iPad OS includes support for cameras and video chat

The iPad software development kit (SDK) is turning up more tidbits about new software features we may — or may not — see in Apple’s tablet computer when it finally goes on sale at the end of March.

iPad SDK 3.2 Beta 3 was released last night (UK time) and adds a few new features for developers, including resources to assist with creating applications that will run both on the iPad and iPhone — which means developers can craft a single apps for both platforms, rather than two different versions.

At the iPad announcement at the end of January, Steve Jobs showed the iPad running existing iPhone apps either in a small window or scaled up to fill the whole screen. Now, however, it looks like the SDK will allow developers to combine both iPad and iPhone apps into a single download and share common code, and use an appropriate user interface to suit the actual device.

The new SDK beta has also added the iPad Photos app and the first thing that everyone seems to have spotted is that this includes support for camera hardware.

Since a camera is one iPad feature that’s currently missing, this could suggest either that Apple will drop on in before launch or it’s simply support for a feature that may appear in a later model — and the chances are that we won’t know which one it is until next month. Here’s a video walkthrough of the iPad Photos app in the SDK:

Operating system support for a flash, zoom and a front-facing camera can also be found in the SDK, and this latter feature also jibes neatly with apparent support for video chat. References to the Mac OS X instant messaging application iChat are present in the SDK, as are buttons for making and ending video calls — buttons that are clearly designed for an iPad-size screen.

Again, the expectation is that video chat will play a part in the iPad at some point — a feature that Apple first introduced on a tablet concept back in 1995.

The Photos app also includes some new settings for wallpaper customisation and there’s an option to set the Lock and Home screen backgrounds either simultaneously or independently. It isn’t possible to add wallpaper to the iPhone Home screen without a Jailbreak, so hopefully this feature will appear for both iPad and iPhone with the release of iPhone OS 3.2.

Apple has so far been pretty coy about the iPad’s exact specification (just like it is with the iPhone, in fact), but SDK Beta 3 has revealed some more information about its graphics hardware.

The graphics processor is part of the main A4 system-on-a-chip processor and the SDK bills this as something from the Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR SGX family — as used in the iPhone 3GS. The documentation isn’t specific about a particular chip, but it’s almost certain to be a more powerful model.