AppleInsider Staff
A teardown of the recently released iPad Air 2 on Wednesday revealed a slew of iterative changes made to Apple's flagship tablet model, including sized-down components and a smaller battery.
Repair firm iFixit has started its traditional disassembly of Apple's latest iOS device, revealing a few new components designed to fit within the tight constraints of a 6.1mm-thick chassis.
As announced by Apple last week, the new Air 2 comes with a 9.7-inch laminated touch panel, A8X SoC, 8MP rear-facing camera, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Touch ID fingerprint reader. The shell was also redesigned, seeing the deletion of the orientation lock/mute button and minor aesthetic modifications to the speaker grille and volume control buttons.
Today's teardown finally put a number on battery capacity, with the Air 2 sporting a 27.62 watt hour, 7,340mAh dual-cell unit, down from last year's 32.9 watt-hour configuration. According to Apple, that will get you about 10 hours of continuous use per charge, or 9 hours on the Wi-Fi + Cellular model.
Also new is the Touch ID home button, which appears to share a design similar to the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The module itself is manufactured by NXP. Touch ID is a major addition to the iPad lineup as it enables Apple Pay purchases, though without an NFC chip, payments are limited to online payments.
Finally, the Air 2 features redesigned speakers, repositioned Wi-Fi antennas (located at the top-edge of the Wi-Fi model), dual ambient light sensors and dual microphones, all arranged on variety of customized flex cables.
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40 Comments
Engadget got a dig in for the iPad Air 2 getting only 11 hours 15 minutes battery in its video watching tests. Idiots.
If the iPad Air 2 was getting 5 or 6 hours I'd use that as a complaint about the thinness, but as the battery is well good enough and far exceeds Apple's claims I'd say the weight and thinness reduction were super decisions. I think when it comes to tablets weight and thinness were always going to be the most important factors to having a great device if the battery was good.
My only grips about this year's iPad lineup is I think ? needs to be more aggressive with price and killing old product. It should have been Touch ID across the board this year. I think they should have killed every iPad but the new ones, and started the iPad mini 3 at $299 and iPad Air 3 at $399. This is why they are losing market share in the tablet race, even with easily the best tablets. Not a race to the bottom, but a sensible trade-off in keeping a firm hold of the reigns in this tablet race. And then, Phil, we'd think the 16 to 64 to 128 up-sell scheme justifiable.
Just once I'd like to hear them say, "And we listened to our users. Instead of taking all of our new power-saving technologies and using them to make the iPad thinner, we made it exactly the same thickness and filled the interior with a larger battery, adding 18 additional hours to the battery life!" We call this iPad the "weekender"...
[quote name="Ireland" url="/t/182992/ipad-air-2-teardown-reveals-lower-capacity-battery-internal-layout-tweaks#post_2625438"]Engadget got a dig in for the iPad Air 2 getting only 11 hours 15 minutes battery in its video watching tests. Idiots. If the Air 2 was getting 5 or 6 hours I'd use that as a complaint about the thinness, but as the battery is well good enough and far exceeds Apple's claims I'd say a weight and thinness reduction were super decisions. I think when it comes to tablets weight and thinness were always going to be the most important factors to have a great device, provided the battery is decent which it is. [/quote] For me battery life complaints are only legit if someone had to change their real world usage because of shorter battery life. I'd love to know who needs to use an iPad for more than 11 hours without a charge. Even if you're on a long plane ride are you really going to be using your iPad for 11 hours straight? I doubt it. I'll wait to see what people's real world usage is a month or two into using their device.
Besides, you can't make the silly thing much thinner with venturing into iPad "bend-gate" territory...
I find it interesting that iPad is losing battery, while others gain it, at this rate it's lovely, now it's quicker charge(on same charger) and still lasts that good day. What's the complaint, people bending ipads in pocket yet? People cathing themselves on fire by sitting on it? Other? We will see.