Quote:
Originally Posted by Wrao
I was too, but then I realized that video chat would probably annihilate the battery far too much to 'safely' incorporate. Particularly if it was at full screen resolution and over 3g. Similarly, a rear-facing camera would be kind of neat because the viewfinder would be like a big digital frame, but again, that'd eat up battery fiercely. I do think we will see it down the line though.
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We'll see a camera in the future for sure, but I don't think power consumption was the reason for eliminating it in this version. Video encoding/decoding can be done on a very, very tight power budget with the right silicon. We're talking a small fraction of a watt these days. Look at all the phones that have video-chatting over 3G. And they have very small batteries: much smaller than the iPad's surprisingly high-capacity (25 watt-hour) battery.
A MacBook uses a lot of power to encode/decode video because it's throwing it at a power-guzzling general-purpose Intel CPU.
A 10-hour battery life from a 25-watt-hour battery means a power consumption of 2.5 watts. The majority of that must go towards the LED backlight, which leaves very little for the SoC. Which means it's very, very efficient. I suppose that's where buying PA Semi came in.
The 4:3 aspect ratio is a good choice for a device which can be used in both landscape and portrait orientation.