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iFixit Tears Down iPad Air 2, Confirms Smaller Battery, A8X Chip, and 2GB RAM

blackcrayon said:
We can also go by the fact that Apple has used single 1 GB chips in the past, including in the iPhone 6, and there doesn't seem to be any reason for them to suddenly switch to two 512 GB chips :D
Also it would be strange for the benchmarks to get it wrong when they're obviously reading system values (as opposed to software that sometimes comes out after a device is released that just looks up the device type and makes a hard coded assumption based on that).
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Right. You assume, but you didn't get that informati from this teardown. All we have is a part number and 2 chips. Then we can deduce what this means.

This post seems to say that ifixit confirmed it was 2GB which isn't true.
 
Lancetx said:
The battery life is still at least the 10 hours that Apple promises, but I guess some people just have to find something to complain about now that they can't complain about the lack of RAM....
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Yep, and if it wasn't battery it would be something else!:cool:

We'll soon read some new complaints about 2GB of Ram and 3 cores are not enough, trust me!

Apple always does it so wrong, that's why they keep selling a ton of products and keep building up cash! All because they never have enough Ram, pixels, battery or cores etc, blau blau blau! Oh ya, and their phones bend easy.:rolleyes:
 
ipadlvr said:
It gets you through an entire day of use. What more do you want from any electronic device? 1 full day isn't good enough?
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Not when my iPad 2 can last easily for a week of constant use, if not more, on one charge. One full day isn't good enough. It's a step backwards, not forwards.
 
Supacon said:
If Apple's priorities weren't clear before, this spells it right out. They have no problem sacrificing battery life if it means they can make a thinner device.
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And yet the Air 2 still gets better battery life than the Nexus 9, which is thicker. Apple is advertising 10 hours battery life. I'm not aware of any review that says the Air 2 is getting less than that.
 
Where are all the "but the iPhone 6/6 Plus should have the Air 2s 2GB RAM" comments?

As for battery life. 10 hours + is great for what it does. How much longer does it need to last. I'd prefer that it feel lighter.
 
Separate RAM chips make the presence of a 128 bit bus likely. No reason they couldn't do a single 2GB chip.
 
dc89 said:
Apple's obsession with thinness has just got silly.
Protruding cameras in one product and a decrease in battery life in another.
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It's about pushing the limits. Engineering impossible designs. Delivery impossibly-sleek devices. What's wrong with that? And a smaller battery does not necessarily mean decreased battery life. Software is a big factor and iOS 8 is out now.
 
The ifixit article seems to suggest it has stereo speakers.
Am I reading this right? Is this a first for the iPad? I thought until now they always had mono speakers?
Also NFC, what!!!! :eek::eek:
 
The presence of NFC makes me think Apple is thinking ahead to more usages of NFC within iOS. I can understand limiting it to Apple Pay to start, so the general public feels safe. Then after a year or so they can open up the NFC capabilities and the iPad Air 2 will already be capable.
 
ipadlvr said:
IFixit didn't reveal 2GB of ram.

We assume it is 2GB.

We don't know what part number "Elpida (Micron Technology) F8164A3MD" is, and neither does ifixit. They told us the part number and said there are 2 of them.

There is no listing anywhere for this part, even in Micron's catalog, and so the only thing we can go by are the benchmark software to tell us
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Based on Elpida's numbering scheme, it's two 1GB chips. An "8" as the second character means 1GB, while an "A" means 2GB.
 
PunjabiSoorma24 said:
The article says this iPad contains the same NFC chip that is in the iPhone 6/6+, so why aren't Apple Pay store payments allowed?
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Doesn't seem strange Apple wouldn't "allow" this considering the form factor of the iPad and the inconvenience... But I hope it means they will allow NFC to be used the other way, as was mentioned- to accept payments from iPhones :) (a la Square, etc but much more elegant).
 
I had the same thought/question (here's to not seeing it get lost in the sea of petty bickering). My first thought was that NFC was included to allow iPads to be used as pay terminals (so they can't send payments but they could receive them).

PunjabiSoorma24 said:
The article says this iPad contains the same NFC chip that is in the iPhone 6/6+, so why aren't Apple Pay store payments allowed?
Click to expand...
 
I get the thinness obsession for the iPhone because most people put it in a case so thinner really does help especially with the newer bigger phones.

For the iPad im not sure. My iPad 2 is thin enough to enjoy. I think more than thinness they wanted to get it lighter. Making it lighter will help when holding it for long periods. I'm split on the obsession with thinness for the iPad. I wonder how far it will go before they just stop making it thinner. They have got to be getting close to the limit.
 
PunjabiSoorma24 said:
The article says this iPad contains the same NFC chip that is in the iPhone 6/6+, so why aren't Apple Pay store payments allowed?
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It has an NFC module on the board. Apple products share some of the same parts, so it is fine that they find the same chips on the boards.

The iPad may have an NFC chip on the board but it doesn't have an NFC Antenna, so no, the iPad doesn't have NFC.
 
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vagos said:
For the name of god people, enough with the slim-rage.
It's got 11.5 hours of battery life. Not good enough for you ?
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Funny I don't remember people complaining about battery life with iPads. Now that a tear down reveals a smaller battery everyone is outraged over battery life. Even though the majority of reviews claim similar battery life to the previous Air (and within Apple's claim of 10 hours). And 99.9% of the complaints come from people who don't have an Air 2 yet and haven't been able to do any real world testing. On The Verge's people are drooling over the new Nexus 9. I didn't see any battery life complaints even though the device is thicker than the Air 2 and battery life is between 9-9.5 hours.
 
spectrumfox said:
Not when my iPad 2 can last easily for a week of constant use, if not more, on one charge. One full day isn't good enough. It's a step backwards, not forwards.
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Pretty sure the iPad Air 2 will last just as long. Pretty sure if you use it a couple hours a day it will easily last you multiple days. Unless you provide screenshots of your iPad 2 giving you 70 hours of on screen time (Average 10 a day) without being put to charge then this will be fine and also spec wise this destroys the iPad 2 :)
 
brendu said:
I get the thinness obsession for the iPhone because most people put it in a case so thinner really does help especially with the newer bigger phones.

For the iPad im not sure. My iPad 2 is thin enough to enjoy. I think more than thinness they wanted to get it lighter. Making it lighter will help when holding it for long periods. I'm split on the obsession with thinness for the iPad. I wonder how far it will go before they just stop making it thinner. They have got to be getting close to the limit.
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Thinness helps, I think the original Air is much more comfortable to hold than the 2 beyond the weight savings. And I'm pretty sure Apple would have made the Air 2 lighter if they could, the tech probably wasn't there (for the cost, anyway). Still needs a certain amount of metal and glass and battery right now to be practical.
 
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