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Leaked A8X chip teases more powerful iPad Air 2 as Touch ID button appears

Ahead of next Thursday’s Apple event, new images purportedly showing parts for the new, full-sized iPad have emerged. Photos re-published by blog apple.club.tw show a full logic board for the new iPad Air as well as parts for the new Home button, glass screen cover, and audio control components. At first glance, the new iPad Air logic board does not reveal too much new, but adjusting the colors of the image shows a fairly unexpected addition: an A8X system-on-a-chip:

With the first-generation iPad Air last year, Apple utilized the A7 processor, the same chip used in the iPhone 5s. With Apple introducing the A8 chip with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus in September of this year, it would make sense for Apple to use the same A8 component in the new iPad Air. But this new A8X chip indicates that Apple, once again, is moving to separate, more powerful processors for iPads.

With the third-generation iPad launch in early 2012 and the late-2012 launch of the fourth-generation model, Apple shipped A5X and A6X chips. These processors were variants of the iPhone’s A5 and A6 chips, but they included far stronger GPUs for better gaming performance and overall smoother operation of the iPad’s OS. The A8 chip is a powerful processor that handles the larger iPhone screens well, so it appears that the A8X, if legitimate, will bring the iPad farther ahead of the iPhone in terms of specifications for the first time in a couple of years.

Besides just making the iPad far better at graphics processing than the iPhone, there could be a couple of other reasons Apple is choosing to move to the A8X on the new iPad Air. There have been analyst reports and indications from the iOS 8.1 beta software development kit that Apple could be moving to higher-resolution Retina HD displays on the iPad Air this year. This could mean that the screen on the iPad Air is 30-40% sharper than the current 2048 x 1536 iPad Air panel. With all of those additional pixels across 9.7-inches of screen space, the iPad would likely require a stronger graphics processor to keep the device smooth during operation.

Another possibility is that the A8X chip works hand-in-hand with the rumored addition of 2GB of RAM. With additional RAM, Apple may be finally able to unleash the split-screen iPad multitasking mode it has been working on for a version of iOS 8.

Long rumored for the 2014 iPad update, these new images seem to confirm that Touch ID will be making its way to Apple’s tablet line for the first time. Above, you can see an image of the iPad’s Home button with the stainless steel detection ring found on the iPhone 5s, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus buttons.

To go with the new Home button, above is the tweaked display glass cover for the new iPad Air. Apple has been rumored to finally be moving to iPad glass that laminates the cover directly on the display, just like it has done with the iPhone since the iPhone 4 in 2010.

Also leaked today is the new volume control component. The audio volume up and down buttons can be seen on the lower-end of the image, but in line with some leaked shells, a dedicated mute switch is not seen on this particular part.

At this point, there has been a lack of leaks related to the new iPad mini, but perhaps that is due to rumored shipping constraints through 2014 for that new model. Altogether, we’re expecting at least a new iPad Air with a slightly thinner body, a gold color option, a stronger A8X chip, an improved display covering, the Touch ID fingerprint scanner, improved camera optics, and perhaps even a sharper display and a new split-screen multitasking mode. Also due at the October 16th event, which we’ll be covering: sharper iMacs and MacBooks as well as final details on OS X Yosemite.

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Comments

  1. rettun1 - 9 years ago

    Glad to hear it is getting a big speed bump. I sort of felt like I got the short end of the stick buying an iPad 3, it is still very good but it has been slowing down a lot recently. The only thing that is still up in the air with the air 2 is battery life.

    • silas681- - 9 years ago

      My 3rd gen is now too laggy compared to the 5s. Time for the upgrade!

      • monty72 - 9 years ago

        Mine was the same and was getting a very warm even when doing very little. A fresh restore with 8.02 sorted it out, not laggy at all now. Still not as fluid as my 5s but better than my 4s

    • 89p13 - 9 years ago

      It seems to both me (iPad Retina – first gen) and my wife (last year’s Air model) that since upgrading to iOS8.02, Safari is slower than ever, both iPads will be un-responsive to screen touches for seconds at a time and the speed of of the units has decreased.

      I’m definitely getting the new Air as I use my ipad within a corporate mail system that requires very complex passwords – and with the implementation of the Touch ID, everything else is just icing on the cake.

      Santa already has my list – a new 128GB Space Gray iPad Air.

