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Teardown of New iPad Reveals Samsung Retina Display, Qualcomm MDM9600 Wireless Chip

The "breakthrough in battery technology" is a combination of smaller components overall and the simple engineering choice to make it imperceptably thicker and just barely noticeably heavier. This is great news.

It is also capable of getting hot. This thing is optimized and turbocharged.

Rocketman
 
I find these tear downs boring sometimes, screen - check, big battery slab - check, back case - check, tiny slither of a mother board - check, camera - check.

I guess if you really want to see the may of the battery or the make of the screen your interested? But why would you really want to know the bluetooth chip make or WiFI chip make? You know it'll work?
 
Mr. Gates said:
Sorry if I missed it but do we know how much RAM it has yet ?
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2x512 = 1GB

thundersteele said:
On the iFixit teardown I didn't find any clear statement about the size of the new battery, compared to the old one. It has 70% more capacity, and now macrumors claims that it is "about 70% larger", but that's not clear.

The battery area is about the same, so it should be easy to compare the thickness, and of course also the weight of the batteries. It would be interesting to know whether the capacity just scaled with the size, or whether there is some progress in the technology, i.e. maybe the battery is only 50% larger but increased 70% in capacity.
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From ArsTechnica: Earlier speculation suggested that Apple had somehow significantly improved on the power density of the cells, but our calculations show otherwise. Apple was just able to more efficiently pack in the components—and increase the overall device thickness ever so slightly—to make the battery larger.
 
a.gomez said:
the best parts of the iPad hardware are made by Samsung... How funny is that
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Yet Samsung isn't using it in their products. Why? As we said, there could be many different reasons.

  1. Apple actually developed tech behind the display, Samsung is just manufacturing
  2. Third company developed the display and currently only Apple bought rights to use it in their products.
  3. Samsung, as well as other huge companies, operates as different entities with different CEO-s and separate budgets and goals. One division for displays, one for memories and so on. It was more profitable for display division of Samsung to sell displays to Apple instead of having to sell it to Samsung division at lower price.
  4. Samsung is behind development and production of displays but has no real use for them at this moment. It could be that demand for their tablets and other devices isn't high enough so they haven't included these displays in their products yet.

    About third point - there is a comment at ArsTechnica from someone who claims he's been working at LG: As someone who worked at LG for 5 years, I can confirm this completely. These companies are absolutely massive (far larger than American corps) and each division operates almost entirely in a bubble.
    For instance, there were multiple occasions where the division that makes the display panels would give them to competitors products and tell the in-house division that they can't make enough to supply their own branded devices. This is because each division has its own P&L and it was simply more profitable for the display division to sell the panels than to "give them at cost" to the TV division.
    Weird I thought, but hey, who am I to question the workings of these mega corps.

 
I'm confused - if the battery is 70% larger, and it is the single largest component of the iPad, how could the weight have only gone up 1.8 oz? Did they reduce something else?
 
Randomoneh said:
Samsung, as well as other huge companies, operates as different entities with different CEO-s and separate budgets and goals. One division for displays, one for memories and so on.
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Not only that, the Samsung Electronics division who makes the LCDs will become a separate entity soon as Samsung Electronics is trying to shed the money losing part of the business.
 
Heard on CNBC that LG is providing 40% of the panels. Guess there will be a panel lottery after all.
 
Randomoneh said:
Could you explain that some more? Thanks.
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The part that produces LCD displays is - or was - a division of Samsung Electronics. Samsung has decided to make the division a separate company named "Samsung Display" with its own stocks and management. As part of the spin off, it'll also merge with another company named SMD(Samsung Mobile Display) which is the company that makes AMOLED screen. In other words there'll be a company dedicated to making LCD and AMOLED screens without having to worry about other electronics.

There are many theories as to why Samsung has decided to do this but regardless of the reason, from April on, the Samsung LCDs will be made by a company that's separated from Samsung Electronics.
 
Randomoneh said:
Could you explain that some more? Thanks.
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Samsung's LCD division has been losing money for a while as there is such enormous competition in this market. It lost a LOT of money last year so Samsung are spinning off the company by April this year and pumping in a load of capital to get it back on an even keel.

