that's the most interesting argument for the bigger iPad as well. 2GB of RAM split on a fatter bus with the 3 or 4 core A8x would make a much more plausible 13" iPad. it also explains holding off on the Mini for a bigger one this year.... it just didn't work out.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iFixit Tears Down iPad Air 2, Confirms Smaller Battery, A8X Chip, and 2GB RAM
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
that's the most interesting argument for the bigger iPad as well. 2GB of RAM split on a fatter bus with the 3 or 4 core A8x would make a much more plausible 13" iPad. it also explains holding off on the Mini for a bigger one this year.... it just didn't work out.
Ummm..... yes.... it makes a good butt warmer during the long cold winter nights... I thought everyone used it that way.
The weight, I would agree. But the thinness factor, IMHO Apple had already thinned out their iOS devices to its practical limits already.
There comes a point where you actually NEED enough material (bulk) to comfortably grasp the device. Trying to make it paper-thin is counter to this.
But it never does - Apple can say all they like about more efficient processors but they aren't the main drain on the battery, the screen is.
In theoretical calculations I'm sure the results look good but Apple's real-world testing seems to be almost non-existent given all the recent "issues" with devices and software, the things that drain battery most - games, watching films, browsing the internet and basically any other thing that involves constantly lighting the screen are still going to be hampered by a smaller battery as reviewers are noticing.
It's just Apple being arrogant and stupid of late, ignoring all the wants of their own customers for a little smug back-patting in the board meetings. No-one has been asking for thinner devices lately, most people want more battery life.
Sorry if I sound like a jerk, but I'll just say it. Are you insane? If the iPad Air NEVER got any thinner, only YOU would complain. And you'll be the first to complain when your iPad starts to bend or your screen cracks from the weight of a notebook (actual paper notebook, not a computer). At a certain point, thin is done. There is a breaking point, pun intended, where the thinness of a device only serves to lessen it's durability and can have no positive effect on it's usefulness. I never said we were there yet, but we are coming close. I don't want to hold an iPad the thickness of a playing card. Maybe you want that, but I'll pass. Keep current iPad Air thickness and improve upon battery life. I'm all for that. IT'S THIN ENOUGH APPLE.
PS- I've owned or used every iPad ever released, not counting devices announced last week. I've used some horrible Android tablets as well. Apple was already thinner than any of the crap tablets I've used. Maybe bulk up if the weight and thickness are too much to handle?
Yes, in video tests where both iPads are using the H.264 decoder to play the video files. Of course the bigger battery will win out. I'm more interested in web browsing and app use.
And how... Tim gave a sneak peek at the Air 3. They dropped "iPad" because even the name sounded too thick. Tim said, and I quote, "there is nothing more important than making it thin." So I must take back what I said to you. You were spot on! Tim is definitely doubling down on THIN!!!
Oh wait, is that a super-thin 12" MacBook Air sticking out of your back pocket, or are you just happy to be presenting? Nope, that's a super-thin 12" MacBook Air sticking out of your back pocket. I'll take some AppleCare on that please.
Except that you forget to Highlight that exactely that big batter delivered less hours. The reason why people were complaining is that the batteries of those iPads were both bulkier AND less durable.
Here the point is another one: people would love to see an Air 2 with more battery lifetime and same form factor as the original air. More or less the same step which apple did from iPad3 to iPad4.
Something is odd. Max memory per APP on Android is somewhere in the 16 to 48MB per app. On iOS, it is 70MB. Those are the max amount of RAM each app can consume at any time.
Well said!
As CPU's etc become more energy efficient then you don't need the same battery size.
My guess is that eventually, as technology continues to improve, that Apple will one day offer greater battery life, that is to say that the standard won't be 10.1 hours but something greater.
And considering that iPads generally hold their charge really well when not in use and when switched of, there's no great urgency (well from my perspective that is) to have longer battery life.
I think battery life on the iPad has been one of Apple's success stories from the beginning. I had my old 1st gen iPad fully charged and switched off for months, almost a year. I took it out of storage and hit the power button and expected it to be dead. To my surprise it was still at 100% charge.
My iPad 2 (2,4 model) gives an expected 11.7 hours battery life and it's early days it gave me closer to 18 hours. It has since dropped greatly.But it's still good.