      Now, lets just hope that Apple has their act together as far as the on-line ordering and no constraints on shipping by Christmas.

  2. silas681- - 9 years ago

    Looking forward to this, my 3rd gen iPad is due to get sacrificed on the alter of a four year old when I upgrade as soon as these are released. 64gig wifi, maybe even in gold!

    • Kemar W (@toohotz) - 9 years ago

      Funny, I’ve been saying that my 3rd gen VZW one was in need of a dire upgrade and she took it upon herself to fall off of my BMW the other day making the decision a tad bit clearer. Just don’t know if I’ll pay for the cellular service with it’s $130 premium when my iPhone 6 is already on VZW.

      • Demented Squid - 9 years ago

        Kemar if you have an iPhone, your iPad will hook up to it. I have the iPhone 5c and the iPad 3 and they hook up to each other. It’s in the settings somewhere just look it up and I’m sure you will find it. :)

      • vpndev - 9 years ago

        Remember that the GPS support is part of that $130 upgrade. No GPS with WiFi-only.

  3. Andrew Watson - 9 years ago

    moooahr powwaaarrr!

  4. Now this is an update I can get behind.

  5. charilaosmulder - 9 years ago

    Wrong.

    The A7 in the iPad Air already was a variant of the A7 chip in the 5s and iPad mini. All A#X chips differed from their A# counterparts mainly by having twice the GPU performance to compensate for the 2048*1536 display. The same applies to the A7 found in the iPad Air, but without the X naming convention.

    I liked the fact that the A7 generation had the same name across all iOS devices despite the hidden difference in GPU performance. The X in the name suggests it’s got better performance while the real world performance is about equal due to the display differences (in fact iPhones tend to outperform iPads of the same generation with on-screen graphics performance).

    • Stetson - 9 years ago

      The A7 in the iPad Air did not have double the GPU cores, just a bit higher clock speed:

      http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/ipad-airs-a7-chip-is-identical-to-the-iphones-just-faster/

      • charilaosmulder - 9 years ago

        I don’t get it. The A6 is half as fast both CPU and GPU wise. The A6X has double the graphics performance of the A6, and the iPad Air has double the CPU and GPU performance of the A6X. How did that happen? The other scenario: since the A5, CPU and GPU have doubled in performance. Then how was it ever possible for the iPad mini w/ retina display to be marketed as 4x CPU and 8x GPU power? Is this because over the years since the A5, the A# chips improved more on GPU performance than Apple advertised? Could be, just doesn’t sound likely.

    • Gabriel (@iosight) - 9 years ago

      No. The A7 chip on iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina Display and iPhone 5s has the exact same GPU module, hence the exact same performance.

      The only difference between A7 chip on iPad Air and A7 chip on other two devices it its slightly over-clocked.

      This is why certain graphical animations are quite choppy on the iPad Air, compared to iPhone 5s.

      • taoprophet420 - 9 years ago

        I was going to say it was just an overclocked A7. I’m glad they are increasing the ram. My iPad Air has suffered from ram crashes from day one. Mainly in Safari I had several crashes a day to low memory with only 2 open tabs. iOS 8 seems to have severely decreased the crashes, but I think the 2 GB of ram is needed, especially if they increase the screens resolution.

  6. jaggu118 - 9 years ago

    wow.. its amazing

  7. Now that’s what I’m talking about! A8X, 2GB Ram, bring it on!

  8. The current iPad air is fantastic, light, fast (at least on iOS 7) and with impressive battery life. The only improvements that are needed in my opinion are a ram upgrade, because Safari crashes far too often when multiple tabs are open, and a better screen performance both for outdoors use and night reading (too bright).

    • standardpull - 9 years ago

      I use my Air as my primary computing device (8h+ per day nearly every day). My iPad Air with iOS8 has been fast and rock solid. I had never had it crash or slow down and the new capabilities are top-notch. And that includes the stability, speed, and quality of Safari.

      I strongly recommend that you consider upgrading to iOS8 – I am very happy I did.

      • standardpull - 9 years ago

        The idea that “RAM makes things faster” is simply untrue. Have you seen the RAM utilization rates under iOS8? It’s so well optimized that the idea of a RAM drought is ludicrous. What makes a difference in performance is OS-level efficiency, bus speeds, and the speed of the CPU/GPU cores. Everything else is just part of the “more must be better” checklist, but if you look at the broadly published stats and benchmarks, Apple leads the industry despite the claims by some non-experts that more RAM would make the devices faster.

