The gang at iFixIt — which tears down electronic devices and looks at their innards so you don’t have to — has torn down Apple’s new 9.7-inch iPad 6. Here are some of the iPad 6 Teardown highlights:
- It sports the same 32.9 Wh battery of the iPad 5 (better than the promised 32.4). That bests the 27.6 Wh iPad Air 2 and the 27.9 Wh iPad Pro 9.7″ (all of which are outpaced by the Surface Pro 4’s 38.2 Wh reservoir).
- The new Pencil support apparently comes courtesy of the dual Broadcom touchscreen controller ICs, found here and in previous Pro-grade iPads.
“Turns out the iPad 6 does inherit the same non-fused display and digitizer glass from the iPad 5. They’re air-gapped and individually replaceable in the event of drop damage, lowering the average cost of repairs. But here’s where the iPad 6 gets a ‘Needs Improvement.’ Unlike the lauded (by us) command strip stickies securing the battery in the 12.9” Pro, here a solid barrier of tough adhesive turns a simple battery replacement into an advanced repair,” iFixIt concludes. “Adding up zero waterproofing + a non-replaceable charging port + zero upgradability + glue throughout = repair nightmare. And don’t say you can’t make a repairable tablet, because others have proven that you can. Apple’s ‘education’ iPad is still a case of won’t—not can’t—so we graded it accordingly, at 2 out of 10 on our repairability scale.”
