iPad 2 Teardown: Glass is 27 Percent Thinner


iFixit has posted a detail teardown of the just released iPad 2, revealing a great deal about the inner working of the latest creation from Apple. The iPad 2′s glass is significantly thinner than the previous iPad. More from iFixit:

  • We did a quick glass and LCD thickness comparison:
    • iPad 1: lcd = 3.2 mm glass = .85 mm
    • iPad 2: lcd = 2.4 mm glass = .62 mm
  • The thickness of these components — especially that of the glass — could drastically reduce the durability of the device, especially the glass’ resistance to shattering. We’ll see in due time if the percentage of folks with broken iPad 2 front glass is dramatically different than that of the original iPad.
  • Lifting off the LCD exposes the iPad 2′s battery. We found a 3.8V, 25 watt-hour unit. That’s just a hair more than the original iPad’s 24.8 watt-hours, so any improved battery performance should be attributed to software and other hardware improvements.
  • We confirmed via software that the iPad 2 indeed has 512 MB of RAM.
  • The markings on the 1 GHz Apple A5 dual-core processor appear to be Samsung’s, but Chipworks will investigate in the forthcoming days to find out for sure.
  • Other components that power the iPad 2:
    • Toshiba TH58NVG7D2FLA89 16GB NAND Flash
    • Broadcom BCM5973KFBGH Microcontroller
    • Broadcom BCM5974 CKFBGH capacitative touchscreen controller
    • Texas Instruments CD3240B0 11AZ4JT touchscreen line driver
    • Broadcom BCM43291HKUBC Wi-Fi/Bluetooth/FM tuner combo chip
    • S6T2MLC N33C50V Power Management IC
    • ST Micro AGD8 2103 gyroscope
    • ST Micro LIS331DLH accelerometer
  • There’s also an Apple-branded 338S0940 A0BZ1101 SGP chip. 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!