Apple iPad mini unveiled; sports 7.9-inch display, prices start from $329

Apple today officially unveiled the iPad mini with a 7.9-inch 1024×768 pixel display, which is the same resolution as the iPad 2. Starting from $329 for the 16GB Wi-Fi only model and $459 for the 16GB Wi-Fi + Cellular (3G and LTE) variant with $100 increments for more storage.
Apple claims that the iPad mini is small enough to be operable with one hand and weighs 308 grams. It also claims that the iPad mini offers 35 percent greater display surface area than the Nexus 7. Read on for details.
In terms of design, Apple has sort of gone with the iPhone 5 look with aluminum back and glass front. The iPad mini too comes in ‘black and slate’ and ‘white and silver’. Its dimensions are 200 x 134.7 x 7.2 mm. It is powered by an Apple A5 chipset that was used in the iPad 2. Thanks to sharing the same display resolution as the iPad 2, existing iPad apps would run on it without having to scale them down. The iPad mini also supports Siri, which is strange considering the iPad 2 that runs on the same A5 chipset does not support Siri. The iPad mini is also the only iPad to support Nano SIM.
It also features a 1.2-megapixel front camera with 720p video capture and a 5-megapixel f/2.4 backside illuminated rear iSight camera. The rear camera can shoot videos in 1080p. It comes with a 16.3 watt-hour battery that is capable of up to 10 hours of web browsing or videos on a single charge in the Wi-Fi variant and 9 hours if cellular is enabled. Of course, like all the recently launched Apple product, it too has a Lightning connector.
The iPad mini will be available to pre-order on October 26 in the US, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. It will be available on November 2. The iPad mini Wi-Fi + Cellular model will start shipping a couple of weeks later.