The new iPad, the third generation of Apple’s tablet, has yet to have be given a more appropriate name but has already managed to send ripples across the blogosphere within less than 24 hours of launch.  It’s a less than stellar launch compared to some of the other product reveals we’ve seen from Apple’s annual spring event, but we decided to pit the new handset against two of its most prominent counterparts: its predecessor the iPad 2, and Samsung’s Android-powered Galaxy Tab 10.1.

iPad 2 versus its successor

The new iPad features some very impressive improvements over its predecessor, launched only 12 months ago. The most significant addition is probably the new SoC under the hood. The A5X is more power-efficient and faster overall, mostly thanks to a quad-core graphics processor. The screen resolution has also been upgraded to 2048×1536, and app developers seem to be very enthusiastic about the changes.

Mike Capps of mobile game creator Epic was quoted by The Verge:

“The quad core [processor] makes a big difference in terms of what we can draw. When you think about it, they increased the resolution of the screen by a factor of four and they doubled the graphics performance, that wouldn’t make you think, Great, we’ve got tons of extra graphics performance. But they increased the memory as well and that made a huge difference.”

The specs are impressive, but at the same time price is also a consideration. The price of the iPad 2 has already dropped in the UK, and that trend will likely to expand overseas

The new iPad versus the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1

It probably won’t take a lot from Apple to persuade its customer base that its newest product is better than the previous version, but the same can’t be said about Samsung’s own newly-launched tablet. However an early comparison does indicate the Tab is falling behind in some areas, especially when it comes to its pretty standard dual core 1GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor and the 3.15-megapixel 2048×1536 resolution camera.

But in many ways, Apple is still playing catchup to high end Android tablets, including “HD support” and improved battery life.  As Apple and Android battle it out for device presence, another war emerges around content, sold through these devices, as part of the mobile marketplace’s evolution.