we finally made it through the bulk of
teardown season but it
looks like something slipped through the
cracks oh here it is
it's that new ipad air it's been
redesigned to look more like an ipad pro
with flat edges and smaller bezels
but the bezels aren't quite as thin as
the 11 inch ipad pro it's the thought
that counts though
on the back side you can see things are
mostly the same but instead of the ipad
pro's massive dual camera and lidar bump
the air only has one tiny camera poking
out the ipad air comes in bright new
colors like sky blue and green and has
apple's latest a14 processor inside
speaking of inside
let's see what else is inside this thing
to open it up we apply some heat with an
eye opener and use an isclack to create
a gap between the display and the
aluminum body
then slide an opening pick inside next
some very careful frying gets us past
the rest of the adhesive and we get our
first look inside the ipad air
before we can look too closely at the
new guts we've got to get the screen out
of the way
some phillips screws and two brackets
hide the three cables connecting the
display to the logic board
once those are dealt with the display is
free inside the new ipad air you'll see
a few notable changes the first
is the logic board now lives on the
right edge of the ipad usually we see
pro ipad logic boards centered inside
the device surrounded by a battery cell
on either side
you will also notice there are only two
speakers instead of the pros4
but we have the same magnet
configuration so this will work the
existing 11 inch ipad pro cases and
keyboards
the rear camera hardware lives up here
in the upper corner underneath the touch
id hardware
and since we have touch id instead of
face id there's just a single 7
megapixel facetime camera for video
calls and selfies
finally toward the bottom of the ipad
there's a sim reader in the cellular
versions like ours and
unfortunately it looks like apple hasn't
changed the way they connect ipad
batteries to logic boards this is the
same annoying contact hardware from past
ipads
basically to disconnect the battery and
kill power to the board
you'll have to insert something like our
battery blocker between the board and
the battery contact tabs underneath
since a lot of this is looking familiar
let's head right to the interesting step
the touch id corner first we get the 12
megapixel rear camera sensor out of the
way
then it's a whirlwind of screws to
remove and cables to disconnect
after some generous heat the fingerprint
sensor cable comes up
some more generous heat allows us to
move the button's bracket and push the
button out through the top of the ipad
apple's vp of marketing mentioned in a
podcast that this button was an
incredible feat of engineering
we've seen other power buttons with
fingerprint sensors in them before so
it doesn't seem that impressive but
apparently it was tricky to ensure the
antennas in the cellular model and this
button didn't interfere with each other
this whole corner of the ipad air is
jam-packed with hardware so that one we
believe
we are particularly curious about
whether or not they plan for this button
to be replaced
the heat we used to remove the button
softened this plastic bracket until it
was malleable enough to be moved out of
the way
it's possible that the bracket is some
kind of thermoformed plastic and this is
what they intended
but we're not really sure back on the
disassembly train we start to disconnect
cables and components on our way to the
logic board
first is the seven megapixel facetime
camera followed by several antenna
cables
the apple pencil wireless charging pad
the sim reader and the usb-c port
after everything is disconnected heat
and alcohol help us peel up the board
which like everything else in here is
glued to the aluminum chassis
some behind the scenes desoldering gets
us past the shields hiding the logic
board chips so we can see the silicon
underneath
first on our radar is the apple a14 chip
bundled here with four gigabytes of ram
right above that is 64 gigabytes of
keoxia flash storage
we are done fighting adhesive for the
day so we're not going to pull out this
ipad battery
but we can zoom in on it for you
powering the 2020 ipad air is a pair of
lithium-ion cells totaling 28.9 watt
hours
that's just barely smaller than the 29.4
watt hour battery in the 11-inch ipad
pro
well that's it for disassembly let's
give this thing a score the 2020 ipad
air scores a 2 out of 10 on
our repairability scale while it does
only have phillips screws and some
components are modular
pretty much everything is glued in place
so no matter what repair you attempt
prepare to battle some serious adhesive
we were excited to see that touch id
sensor and we are always hopeful that
apple will bring their design for
repairability skills to the ipad game
unfortunately that wasn't the case today
you