Following the compact tablet Apple iPad Mini 5, the craftsmen from iFixit decided to study the "rich inner world" of the iPad Air 3 tablet that debuted with it, as well as evaluate its maintainability. And in short, this tablet is very hard to fix, like most recent iPads.
A teardown of the iPad Air 3 reveals that it looks pretty much like the iPad Pro on the inside. The thing is that the new motherboard is located in the middle, between two batteries. Previous representatives of the Air series had the board on the side. It is noted that the cable leading to the batteries is connected to the bottom of the motherboard, which makes it difficult to disconnect it and repair the tablet.
It is worth noting that the new iPad Air 3 received a battery with a capacity of 30,8 Wh. This is a significant improvement over the previous iPad Air 2, which only offered a 27,6 Wh battery. Also for comparison, let's clarify that the 10,5-inch iPad Pro has a 30,2 Wh battery. iFixit experts note that although the battery of the novelty can be replaced, this is quite difficult to do.
In general, the tablet is recognized as non-repairable. Experts rated the possibility of its repair only two points out of ten possible. Like many Apple devices, the components here are secured with a strong adhesive, which makes repairs difficult. The only advantage of the design is the use of standard screws, for unscrewing which one screwdriver will be enough. Also noted is the generally modular design, which facilitates repairs. However, the Lightning port is soldered to the motherboard.
Recall that the iPad Air 3 is equipped with a 10,5-inch Retina display with a resolution of 2224 × 1668 pixels. The motherboard of the tablet has an A12 Bionic processor, which is placed directly above 3 GB of SK Hynix LPDDR4X RAM, and next to it are 64 GB of Toshiba flash memory and a number of other controllers from Apple and Broadcom.
You can learn more about the process of disassembling the iPad Air 3 tablet here.
Source: 3dnews.ru