If you thought that last year’s 12.9-inch iPad Pro was difficult to repair with a repairability score of 3/10, its’ new 9.7-inch sibling scores even more poorly. Only a week after tearing apart the 4-inch iPhone SE, folks at iFixit have released the 9.7-inch iPad Pro teardown. The new iPad is “kind of a mess” because it has roughly as many components as the 12.9-inch model crammed into a smaller frame.
iPad Pro inherits the ‘ugly genes’ of family
iFixit inferred the new iPad that was launched last month had the looks of the iPad Air 2 with innards of the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. They found that it also had the “ugly genes” of the iPad family. Apple has crammed a lot of features into the device at the cost of repairability. iFixit gave the 9.7-inch iPad Pro a repairability score of 2/10, even lower than its bigger sibling.
The 9.7-inch model has its display cable placed on the bottom right edge of the case. iFixit noted that the battery was a pain to remove. There are no pull tabs for easily removing the battery, making it a “sticky affair.” Upon removing the battery, disassembling the EMI shield, iFixit found that most of the tablet’s components are held together by “gobs of adhesive.” It makes pulling the components apart a “nail-biting affair.”
9.7-inch iPad supports OIS
The fused LCD and front panel glass simplifies the opening process to some extent. But it significantly increases the cost of display repair, along with the risk of damaging the screen. iFixit also took a look at the protruding rear camera. It is the same 12MP snapper found in the iPhone 6S, compared to the 8MP camera in the 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Even though Apple did not highlight optical image stabilization as one of the camera features in new iPad, iFixit found that is support OIS.
The beefed-up specs were probably the reason behind the rear camera bump. iFixit noted that some weird cable choices, four speakers, and copious adhesive make the new iPad a complete mess. The 9.7-inch iPad Pro packs a 7,306mAh battery compared to 7,340mAh in the iPad Air 2 and 10,307mAh in the 12.9-inch model. Despite the difference in battery sizes, they all offer roughly the same battery life of about 10 hours.
