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iPad 2 Teardown: A5, 'Neat and Tidy' Interior, Massive But Thin Battery
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I would like to see an increased battery option, thicker and pricier. I have posted that since iPhone 1 and it has not happened so I am not holding my breath, but I would rather have double battery than double flash.
I think that since good lenses and photos require device depth, they should put the high resolution still camera facing out the top edge of the device so proper optical zoom and focus can happen. Apple has the technology to really do that right for the first time.
It is hard to underestimate the value of a proper photograph that is in focus and framed for the distance you are from the subject.
Rocketman
Not necessarily, they stopped putting the brand on their chips in apple products few years ago, I don't know why. Now they are all Apple branded.
Even ifixit guesses : "Apple-branded 338S0940 A0BZ1101 SGP. This looks like the Cirrus audio codec Chipworks found in the Verizon iPhone, but they'll have to get it off the board to make sure."
I don't really care for Apples choice of using alot of glue to cut costs. It makes opening and repairing the device on your own that much harder. On the otherhand ipads and iphones are disposal items since the batteries can't be replaced anyway so it's not that big of a deal that they're cheaply made.
My wife looked at the picture and asked, "Does it still work after they let the Pixie out of it?"
I guess for some people it truly is a ~magical~ device.
I guess for some people it truly is a ~magical~ device.
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Oh you thought the iPad 2 was designed by Dell! No, this is Apple they have put thought behind the design the glue will hold up just fine.
Full of Win said:
Oh you thought the iPad 2 was designed by Dell! No, this is Apple they have put thought behind the design the glue will hold up just fine.
If you check other teardowns like the ipod classic, you won't see any chip with the cirrus logic branding, and yet it has an cirrus logic codec.
Glue and breaking clips? It is a throwaway product obviously. It evidently works very nicely, and it is cheap to manufacture, but glue and breaking clips are evil.
The Use of Structural Gluing Just Turns Me Off
The extensive use of structural gluing of the major parts in the iPad 2 makes it a $730 (3G w/32gb) through-away product by design. If you look at the iFixit teardowns for the original iPad there is a very apparent drop in overall quality with iPad 2. Then look at the Xoom teardown and you will see why it costs more.
IMO, The iPad 2 will have no resale value in 12-24 months which makes it a poor tablet choice today.
The extensive use of structural gluing of the major parts in the iPad 2 makes it a $730 (3G w/32gb) through-away product by design. If you look at the iFixit teardowns for the original iPad there is a very apparent drop in overall quality with iPad 2. Then look at the Xoom teardown and you will see why it costs more.
IMO, The iPad 2 will have no resale value in 12-24 months which makes it a poor tablet choice today.
Having all this components inside one chip definitely increases performance.
The comm chip also has a FM Tuner. Could we expect it will someday be taken advantage of? Hopefully Apple will allow developers to create FM Tuner Apps.
Also, I found an easier way to open it: Bring it to Florida during the Summer, leave inside your car for a couple hours (before the battery explodes) and it should easy pry open.
I don't consider 512MB to be too little for an iPad. Compared to Windows apps, iOS Apps are well optimized and don't require too much memory to run.
And having the storage on a chip, also makes it fast enough that it could implemented as virtual memory. So we should be in good shape.
What else would you expect to use? I could only think of using magnets (as used on the iMac) but then a sudden fall could separate the display from the assembly. If you want something to take apart yourself, consider any of the other bulky tablets out there.
The Apple A5 is (probably) three chips in the same package.
The CPU and the GPU is on the same silicon die, a system-on-a-chip (SoC). The RAM are probably two separate dies stacked on top of the SoC. Together this constitutes three chips in a Package on Package configuration, or PoP.
Doing a microscope survey of the SoC die will determine if the core is what we expect, that the CPU is Cortex-A9 MPcore based, and the GPU is a PowerVR SGX543MP2.
If "horrible" is a spec then it is 4.5 of those. Doesn't bother me so much because the only use they will get from mine is Skype an the kids playing in Photobooth.