It’s that time of the year again, when new Apple devices get torn down in order to find out what’s ticking inside them. This time we’re seeing the Apple iPad 7 get torn down by iFixit, in order to find out what the situation with the moving parts is. Also, battery size and all that…
So, the 7th gen iPad has grown in screen diagonal from 9.7 inches to 10.2 inches and it ships with iPadOS preinstalled. It’s an affordable $329 tablet, that has similar innards with the predecessor, as found by iFixit. While the iPhone 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max jumped to much higher battery capacities, the new iPad has inside the same unit as the predecessor, a 8827 mAh/32.9 Watt hour unit.
It’s supposed to rely on hardware and software tweaks to deliver an extra hour of battery life. There’s also 3 GB of RAM inside, which is an extra GB from the predecessor and not bad to have at $329. Also, as expected iFixit hands out a repairability score for the 2019 iPad, which is not at all flattering. It’s a 2 out of 10, which we’ve seen happen more than once for iDevices.
On the plus side we have a non laminated separately replaceable cover glass and LCD, that makes the screen repair less expensive. Also, the LCD is simple to remove, once the cover glass is separated. The big minus is the strong adhesive that prevents easier repairs. The Lightning port is also soldered to be the main board, a big problem for repairers and the extra adhesive that holds everything into place is a curse for logic board replacements.
This thing needs to get more modular… like yesterday.
