iPads through the years – in pictures

Before the iPad was in production, there were prototypes – such as the device on the right. These pictures appeared in Apple's US court case against Samsung in 2012 Photograph: Buzzfeed

'Prototype 035', as the early one was called, was substantially thicker than the final production iPads. Some versions included USB ports - later abandoned. Photograph: Buzzfeed

Steve Jobs, unveiling the first iPad in January 2010, portrayed it as something that wasn't a phone, but wasn't a laptop computer either. And it certainly wasn't a netbook, he said. His demonstration of its functionality relied heavily on non-mobile situations – sitting down in a living room-style setting to watch a film, for example, rather than the way that many people would come to use it in settings where a laptop just wouldn't work January 2010-March 2011
£399 ($499) and up

Released with iOS 3.2
1GHz Apple A4 single-core processor
256MB of RAM
9.7in 1024 x 768 resolution screen
16, 32 or 64GB storage
13mm thick
680g

A segment-defining product that defied cries of "it's just a big iPod touch" to smash predictions and outsell its rivals. Photograph: Kimberly White/Reuters

Samsung was one of the first companies to jump on the modern tablet boom – helped partly by the fact that it had made many of the touchscreens for the iPad, and so knew what was coming. But its Galaxy Tab 7.7 (with a 7in screen) was handicapped by running on Android 2.2, which wasn't developed for tablets, a lack of tablet-optimised apps, and its price – which was about the same as the iPad for a smaller screen. Sales were minimal Photograph: PR

After a year, some rivals had sprung up to the iPad – but they were either much more expensive (because Apple had cornered the market for touchscreens) or much smaller, using 7in screens. Steve Jobs dismissed the latter as 'tweeners' and said they'd have less than half the screen size of the iPad; the latter claim turns out to be true. The iPad 2 boosted its processing power and RAM but didn't change the screen resolution.
iPad 2

March 2011 - March 2012
£399 ($499) and up

Released with iOS 4.3
1GHz Apple A5 dual-core processor
512MB of RAM
9.7in 1024 x 768 resolution screen
16, 32 or 64GB storage
VGA front-facing and 5MP rear-facing cameras
8.6mm thick
601g

Thinner, lighter and with cameras, the iPad 2 cemented Apple's touch-screen driven tablet experience as the best out there Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In January 2011 Motorola announced its Xoom tablet, which boasted that it would be the first to use Android 3.0, aka 'Honeycomb', which was 'optimised for tablets'. However it suffered from a high price, poor distribution – and a continuing lack of tablet-optimised apps for Android. In all, Motorola sold about 1m Xooms in 2011. Apple sold a total of 15.3m iPads in the fourth quarter of 2011 Photograph: PR

iPad 3

March 2012 - October 2012
£399 ($499) and up

Released with iOS 5.1
1GHz Apple A5X dual-core processor, quad-core GPU
1GB of RAM
9.7in 2048 x 1536 resolution 'retina' screen
16, 32 or 64GB storage
VGA front-facing and 720p rear-facing cameras
9.4mm thick
650g

Short lived but the first with a high-resolution 'retina display', the third generation iPad dropped numbers and increased quality Photograph: Keystone/Zuma/Rex Features

iPad 4

October 2012 - to date
£399 ($499) and up

Released with iOS 6
1.4GHz Apple A6X dual-core processor, quad-core GPU
1GB of RAM
9.7in 2048 x 1536 resolution 'retina' screen
16, 32 or 64GB storage
720p front-facing and 5MP rear-facing cameras
9.4mm thick
650g

Taking over the mantle just five months after the launch of the third-generation iPad, the iPad 4 got even faster with more RAM and a Lightning connector to boot Photograph: Robert Galbraith/Reuters

iPad mini
 
October 2012 to date
£269 ($329) and up
 
Released with iOS 6
1GHz Apple A5 dual-core processor
512MB of RAM
7.9in 1024 x 768 resolution screen
16, 32 or 64GB storage
VGA front-facing and 5MP rear-facing cameras
7.1mm thick
310g

Apple's first challenge to the smaller 7in Android tablets from the likes of Google and Amazon, the iPad mini saw the iPad 2 shrunken into a smaller, lighter 7.9in frame Photograph: Sean Gallup/Getty Images