Here’s Why Rumours of a 10.5-inch iPad Make Perfect Sense

Apple is widely rumoured to be working on an iPad that falls in between its current 9.7-inch and 12.9-inch models, with analysts like Ming Chi Kuo also predicting that the company will introduce a “narrow bezel” iPad with 10.5-inch sometime in the first half of this year. Now, an interesting article by Dan Provost (via Daring Fireball) has tried to explain mathematically how a 10.5-inch iPad would make perfect sense for Apple.

When Apple announced the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, Phil Schiller explained the reason for that sizing was that the width of the new iPad is the exact same dimension as the height of the 9.7-inch iPad, which allows having two full height iPad apps side by side. Now, Apple could do the exact same thing for a 10.5-inch model, but with the iPad mini. “The math works out perfectly”, writes Provost, the co-founder of Studio Neat.

This new 10.5″ iPad would have the exact same resolution as the 12.9″ iPad Pro (2732 x 2048), but the same pixel density of the iPad mini (326 ppi instead of 264 ppi). Crunch the numbers, do a little Pythagorean Theorem, and you end up with a screen 10.5″ diagonal (10.47″ to be precise, but none of Apple’s stated screen sizes are exact). In terms of physcial dimensions, the width of this 10.5″ screen would be exactly the same as the height of the iPad mini screen.

For many users, the resolution of the 12.9″ iPad Pro with the form factor of the 9.7″ iPad Pro, will prove to be a very compelling device, don’t you think?