It’s already insane how thin an iPad 2 is — even thinner than the iPhone 4 — but come 2012, you’re about to see them get a lot thinner, thanks to some svelte battery packs that should shave up to 30% off the total footprint of the iPad 3.
Taiwan Economic News reports:
With the upcoming iPad 3 to feature a thinner, lighter battery module that is widely believed to be priced 20-30% higher than iPad 2’s, Simplo Technology Co. and Dynapack International Technology Corp., both Apple Inc.’s contract suppliers of iPad and Macbook battery packs, will hence secure a surefire profit drive for the near future.
Institutional investors pointed out that the battery pack for iPad 3, scheduled to be massively produced in the first quarter of next year, has been redesigned to be thinner and lighter with a longer service life than iPad 2 edition’s/
How much thinner can Apple even make the iPad 3, anyway? Will the next one waver like a piece of paper?.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
22 responses to “Thanks To New Batteries, iPad 3 Could Be Almost As Thin As A Razor Blade”
I heard they are having to “fatten it up” to razor blade thickness because it was so thin they kept losing it when it turned sideways.
It’s really amazing how this story keeps changing as it passes from blogger to blogger and site to site. Disgusting reporting.
Well I never, a Razor blade you say… will health & safelty ever allow it, what about airport control?!
Why not keep in the same thickness and add more battery life? It’s plenty thin enough now.
I’m thinking more like same thickness (maybe a hair thinner) and use the space for dual mode 3g, etc
imagine razor thin battery with fiber glass body..
Having it as thin as a razor blade does open up a whole new world of app possibilities…..
or lose it through a crack in the floor?
30% higher in COST of the battery compared to the cost of a battery currently in an iPad2???
I’m sorry but I think you may have dropped the ball on this one.
The article says the batteries will be thinner, but not by “30%”. Specifically it says the new battery has “been redesigned to be thinner and lighter”, but that is all it says about the size. The only time it mentions “30%” is when it says they may be 30% *more expensive*.
For all we know these batteries may only be a tiny bit thinner. We do not know as the article does not say.
And what if the new batteries were 50% thinner, who is to say that Apple would not just put in twice as many, meaning no reduction in thickness of the device at all? I think something similar happened a few years ago with MacBook batteries…