 5G. As you can see we have no idea how to call it. But whatever it is, this iPad nano will compete against the devices I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, and will most likely run the same iOS version the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 will ship with. Basically the smaller iPad / bigger iPod touch should offer the same iOS mobile experience, no matter if we look at it as a tablet or PMP.

Will Apple ship any iSandpaper with a smaller iPad? Well Steve Jobs did say that Apple will not make smaller iPads but he never said the company will stay out of the bigger PMPs business. Therefore, if a 3.5-inch iPod touch doesn’t require any sandpaper to work properly, neither will a 6-inch iPod touch 5G.