iFixit have gone above and beyond by flying to Australia and queuing up to get one of the first new iPads just to dismantle it. And as they have come to expect, Apple has continued the tradition of making the tablet very difficult to disassemble and therefore repair outside of an Apple Store.
There is no doubt that the new iPad is going to sell millions of units, and while Apple benefits the most in terms of profit from those sales, there’s a few component manufacturers doing well out of the tablet, too.
Samsung looks to be supplying the beautiful new Retina display, at least for this first batch of tablets. Broadcom has multiple chips inside including an 802.11 wireless chip, an I/O controller, and microprocessor. Elpidia has supplied the 1GB of RAM, and Texas Instruments has a device driver in there too. Qualcomm supply the power management, 3G/4G transceiver, and wireless modem, Toshiba has a memory chip on board as well as being the flash memory supplier, and there’s further silicon provided by Triquint, Avago, and Skyworks.
If you’re wondering how quickly Apple manages to get launch day iPads manufactured, the A5X processor gives us a big hint. It has a manufacturing date of the first week of 2012, suggesting Apple was preparing component stocks for nearly 3 months at least.
The big addition to the new iPad, and by big I mean large, is the new battery. The iPad 2 only carried a 25-watt hour unit, but the new iPad fits in a 42.5 watt hour replacement. It offers up similar battery life to its predecessor, demonstrating how much extra juice that high resolution screen and new processor require.
Of course, if you’re queuing up for an iPad today all you really care about is booting it up and taking in that new display. It’s certainly the main (only?) reason to consider it over the iPad 2, and for an extra $100 Apple has rendered the decision that much easier to make.
Read more at iFixit
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