Update: “We put the new iPad through more tests,” iFixit notes. “The display on the iPad 5 has ~44% greater luminance than the LCD in the Air 1.” Well, we guess that answers that!
Apple claims that its latest iPad boasts a “brighter 9.7-inch Retina display” than its predecessors.
However, our friends over at iFixit call that claim into question with their teardown of the device — which prompts them to ask, “Brighter than what?”
“It doesn’t look that different from the Air 1’s display,” iFixit notes, when taking apart the new tablet. “If they mean brighter than the Air 2, then that may simply be due to reverting to the unfused display design of the Air 1.”
The teardown reveals that the new low-cost 9.7-inch iPad isn’t enormously different from the first-gen iPad Air, albeit with a few minor tweaks. These essentially break down as: the absence of a mechanical lock switch, the addition of a single row of speaker holes, and microphone slots that got shrunk down to microphone holes.
How hard is it to repair new iPad?
As repairability positives, they note that the LCD is easy to remove, while the battery did not get soldered to the logic board.
As negatives, they observe that the front panel got glued to the rest of the device, greatly increasing the chances of cracking the glass screen if you try to repair it.
There’s also plenty of adhesive holding everything in place, making for the most difficult battery-removal procedure in any iPad up until this point. Additionally, foam sticky tape adheres the LCD to the front panel, while it’s not possible to access the front panel’s connector until you remove the LCD. iFixit gives the new iPad a repairability score of 2 out of 10 (with 10 being the easiest to repair).
We’ve come to expect unrepairable Apple products over the years. However, the skepticism from iFixit about Apple’s new brighter iPad display is most certainly interesting. We’ll update this article if we hear back from Apple about it.
Source: iFixit
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
3 responses to “iPad teardown throws shade on ‘brighter screen’ claim”
Brighter than some of the #(dim)wits in Apples marketing department.
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probably brighter than the iPad 4th generation it replaces from Fall 2012. It’s not an iPad Air replacement so it shouldn’t be compared with it. The iPad Pro replaced that line. It’s referred to by Apple as the iPad 5th generation so to compare it to anything beyond the original iPad through the iPad with Retina Display from 2012 is egregious.