        “Oh, but with more RAM Safari can keep more objects there”. Ha! Ever see the caching directives for objects streamed over HTTP? Ever notice that a HEAD results in a … network request with all its latency? If you find lousy performance with Safari, you very likely have a major problem with your local network. Try a 5 GHz router.

      • Mib Frank - 9 years ago

        I do get it, impress the user with stats and they’ll think its great. But what if it was a simple matter of 2GB being the minimum memory chip in manufacture today. (for these devices specifically) ?

      • eninety2 - 9 years ago

        I’m curious as to what you do on an iPad for that amount of time.

      • I don’t know what is wrong with Safari then, for sure not my local network! What I have experienced in general is that Safari on a Mac can take up a lot of RAM when multiple windows/tabs are open, and that’s why I am looking forward to more RAM. If you say RAM is not needed, then I must conclude that the problem is entirely OS-related, which sounds a bit strange to me, as the issue is very popular (Many friends experience it on different iOS devices) and known. In general, what I notice is that on the iPad Safari crashes when “heavy” websites are loaded (like Facebook, if you keep scrolling down the feed, or even Apple’s website sometimes), so I suspect that RAM may have a role there.

    • taoprophet420 - 9 years ago

      Giacomo are you still on iOS 7? iOS 8 has pretty much ended my daily Safari crashes.

      Also when you open safari do you get random images of pages you looked at days before until it loads your current page?i think it’s a caching problem that ties up the ram.

      • I don’t know, I am reading mixed reviews about iOS 8 on the iPad Air, and I have had a lot of negative experiences with new software on older devices (first iPhone, iPhone 4, first iPad). I think I will wait until Yosemite is out, so that the software environment is fully integrated and I can take advantage of continuity/handoff. Until then, I can live without the new features.

      • taoprophet420 - 9 years ago

        iOS 8 has been a lot better and smoother experience for me then iOS 7 on my iPad Air. The main improvement has been the lack of Safari crashes.

        Auto suggest and continunity are the probably the most useful new features so far.

  9. beno51079 - 9 years ago

    This I’m on board with. 2GB of Ram and being much faster than the current iPad Air. Which is still great but since updating my iPad Air to iOS 8 it’s not so good now with iOS 8 being so buggy.

  10. Would love to see the A8X in the iPhone 6 Plus.

    • taoprophet420 - 9 years ago

      I haven’t had any issues with ram, but it would be nice to have the extra bit of power in the 6 plus. Even overclocking the A8 wouldn’t been bad with all the extra battery storage in the plus.

    • 89p13 - 9 years ago

      And that’s probably what next years 6s / 6s Plus (or whatever it’s to be called) will sport. As others have noted, the MLK (Mid Life Kickers) of the current iPhones have had the upgraded processors as well as some other things to keep us on the hook for mid-contracts upgrades.

  11. David Tan - 9 years ago

    iPad simply needs two upgrade, first is the screen which should use the iPhone 5 touch technology to reduce the gap between touch and display. This reduces the glare problem everyone facing. Second is the ram where safari keeps on refresh the webpages when opening too many tabs. I would also hope the screen can be in 16:9 aspect ratio.

    • taoprophet420 - 9 years ago

      I agree with the upgrades you mentioned. The performance of the iPhone 6 and 6 plus in the sun is not mentioned enough. Besides the mega battery improvement the readability in the sun is probably its best improvement.

      I think the iPad mini will be the first 16:9 ipad and we will have to wait until the spring, probably around the time of the IWatch. I think Apple wants to differentiate the air and mini more. The mini has ate into air sales and think Apple wants to focus on the separate models at separate times. I wouldn’t be surprised to see an iWatch,iPad mini and iPad Pro event in February or March.

    • VladimĂ­r NejedlĂ˝ - 9 years ago

      16:9? No way! It would be the death of iPad. 4:3 is ideal and one of the reasons I use one all the time.

    • WaveMedia (@WaveMedia) - 9 years ago

      16:9 on tablets is horrible unless all you do is watch video and play games. 4:3 is a WAY better ratio for everything else. A4 paper is close to 4:3 for example because that’s the field of view human vision typically has (or close to). It’s a natural ratio for larger objects like a tablet.

