every year Apple announces a new line of
upgraded iPads but there's one version
of the iPad that hasn't been updated
since 2015 the iPad Mini well today's
the day and we've got our iPad Mini 5
but the question is is this an updated
iPad Mini or just a shrunken down iPad
air we know one way to find out let's
tear it down while the iPad Mini might
be overdue for upgrades
there's nothing upgraded about the
opening procedure it's still an iPad
afterall
and that means we're unsticking a lot of
adhesive to get the display off once
freed from the body we have to do some
tricky juggling the display needs to be
propped up at a 90 degree angle while
you remove the 2 screws holding down the
dual purpose battery connector and
display cable cover the display is a 7.9
inch LED backlit Retina true tone
display with a resolution of 2048 by
1536 and a pixel density of 326 pixels
per inch
removing the components along the top we
find the modular headphone jack and the
front and rear facing cameras the rear
camera is 8 megapixels with an F 2.4
aperture and the FaceTime HD cam is 7
megapixels with an F 2.2 after like
other iPads the iPad Mini 5 has a glued
and logic board
which means it's time to break out the
adhesive remover once that has a chance
to soak in we can use our spudger and a
card to carefully lift the board up and
off the case
whoops not so fast before we can do that
we need to unscrew the lightning
connector which is soldered to the logic
board
besides the Lightning connector we spot
the a12 Bionic chip with 64-bit
architecture and 64 gigabytes of toshiba
made flash memory the big battery is all
that's left so we break out the adhesive
remover again and start some
nerve-racking crying with our plastic
card we saw battery pull tabs on the
last version of the iPad pro so we're
stumped as to why they chose not to use
them in the mini why not make the
battery easy to remove they gotta get
recycled someday if you're curious about
the specs the extra thin battery packs
three point eight two bolts and 19.3 two
watt hours of power with our iPad
disassembled and our heads spinning from
all the adhesive remover we used it's
time to turn our attention to repair
ability and open a window
the iPad Mini 5 scored a 2 out of 10 and
here's why
on the upside a single Philips driver
takes care of all the screws many
components are modular and can be
placed independently but the Lightning
port is soldered to the logic board and
on the downside battery replacement is
possible but it's unnecessarily
difficult gobs of adhesive hold
everything in place making all repairs
more complicated and finally removing
the home button is tough and will be
required for display replacement if you
want to keep the touch ID functionality