Thanks to industry insiders in China, RepairLabs is able to confirm some of the changes in iPad 3.  The picture shows back housing of iPad 3 and compares to iPad 2 for improvements and changes. We have listed some of the obvious differences below.

1. LCD mounting is different: The LCD screen is probably redesigned and will probably have retina display.
2. Different Camera: different camera with higher MP count is expected for iPad 3
3. Bigger Batter: The logic board is smaller in width on iPad 3 casing compared to iPad, suggesting that iPad 3 will probably have more battery.

Many people are mainly excited about the LCD screen. Rumours say that it will be a retina display and this is very believable as improving the screen resolution will be one of the value proposition of the iPad 3. Although the device will be similar to the predecessor, iPad 3 is rumoured to be a millimeter thicker with significantly powerful GPU. The A6 CPU is expected to remain dual core instead of quad core.

We wouldn’t believe rumours based on leaked images but the changes outlined above line up with previous rumours about the iPad 3. As far as release date goes, it is likely that there will be an announcement near the end of February as the iPad 2 was announced on March 2, 2011 with shipping date of March 11, 2011. So expect an announcement from Apple around February 29, 2012.

Source: repairlabs via TheVerge