    • charilaosmulder - 9 years ago

      The gap you see has nothing to do with the lack of the iPhone 5’s integrated touch controller. The gap is there because the iPad’s display, unlike any other Apple display, isn’t laminated to the glass. There exists a small gap of air in between the panel and the glass, which the iPad Air 2 is rumored to change. The lower reflectivity on some of Apple’s newer displays is due to an anti-reflective coating on the glass. Yes this would be nice, too, on the next iPad. 16:9 would we worse for over 90% of apps because 3:4 is much more practical in most purposes. Very few apps would benefit, and all apps would have to be updates (which isn’t going to happen since many aren’t getting updates anymore and/or are very specifically designed for the 3:4 aspect ratio).

  12. Computer_Whiz123 - 9 years ago

    Oh yeah! Touch ID is finally coming to iPad

  13. FAME - 9 years ago

    As many predicted. This may mean iPhone will get a refresh early 2015. My assumption is that A8X has the GX6650 GPU. They’ve never made ‘X’ chips exclusive to iPads and previously iPhone always adopted them first. This first batch of iPhones on sale now are the ones to avoid. In February iPhones will likely be updated with A8X ship, similar to how they updated the Macbook line this year (Haswell to Crystalwell, GT650M to GT750M).

    This seems to be Apple’s new strategy, reason is am guessing it because iPhone was cutting into possible iPad sales. iPhone has always had way more to offer because features are held back on iPad whilst performance remains the same. Now that iPad have more power than iPhone, they seem worth buying. Apple’s problem is greatly underestimating the demand for a phablet. iPhone 6 Plus will cut into iPad sales even more regardless of the latter having more powerful hardware. In order for iPad to not be obsolete, it needs to offer greater productivity – i.e. become a real, usable mobile station, like Windows Tablets. Hence the rumors.

    • PMZanetti - 9 years ago

      Um, no. Not at all. Not even a little bit. Not one thing you said makes any sense or is historically accurate.

    • taoprophet420 - 9 years ago

      The 5x and 6x are the only x chips so far and were on the 3rd and 4th generation iPads. IPhones have not had an x chip yet.

  14. PMZanetti - 9 years ago

    They need to add 2 GB of RAM so that the clueless tarts can realize that it’s not RAM that forces Safari to reload and move on to complaining about something else

    • taoprophet420 - 9 years ago

      In the crash logs it reports the Safari crash as a result of lack of ram. Also I have had several other app crashes listed as insufficient ram as the cause.

      • taoprophet420 - 9 years ago

        Looks like Apple got rid of the diagnostics & usage and diagnostics & usage data in the about section in iOS 8.0.2 or at least moved it somewhere else I can’t locate. I saw some theories that log was messing up ram allocation.

    • giskardian - 9 years ago

      Exactly. It’s Safari caching behavior. They’re afraid to use more aggresive caching due to low NAND endurance. If Apple used high quality NAND they could cache more Safari tabs.

      It would still be better to have more RAM, but I’d take improved NAND and caching over RAM if I had to choose.

    • I can’t speak to Safari because I’ve never personally researched it, however more ram will let developers do more period. History has proven this time and again and as a game developer I can tell you iPhone and iPad games will benefit from more RAM. Right now as you approach ~250MB you will get your first memory warning with all other apps are closed under iOS 8 and far sooner if you have apps open. If Apple could even double that number games could load a lot more textures and add a lot more to the environments without worrying about the OS getting angry. An extra GB should put you well about double and that will help game devs out a lot.

      It’s a welcomed addition, one you should be happy about.

  15. Ilko Sarafski - 9 years ago

    It’s funny to see that people are complaining about their… Airs? I have iPad 2 (yes, that old!) and I am still quite satisfied with the results and quality. Yes, I know and I can see it’s laggy and it has some issues right now, but I am not going to cry if it still does the job for me. I get that feeling that most of the people are trying to find something negative in their device simply to justify the $500 they are about to spend for the next-gen device. Oh, I also have iPhone 4 (yes, that old!) and I am still quite satisfied… :) It really matters the perspective you are looking from. I guess I’ll go for iPhone 6S and iPad Air 3. :) Then I’ll be able to say “oh, that’s nice, now I can see and feel the big difference”, not like many people are going from Air to Air 2. :)