If you take a closer look at the iPad comparison page, you will notice that Apple dropped GSM/EDGE (2G) for the new (9th generation) iPad, and for the new (6th generation) iPad mini. The current iPad Air (4th generation), as well as the iPad Pro models, have 2G still.

Considering that 2G is being phased out in many places of the world, and also considering how unbearably slow it is for today’s amount of data, this is probably a good thing.

In Germany, in my experience, you either get 2G or 4G, 3G is not well built-out. But sometimes it can happen that both 2G and 4G are available, but 2G has the stronger signal, so the device will stick to 2G, which is annoying. Dropping the 2G hardware would force the device to try 4G, which is a welcome feature for me.

Of course, in case of emergency, you’d rather have 2G than nothing, but this isn’t a phone and you can’t do calls with it, anyway. It’s just for data, which 2G is terrible at.

If you take a look at the iPhone 13, you’ll see it still has 2G, which is sensible since you can actually make use of 2G for calls.

iPad comparison table
Comparison of iPads on apple.com

But the Air and Pro models are from last year, while the iPad mini and entry model are from this year. I wouldn’t be surprised if the future Air model also drops 2G. I could imagine Apple to keep 2G on the Pro model a little longer, since it’s “Pro” and one might expect the best connectivity on a Pro device.

I’m a bit surprised, I checked online and no one reported on this at the time I’m writing this, or at least I couldn’t find anything.

Perhaps it would be bigger news if Apple dropped 2G on the iPhone. But still, I think it’s something worth mentioning, regardless.