Samsung is seeing OLED as the future and will, at least for the time being keep this in house but could merge this into the new display company once it is producing revenues to offset the losses of the LCD company.

This gets the loss making business off the main balance sheet, forces Samsung's other divisions to pay market prices for the LCDs they use in their other products and allow some distance for companies like Apple to purchases from the new company with a 'Chinese Wall' between them and the main Samsung corp.

This also might be a way to support the LCD business waiting for other competitors to go out of business. Almost no high end LCD producers are making money at the moment as the revenue generated form low prices does not cover the capital cost of research and improved manufacturing techniques.

(We all want fantastic screens at low prices and don't seem to be willing to pay what the manufacturers need us to to make this a viable business as things stand)
 
AidenShaw said:
Bacon?
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I cooked some on the grill a few nights ago along with some onions and red peppers to top of the charcoal grilled filet mignons I made for dinner.

But back to topic, the new iPad is going to spread like wildfire. It looks like a gem.
 
festerfeet said:
Samsung is seeing OLED as the future and will, at least for the time being keep this in house but could merge this into the new display company once it is producing revenues to offset the losses of the LCD company.
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SMD, who makes all the mobile OLED displays, is actually not part of Samsung Electronics but a separate company. There were strong rumors last year that Samsung Electronics will merge SMD into it but turns out the newly found Samsung Display will now most likely merge with SMD as early as by the 2nd half of this year.


festerfeet said:
...
This also might be a way to support the LCD business waiting for other competitors to go out of business. Almost no high end LCD producers are making money at the moment as the revenue generated form low prices does not cover the capital cost of research and improved manufacturing techniques.
Click to expand...

Indeed and that's why I find it incredulous to find so many claims in the line of "Samsung will cut their component supply to Apple and Apple will be screwed" usually posited by the ones with anti-Apple sentiment, hoping the mighty Samsung will find a way to severely damage Apple and give them the joy of schadenfreude and "I told you so"s. Samsung, or more precisely the LCD making part of Samsung really needs a big client like Apple more than ever.
 
Most likely the LCD and OLED units will merge as part of Samsung's $41.4 billion investment plan for 2012.
 
Great Friday

I don't know which is better, getting my new iPad in the mail today, or watching MJ. It's soooo close.
 
AppleScruff1 said:
I cooked some on the grill a few nights ago along with some onions and red peppers to top of the charcoal grilled filet mignons I made for dinner.

But back to topic, the new iPad is going to spread like wildfire. It looks like a gem.
Click to expand...
I had a friend for dinner... with some fava beans and a nice chianti... ;)

Anyway, I'm definitely happy to see a Samsung-manufactured display at this point, as Samsung has been the market leader in this technology, and even makes some of the displays for other TV manufacturers, including Sony. Hopefully the first batch of iPads will all sport the Samsung panel, so those of us who are the early adopters (or is that guinea pigs?) won't be subjected to, as others have called it, the panel "lottery".
 
Randomoneh said:
From ArsTechnica: Earlier speculation suggested that Apple had somehow significantly improved on the power density of the cells, but our calculations show otherwise. Apple was just able to more efficiently pack in the components—and increase the overall device thickness ever so slightly—to make the battery larger.
Click to expand...

Ah well, if enough people say it, then it's probably true. Would still be nice to have an actual weight or size comparison between the batteries.

Jugney said:
I'm confused - if the battery is 70% larger, and it is the single largest component of the iPad, how could the weight have only gone up 1.8 oz? Did they reduce something else?
Click to expand...

Volume != weight.
 
Panel Lottery?

Vanton said:
Heard on CNBC that LG is providing 40% of the panels. Guess there will be a panel lottery after all.
Click to expand...

I also read that LG (and maybe another manufacturer) will be supplying panels once the quality control issues at up to standards. I'm disappointed to hear this because it will lead to a panel lottery.

So, does anyone have an idea when the LG panels will be in the iPads that are available to the public?

Also, is there any chance that the LG panels will be superior to the Samsung panels?
 
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