iPad Air teardown reveals smaller battery, separate LCD & cover glass

By Shane Cole

A new dissection of Apple's latest tablet shows an iPad mini-like construction and several parts shared with the iPhone 5s.

Repair experts iFixit found a new two-cell design design for the iPad Air's 32.9 watt-hour battery, a change from the fourth-generation iPad's three-cell, 43 watt-hour configuration. The iPad Air maintains its impressive battery life despite the lower charge capacity thanks to efficiency improvements in iOS and the new A7 processor, according to Apple.

Also going on a diet, the device's 9.7-inch LG-manufactured Retina display has reportedly lost 20 percent of its thickness. Unlike the newest iPhones, the iPad Air's display is not laminated to the cover glass.

As they dove deeper, iFixit noted the similarities in construction between the iPad mini and iPad Air, saying that it "seems like Apple took an iPad Mini and transmogrified it to a regular iPad's size."

In addition to the similar construction, the iPad Air also gains a mini-like stereo speaker arrangement. The speakers contain no manufacturers identification, making it likely that they are a custom part.

The iPad Air gains the nano SIM introduced with the iPhone 5, and swaps out the formerly Murata-made Wi-Fi module for a USI part, likely thanks to the tablet's new use of MIMO technology.

Lastly, the iPad Air carries a slightly different model of Apple's A7 processor than the one found in the iPhone 5s. Benchmarks have shown that the iPad's variant of the chip has a minimally increased clock speed -- about 100 megahertz -- from the version found in Apple's handset.

A full list of silicon found soldered to the iPad Air's logic board: