With the new 9.7-inch iPad now available to personal pickup customers at select Apple Retail Stores in the US, Canada, Australia, and Japan, iFixit has already begun its teardown of the new tablet, reports AppleInsider.
According to the results of the teardown, it seems as though this new iPad is actually very similar to the first-generation iPad Air. For example, the new tablet has the same size screen as the first Air, which is apparently easier to repair, despite being thicker, because the LCD and digitizer are not fused together. In fact, iFixit was even able to swap the same parts from an old Air with the new 9.7-inch iPad.
The teardown shows that the two tablets also share the same LCD timing controller, with results being pretty much the same for both. iFixit says that Apple’s claim that the newest tablet is “brighter” could have something to do with the iPad Air 2 having a fused display.
Other similarities between the iPad Air 1 and the new 9.7-inch iPad include the same 32.9 watt-hour battery, which is superior to both the iPad Air 2’s 27.6 watt-hour supply and the 9.7-inch iPad Pro’s 27.9 watt-hour supply.
The main difference between the new tablet and previous versions is the A9 processor with 2GB of DDR4 RAM, with the iPad Air models having an A7 chip with 1GB of DDR3 RAM. The base storage in the new iPad has been increased to 32GB for the same price as the base model in the previous iPads, and it also now features a Touch ID sensor with a physical button, as opposed to the solid-state button on the iPhone 7.
Source: Teardown finds Apple's new iPad largely similar to first-gen iPad Air