But more on topic, there is more buzz these days at MacRumors than at an Apple product launch. Think I'll skip the launches in future and just wait for the MacRumors articles.
So excited to read all this stuff (the specs) of the iPadAir2.
I'm busy earning extra credit card reward points so I can get one for free!
But I still can't decide whether to stick with a 16GB model or this time go for the 64GB. What do you guys recommend? I'm thinking 16GB is too small these days. ??
64GB. I went with 64/LTE but I'm thinking maybe 128 was the right choice :/
16 is too small for anything but a media consumption device. And an iPad is more than that.
----------
Battery life will improve on future models, for this specific revision it wasn't a priority. And my name is not Tim.
Last edited by a moderator:
You're talking about the Secure Enclave in the the M7 and M8 co-processors. This is where TouchID fingerprint data is stored. Secure Enclave is a marketing term coined by Apple to name the repository on the Mx co-processor.
The NFC module is where the secure element used for processing NFC payments is made and is utilised by Apple to store the static D.A.N. for each card set up under Apple Pay and the place where the one-time use transaction token is created and used to verify and authenticate an Apple Pay transaction.
Two different and completely separate things.
Sloppy. It is easy to reduce thickness by reducing value.
The iPad was the one device that you did not have to worry about battery life. Going on holiday? Just grab your iPad and you're good for the drive to the airport, wait for the plane, flight itself and drive to the hotel. Previously battery life could cope, now - not so much.
The iPad was the one device that you did not have to worry about battery life. Going on holiday? Just grab your iPad and you're good for the drive to the airport, wait for the plane, flight itself and drive to the hotel. Previously battery life could cope, now - not so much.
If the battery density was 2 times higher in around 10 years (highly possible), they could make it a extremely rigid 3-4 mm thick by simply using some carbon fibers to reinforce a titanium or aluminium body. This thing would be much more rigid than even the current one with possibly 20h of battery life.
It would weight probably 150g (or even less) and with current speed of improvement in the screens, probably be nearly indestructible if dropped.
I'm guessing that by that time, the whole side of these thing would be just one screen and you could easily interlock them to create a larger screen of arbitrary size that works as one screen/one device (a sort of hyper continuity).
Would you bitch then?
----------
Hey buddy, the battery life IS THE SAME AS PROMISED FOR THE LAST 6 DEVICES. Spreading FUD doesn't make it true.
Tat depends if you were happy with the battery life as it was before, or would you like better battery life?
Main question:
How much battery life is enough, so that getting thinner is better?
8 hours?
a day?
IMHO, I would like 16 hours of battery life while playing games and / or watching movies in airplane mode: for long-haul flight entertainment.
How are you reducing value? You've gotten a thinner and lighter device that performs way better than the previous generation, has a much better camera, and offers the higher capacities (64GB & 128GB) at $100 cheaper price points than 1 week ago - AND it maintains the same battery life.
How has that reduced value? Seems to me it has increased the value of the product significantly.
If you didn't have to worry about battery life before then you don't now either.
But it doesn't according to reports. Just because Apple says so it doesn't make it true.
Carry the charger in your book bag (since you have ebooks, there should be room). When you're writing your papers, choose a quiet spot near a power outlet. Your uni may not be as advanced as some, but I imagine there are places set up for students to charge their portable devices.
----------
External batteries are great for topping off your iPad's battery when you don't have access to power lines. Some will give you several charges. No need to make everyone's iPad thicker and heavier when most don't need it.Tat depends if you were happy with the battery life as it was before, or would you like better battery life?
Main question:
How much battery life is enough, so that getting thinner is better?
8 hours?
a day?
IMHO, I would like 16 hours of battery life while playing games and / or watching movies in airplane mode: for long-haul flight entertainment.
Tat depends if you were happy with the battery life as it was before, or would you like better battery life?
Main question:
How much battery life is enough, so that getting thinner is better?
8 hours?
a day?
IMHO, I would like 16 hours of battery life while playing games and / or watching movies in airplane mode: for long-haul flight entertainment.
That's all nice and stuff, but there is no device in the world that does that. The technological envelope needs to continue to be pushed, and I applaud Apple, and their competitors (Well done Motorola and HTC on the new Nexus 6 & 9 respectively, keeping Apple on their toes!), for continuing to push that envelope. Where's the innovation in putting in a bigger battery?
