Apple just won regulatory approval for two mystery iPads in Eastern Europe

The Eurasian Economic Commission approved two mysterious devices for Apple this week, which could be new, yet unseen iPads, as spotted by the French outlet Consomac. It’s the first time the EEC, which executes business decisions for the Eurasian Union, has approved Apple’s devices, so it’s unclear what devices those model numbers indicate.

Apple is also going to bring several iPad and iPhone devices into Eastern European countries and Russia, with the legislators’ approval. These iPad and iPhone models have “CC” and “AA” prefixes in front of their numbers, which is unusual.

We know very little about the two mystery iPads and what we can piece together is just speculation. In January, a developer found references to an “iPad_Modern” in the source code of the iOS 11.3 beta. That echoes the pre-release iOS 11 code references to a “Modern” iPhone discovered when the iPhone X had not been released yet. (The word “modern” also echoes in Tim Cook’s interview with Fast Company today, where he said, “You could take every one of our products — iPod, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — they weren’t the first, but they were the first modern one, right?”)

If the two references are connected, a modern iPad could mean a tablet with Face ID capabilities and slim bezels. Current iPads at least have modest bezels and use Touch ID. It’s also unlikely that tablets could switch to OLED production, given how costly and difficult that could be to produce on a large-scale.

Since there are two iPad models mentioned in the EEC document, it’s safe to assume these are 10.5 and 12.9-inch iPad Pros, and not the smaller 9.7-inch iPad.