Both will be available for purchase “in the coming weeks”

Oct 24, 2012 04:47 GMT  ·  By

Several hours after Apple officially unveiled the iPad mini, along with its larger sibling the 4th generation iPad, Verizon announced it would carry both tablets in the coming weeks.

Even though Verizon did not offer any details on the iPad mini's availability and pricing options, Apple confirmed pre-orders will start on October 26, with the slate going on sale on November .

These dates might be available for Verizon's iPad mini as well, but we should wait and see if the carrier opens up pre-orders for the tablet in the next few days.

Pricing options are a mystery for the moment, but we will keep an eye out on this one, so stay tuned for more updates.

The improved 4th generation iPad comes packed with an A6X chip, a better FaceTime HD camera and Lightning connector. It will retain the 9.7-inch Retina display and it will better Wi-Fi performance.

The iPad mini sports a much smaller 7.9-inch that supports 1024 x 768 pixels resolution (163 ppi), but it's thinner and lighter.

According to Apple, the iPad mini is 7.2mm thick and weighs 308g, which means it's 53% lighter than the 4th generation iPad.

Hardware-wise, the iPad mini is equipped with a dual-core Apple A5 processor and 4G LTE support for Verizon's network.

On the back, the slate features a 5-megapixel iSight camera with autofocus and full HD (1080p) video recording. It also sports a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera for FaceTime video calling over Wi-Fi or cellular.

Furthermore, iPad mini comes with the thinnest single cell battery ever designed by Apple, which is rated for 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video or listening to music.

It is also worth mentioning that iPad mini and 4th generation iPad are powered by Apple's latest iOS 6 platform. All iOS apps support the iPad mini's smaller display, so no optimizations are required.