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iPad Air teardown: never mind the repairability, feel the tech

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iFixit has done its usual trick of hopping over to Australia to get its hands on an iPad Air in the first time-zone to open its doors for business to bring us a look at the innards of the new device. The device is now on sale in the U.S. too, with supplies expected to be good.

No surprise that the company found little prospect of success for DIY repair, reporting that even opening the casing was a challenge: when you pack that much technology into so small a space, there’s going to be a lot of glue involved.

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Some details of what the company found and more photos below the fold … 

The teardown confirmed Apple’s battery-life magic: the company has indeed replaced the three-cell 43 WHr battery of the iPad 4 with a less-powerful two-cell battery (32.9 WHr) to reduce the dimensions, while the more efficient A7 and M7 chips allow even greater battery-life.

The A7 processor, though not given an X designation by Apple, is revealed to be a slightly different chip to the one on the iPhone 5S: marked as an APL5698 rather than APL0698.

The Broadcom touchscreen controllers are found to be similar to those used in MacBook trackpads, while last year’s Micro-SIM is of course replaced by a Nano-SIM – all part of that quest to do everything possible to reduce the overall size of the tablet.

Repairability? 2 out of 10, mostly thanks to masses of glue and sticky-tape – again, the price you pay for the ultra-slim design.

Check out the full details over at the iFixit site. As an aside for European readers, iFixit now has a European store, offering faster and cheaper shipping on its repair kits.

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Comments

  1. sarcastic9medved - 10 years ago

    Why do we even care about DIY repair of these types of items? Really….

    • FAKE (@bob_spounge) - 10 years ago

      it’s true. I can’t imagine what would break for me to think, “Oh, I’d rather fix it myself”

      • Ben Lovejoy - 10 years ago

        Agreed, I’m old school enough to want laptops to be upgradeable, but couldn’t imagine wanting to delve inside an iPad myself

    • thejuanald - 10 years ago

      Well it was either pay $120 to get the battery replaced on my iPhone at apple or pay $10 for a battery and do it myself. The same with the charging connector when that died a few months later. So I could have spent nearly $250 to get my phone fixed or the $20 I did spend. Tough choice.

      • seizmicdesign - 10 years ago

        Yeah, but the iPhones are a lot easier to get in to than an iPad.

      • It’s called Applecare.

      • thejuanald - 10 years ago

        That’s true, I’ve never tried to take apart my iPad.

        How much is apple care? More expensive than $20? Thought so. Plus, my 4S was just out of the 2 year warranty of AppleCare, unless it’s longer than that and I just am remembering incorrectly.

  2. Inaba-kun (@Inaba_kun) - 10 years ago

    It will be interesting to see the GPU benchmarks on this. Hopefully Apple have used the top end 6 core PVR Rogue instead of the 4 core Rogue in the 5S. The iPad has a lot more pixels to fill, and will need the extra power.

    • degraevesofie - 10 years ago

      AnandTech already reported that it’s the same part as in the 5S (clocked slightly higher).

      • Inaba-kun (@Inaba_kun) - 10 years ago

        That’s disappointing. That will make the iPhone 5S the quickest iPhone for gaming (or other GPU work) by a huge margin. Apple have always struggled to get iPads to the same speed as the iPhones, and it seems this time the gulf will be far larger than ever before.

  3. FAKE (@bob_spounge) - 10 years ago

    Quite amusing to find out the iPad is held togther with glue and sticky tape

    • Ben Lovejoy - 10 years ago

      Take up a lot less room, and weigh a lot less, than screws.

      • FAKE (@bob_spounge) - 10 years ago

        yeah i know. Just Brings back memories of things i made as a kid … if only i knew was on the right track back then

    • Why? Aircraft are, cars manufacturers use glue more and more… It has nothing to do with ‘lesser quality’. Nowadays glue is high tech and the thing we design are so compact screws and bolts are no longer the right choice.

      • Bill Shamblin (@bshammy) - 10 years ago

        If you read a little more closely you’ll see the poster was denoting humor…Humor, born it Britain but drowned trying to cross the channel…

      • chapineldora - 10 years ago

        Would that be tacky tech? :-) Looks like it’s just the right strength.

Author

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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