Apple launched a new 9.7-inch iPad exactly one week ago, at an educational event held in Chicago. Its two main new features are support for the Apple Pencil and the A10 Fusion chip, but has anything else changed inside?
Fortunately, the guys from iFixit they are for it. They already put their hands on a tablet unit (which now uses the A1893 model) and completely disassembled it.
Here are the highlights of teardown:
- The cables digitizer they are similar, but not identical to the previous model, possibly due to the new support for Apple Pencil.
- The Touch ID chip is the NXP 8461A1, exactly the same as before. That is, no second generation Touch ID on this iPad.
- For a change (not), the Lightning connector is very delicate and difficult to remove.
- The A10 Fusion chip the SoC APL1W24, exactly the same used in the iPhone 7.
- This iPad has 2GB of LPDDR4 D9VBD RAM from Micron.
- The touch controller is Broadcom's BCM15900B0, also used on the Pro 10.5 and 12.9 inch iPads.
- At least in the open unit, the 32GB of flash memory is from Toshiba.
- The A1484 battery, with a capacity of 32.9Wh is the same as the iPad of the fifth generation.
Some more pictures of the process:
Click / tap to enlarge them.
And a video:
Based on that, iFixit gave a note 2/10 in terms of “repairability” for the new 9.7-inch iPad.
