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New iPad Pro Details Revealed in iOS 12 Beta, Suggests Stunning Design Upgrade

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In all likelihood, it’s not long to wait until Apple reveals its latest gadgets, perhaps just a few weeks. It could be that, along with multiple new iPhones, the Cupertino giant will release the first iPad Pro with Face ID.

9to5Mac

Analysts have reported this alongside predictions of slimmer bezels, a vanishing headphone jack and more.

There have been rumors of a repositioned fingerprint sensor - something which made no sense to many commentators. I agree with them.

But then the sleuthing skills of Guilherme Rambo revealed on 9to5Mac that the code in the latest developers’ beta of iOS 12, that’s beta 5, seems to confirm that earlier suggestion that the front of the next iPad Pro will be all-screen, and indeed will come with Face ID.

But if you thought that was all Guilherme could find, think again. He’s now found more stuff. First of all, as mentioned in his Twitter feed, another line of code confirms, to Mr Rambo’s way of thinking, that Face ID is present in the next mysterious tablet Apple will release. As noted elsewhere, I don’t speak fluent code, but Guilherme Rambo does, and has an intimidatingly good track record of accuracy.

Guilherme Rambo

Additionally, on 9to5Mac, he has published more details he’s found, and one of them is arguably the coolest yet.

If you have an iPhone X, and many people do, as Apple’s latest record-breaking quarter has indicated, there are many visual elements to enjoy. For me, one of the most attractive is the way the corners of the display curve round, perfectly matching the shape of the bezel that surrounds it.

David Phelan

It’s worlds away from the sharp, straight edges of previous iPhones and it looks just great.

So, you might ask, wouldn’t it be cool if the iPad Pro had the same curved edges on its display?

That’s what the dev beta suggests, 9to5Mac says. While the icon that the publication unearthed previously was too tiny to be conclusive, curved edges seemed a possibility. Now, though, there’s a new asset which seems to relate to the new iPad Pro and which may confirm this screen edge. As Rambo explains,

The asset is a mask used to round the corners of some UI element, and its format is very clearly a rounded rectangle (or squircle). The asset mentions J3xx, which indicates a 2018 iPad model number (J3 followed by two more digits). There’s also another similar asset for this year’s entry level iPhone (codenamed N84), which seems to confirm the rumors that all of this year’s iPhones will have a design similar to iPhone X.

Now, it may be that, like me, you have to fight to overcome your resistance to the word “squircle”. For reference, I always avoid “phablet”, too. Oh, rats, I said it.

But if you can get past that, the idea of a rectangle with rounded corners - a shape that we know that Apple co-founder Steve Jobs championed from the company’s earliest days - is one that adds a sumptuousness to any display.

The iPhone X was not the first phone to have rounded corners to its display, but even the latest tablets, such as Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S4, have sharp, right-angle edges to the screen itself.

Let’s remember that the clues have all come from a beta version of software, so anything can change, but the latest evidence is compelling - and very exciting.

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