iPad Air 2 Teardown By iFixit Reveals Smaller Battery

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Apple’s iPad Air 2 is now available in the market, and like always, the teardown experts at iFixit have undertaken a teardown of the device. In fact, iFixit has always been the first to teardown Apple’s devices, and for them, it’s a kind of cultural ritual. For us, it’s always interesting to find out what really lies under the hood.

This time, iFixit has found that the battery is indeed 15% smaller than the last year’s iPad Air. That said, it’s still  too early to say whether this smaller battery could result in a drop in battery life compared to last year’s model. The teardown reveals a 7340 mAh battery, which is smaller than the 8827 mAh battery found in last year’s iPad Air. Hopefully, Apple with its new A8X processor and new software, has figured a way to maintain an equal battery life. Apart from the battery, iFixit found only some minor changes to the device, such as some repositioned cables and components.

Opening the iPad is still not easy. Here’s what iFixit has to say about this:

The newly-bonded front panel is more rigid than in previous iPad models, and therefore feels a bit sturdier to pry against—however, flexing the glass still disturbs the LCD, even when you aren’t inserting the pick very deeply. That being the case, the glued-down display remains the iPad’s only access point, so there’s still a risk of damaging it even when performing ordinary repairs.

Because the front panel is glued to the rest of the device, it greatly increases the chances of cracking the screen during the repair procedure. iFixit also notes that there’s an abundant amount of adhesive used in everything, which makes repair more difficult.

iFixit also found 2GB RAM, and various other sensors such as Touch ID fingerprint sensor, barometer, 3-axis gyro, accelerometer and ambient light sensor.

In terms of the repairability score, the iPad Air 2 only scored of 2 out of 10 (10 being the most easy to repair). Apple’s devices usually don’t get good repairability scores, so the low score for the Apple iPad Air 2 is not really surprising.

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