Korean website The Elec continues to believe that the iPad Pro lineup will be refreshed in March 2020 with 3D sensing rear cameras, noting in a report today that LG will supply time-of-flight sensors for the devices.
However, there is still debate as to whether the iPad Pro will be refreshed this October, next March, or in both months.
Early this year, Bloomberg's oft-reliable Mark Gurman claimed a laser-powered 3D camera could debut on an iPad Pro as early as spring 2020, but he more recently reported that Apple plans to refresh the iPad Pro lineup by the end of 2019, so Apple's roadmap for its high-end tablet is not entirely clear.
Japanese blog Mac Otakara and Sonny Dickson also expect the iPad Pro to receive a triple-lens rear camera system in October.
Meanwhile, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has said there is an over 50 percent probability that the iPad Pro adopts time-of-flight technology in the fourth quarter of 2019 or first quarter of 2020, adding to the uncertainty.
On a purely speculative basis, we can think of three possible scenarios: the March refresh with 3D sensing ends up being an October affair instead, or the iPad Pro receives a minor refresh in October and a bigger update with 3D sensing in March, or the iPad Pro is simply not refreshed until March.
Apple would be breaking precedent by refreshing the iPad Pro in October, as the tablet has gone roughly 18 months between hardware updates since first launching in November 2015 — the second-generation 12.9-inch model was released in June 2017, followed by third-generation models in November 2018.
The Elec also expects LG to supply 3D sensing rear camera sensors for 2020 iPhones, slated to launch next September, although it appears to mistakenly refer to the iPhones as iPads in one section of its report.
The Elec has established a small track record after accurately claiming the iPhone 11 would have a 3,110 mAh battery.
