Here we are, one week later after the announcement of the 2018 iPad 9.7 and while at $299 (for students) it’s a bargain, it’s also got drawbacks. 2 GB of RAM may not be enough for some, for example and it seems that the construction of the device makes repairs very hard. iFixit has the scoop on that, courtesy of a teardown.
As usual, they took apart the device to see what makes it tick, who made the components and how easy it is to repair. We skipped straight to the conclusions and saw that the device earned a grade of 2 out of 10, meaning it’s very hard to repair. The silver lining is that at least the LCD panel is easy o remove once you separate the cover glass/digitizer. The device is also air gapped and it’s got separately replaceable cover glass and LCD, which makes drop damage repairs less pricey.
Sadly, typical for an iPad there’s a ton of adhesive/glue used here to hold everything together. The adhesive holds components in place and especially the battery is glued shut and very hard to remove. Even the LCD has its downs, like the foam sticky tape tape, which makes it stick to the front panel. This increases the risk of damage during teardown.
In other news, Toshiba makes the 32 GB flash memory, NXP the NFC controller and there’s 2 GB of Micron LPDDR4 SDRAM on board. A special Broadcom controller for the touchscreen was found here, probably to add the Pencil input in the mix. Conclusion? Be wary of repairs and we hope you don’t need them.
