ARM-powered Apple tablet called 'iPhone on steroids'

Clues on Apple's forthcoming tablet continue to surface as the device is expected to debut this month, with a new report referring to the device as an "iPhone on steroids."

Citing a close contact within Apple, Boy Genius Report on Wednesday issued a report with alleged new details and specifics on Apple's 10-inch touchscreen device. The source said the device has an internal model number of K48AP and sports an "incredibly fast" ARM-based processor.

What kind of ARM chip remains unknown, though many have speculated that the reference Cortex-A9 design would be a likely candidate for any new hardware. However, one analyst recently claimed that the device would sport a Cortex-A8-based chip with a speed of about 1GHz.

In Wednesday's report, the source also said that the tablet has multi-touch gestures that are "out of control," and the device runs the on the iPhone kernel. There hasn't been an update to the iPhone OS in some time, the tipster claimed, because the new build has too many tablet-related references that "Apple obviously didn't want to leak."

While Boy Genius Report has a respectable track record in forecasting iPhone-related announcements tied to its AT&T sources, its predictions pertaining to Apple have often fallen off the mark. Last year the site incorrectly indicated iTunes 9 would add Blu-ray support and said Apple would create a social media consolidation application, both times citing a "reliable" source.

Wednesday's new details are bolstered by a report from earlier this month that claimed a new iPhone 4.0 beta SDK includes a "simulator" that aims to make it easy for developers to adapt to different screen resolutions. Some developers have allegedly been asked to prepare full-screen demos of their iPhone software for a demo later this month.

Reports have indicated that Apple is planning an event on Jan. 27 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco to unveil its tablet device. Last July, AppleInsider first reported that the device would see an early 2010 debut, and the hardware would be akin to a large iPhone or iPod touch.