If people are complaining now about lack of innovation even with Apple designing some truly remarkable silicon the past few years, achieving amazing results in efficiency and performance using their own unique proprietary chip designs, able to increase that performance while maintaining the same battery life on a smaller battery - not even one that is the same size - then that is properly excellent engineering.
It is actually comical listening to everyone here moan and moan when if they took a step back they would see these things for what they are - truly exceptional feats of electrical & mechanical engineering and industrial design.
On the other hand, playing Devil's advocate - look what happened to the iPad mini - 100% customer satisfaction rating, and what does Apple do? They get complacent and leave it alone essentially.
Maybe you should all keep moaning ;-) Just not here. Go to official customer survey sites like JD Power and Consumer Reports...or Apples own website. The discussions here are not on Apple's radar.
Have you used the new iPad to go on the trip you mention? It isn't like they reduced the battery life to half. It basically went from 13 hours to 11.5 hours. So basically unless you always got to 10% battery before you can find a plug, you won't really notice.
Are there some people that need that 1.5 hours? Sure, but how many? I know people that go on camping trips and even on the Air 1, they needed to bring extra batteries to charge it. So should the Air have been made thicker and have 20 hours battery life just for those people?
It maintains the same promised 10 hour battery life. If Apple understated the iPad Air's battery life a bit, that's fine, bonus for you, but the iPad Air 2 delivers at least the same claimed battery life as all of its predecessors before it.
I have never ever noted a truly noticeable difference in battery life between the generations, and currently have 2 iPad 2's, an iPad Air, and an iPad mini 2 at home and owned both the 3rd and 4th generation iPads. So the only one I haven't had is the original.
Obviously this is anecdotal personal experience, but I mean, I use my iPad all day long at work and at home, and have only ever had to even look at the battery life on a couple of occasions when I had been streaming live sporting events all day long during the World Cup and last Winter Olympics. But that was over 10 hours straight of constant live streaming (it was for the benefit of the Office - didn't sit and stare at the screen watch sports for 10 hours straight
)
Please show us a screen shot of your battery usage in settings showing 168+ hours of usage...
I do love a good tear down, I used to love taking things apart and putting them back together but now with my eyes being so bad and things being so small I can't do it so its great that others do and put the pictures up so I too can enjoy experience!
As for the new iPad itself, I don't know what people are complaining about, I think it is an incredibly good update, it might not have any new whiz-bang features, but it is a massive performance improvement which is at the end of the day just as important, especially as iOS gets more demanding and 2GB RAM becomes the norm in the future.
As for the new iPad itself, I don't know what people are complaining about, I think it is an incredibly good update, it might not have any new whiz-bang features, but it is a massive performance improvement which is at the end of the day just as important, especially as iOS gets more demanding and 2GB RAM becomes the norm in the future.
I'm pretty sure that this is not the target group that Apple is going for with the Air 2 anyway.
Cook said it himself that they haven't figured the upgrade cycle of tablets our yet. I just ordered the Air 2 and am upgrading from the iPad 3. For me the increased performace, thinness, weight, TouchID etc are very compelling differences with my old iPad. I guess the same can be said for owners of the iPad 4.
The "problem" Apple in general has is that the build quality of their devices is very good and that performance is also good enough to last several years, even beyond the expected 2 year upgrade cycle that is common in the smartphone market. Many people around me do not upgrade because their products work fine performance-wise and still look fine too because people use cases and screen protectors.
IMHO, I would like 16 hours of battery life while playing games and / or watching movies in airplane mode: for long-haul flight entertainment.
What kind of flights are you on where you need 16 hours of battery life? Are there nonstop-around-the-world flights? I'm on 12-hour flights on a quite regular basis, and I have never been able to use my iPad for more than 8 hours or so, because there's a limit to how long I can stare at a screen, it's not possible to use the iPad during the food service, I actually want to get up every now and then, and at some point, I do actually get sleepy. To need 16 hours of battery life, I would have to be on the plane for a minimum of 24 hours.
What I don't get though is: The people who say they would like a heavier tablet to get more battery life can just take an external battery with them. Adding weight to their backpacks to gain battery life. Same thing. That way, the vocal minority that will sacrifice lightness for battery life can get what they need without spoiling things for the quiet happy majority.