Does The Apple iPad Have A Camera?

There seems to be some evidence that the final version of Apple's iPad will have a front camera (or webcam), that everyone expected but was disappointed not to get.

9to5 did a screen capture of the official launch event where Steve Jobs holds the iPad in front of him and one can clearly show, spot in the middle, a white spot akin to the glass lens of a camera.

Obviously, there were those photos leaked a few hours earlier by Engadget that showed what turned out to be an iPad fixed to a table with a huge frame in which there was a clear cut, exactly where a camera was expected to be.

Need more proof? What about this one, Mission Repair, which specialises in fixing Apple devices, claims that the company has started sending out iPad parts including a frame that has a slot where a Macbook-like webcam would nicely fit.

And the last piece of the puzzle, Crunchgear got hold a screenshot of the iPad emulator that Apple launched last week as part of the iPad SDK and shows an option in its contact feature that allows users to take a photo.

Does that mean that Apple will be launching the iPad with a camera? Possibly but then, it might also be part of the iPad v2 that will (certainly) come in January 2011.