Apple's highly-anticipated third generation iPad, which will be announced on March 7, 2012 and has yet to receive an official name (which is why we refuse to call it "iPad 3"), is reported to be slightly thicker than its iPad 2 predecessor by empirical measurements, according to new photos that have surfaced of its backside casing.

The pictures have been sourced from Chinese news blog Apple.pro and depict the backside casing of both tablets being empirically measured with a digital caliper. The iPad 2 measures in at 8.69mm while the new third-generation device measures 9.50mm, or roughly 9.3-percent thicker than the previous generation.

 

Image source: Apple.pro

Apple's new tablet is purported to run a proprietary ARM based dual-core Apple A5x SoC, making this device another "half-step" hardware upgrade (see: "iPad 2S") that should give it just enough GPU shader/compute performance and memory bandwidth to operate a 2048×1536 Retina Display without sacrificing too much battery consumption in the process. As we confirmed earlier,  the third-generation tablet will include more internal physical space for a higher capacity Lithium-Ion Polymer (Li-Po) battery, but exact specifications regarding cell density remain to be confirmed.

Nevertheless, sources who have had hands-on experience with the third-generation iPad backside casing have insisted that the subjective physical difference from the iPad 2 will be inconspicuous to users.