iPad 3 Retina Display confirmed

After months of speculation, it appears that it has now been confirmed that Apple’s next tablet will feature a Retina display.

The confirmation comes from the folks over at MacRumors, who have just gotten their hands on one of the purported iPad 3 display panels that have been floating around China for the past few weeks…

After examining the component under a microscope, the site was able to verify that the pixels in the iPad 3 display are exactly one-quarter the size of those found in the screen of the iPad 2.

“Since we only had a raw iPad 3 display with no method to power it, taking high quality photos of of the pixels was difficult. Still, even with the relatively poor lighting, you can easily make out the pixels on each display (made up of red, green and blue elements). We highlighted a cluster of 4 pixels (2×2) from the iPad 2 to compare it to the same area on the iPad 3. On the iPad 3, the same cluster was occupied by 16 pixels (4×4) — exactly twice the resolution in each direction.

Extrapolating out, the iPad 3 screen should carry a full resolution of 2048×1536, exactly twice the linear resolution of the iPad 1 and iPad 2 which is 1024×768.”

Excited? You should be. Along with a Retina display, the new iPad is also expected to feature a quad-core processor, high resolution cameras, and LTE support. Folks are anticipating Apple to unveil the tablet at a media event on March 7th.