IFixit Teardown Finds That New Low-Cost IPad Is Essentially An IPad Air With Minor Tweaks

When the new low-cost iPad was announced, the spec sheets had showed that it was essentially an original iPad Air with minor improvements. Today, iFixit tore it down and found exactly that.

So remember how we said this was similar to the first Air? We were serious—take a look inside the Air 1 and iPad 5 respectively. Not much has changed.

The biggest change from the iPad Air is that this model gets a Touch ID sensor.

Thumbs up for fingerprint reading. Thumbs down for a harder repair, since the sensor is uniquely paired to its logic board at the factory. At least this lovely button is still a button (unlike the solid-state un-button that debuted on 7-series iPhones).

The firm also noticed some smaller things such as the lack of a mechanical lock switch, smaller microphone holes and a single row of speaker holes.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *