The new iPad teardown

Every time Apple releases new hardware, the tech world awaits its inevitable teardown. Apple’s products are just as much a feat in engineering as they are sleek and beautiful. And everyone wants to know how they’ve done it.

The new iPad is no exception. Apple has managed to squeeze over 3 million pixels into the tablet’s Retina display, and add a high-speed LTE radio, all while maintaing [roughly] the same size, price and battery life of its predecessors.

So what’s going on under the hood to make it all possible? Let’s find out…

The folks over at iFixit get the award for the first total teardown of the new iPad. And while pulling apart Apple’s latest tablet, they’ve managed to uncover some interesting details regarding its components:

• “The model numbers on the back of the 9.7-nch display lead us to believe this is a Samsung LCD.” This confirms earlier reports that Samsung was one of the only manufacturers trusted with making the Retina displays.
• The A5X processor for iFixit’s particular iPad was made by Samsung in the first week of 2012. That kind of gives you an idea of the tablet’s production timeline.
• The new iPad uses a Broadcom BCM4330 802.11 a/b/g/n MAC/Baseband/Radio with Integrated Bluetooth 4.0+HS and FM Transceiver. This is interesting considering the reports we’ve heard that Apple would be going with Qualcomm’s new 4G chipset. Perhaps it just wasn’t ready in time.
• The battery appears to makeup nearly half of the iPad’s innards. This makes sense considering it now has to support a high-resolution display and a battery-draining LTE radio. We also hear it takes forever to charge.

That’s about all for now. The iFixit team appears to still be going through the tablet’s final bits and pieces, so we’ll let you know if they find anything else worth mentioning. 








[Via: idownloadblog]