You’ll find a rather familiar set of bits inside the iPad mini with Retina display this week from the likes of iFixit. The folks notoriously attached to the term “teardown” have found this machine to work with a repairability rating of 2 out of 10 – not so fantastic – but the whole organization of […]
Typically, unboxing and teardown videos don’t come out until after a new gadget hits the market, but Sony decided to beat third parties to the punch by letting their own engineer take apart the shiny new PS4 console.
The guys at WIRED scored an exclusive video with Sony Engineering Director Yasuhiro Ootori, who carefully unboxed the new console, then proceeded to tear it down – not only showing off its ease of repair, but all of the major components inside.
While it’s basically a super slimline x86 PC, the PS4 is one of the most efficiently designed systems I’ve seen. It’s amazing that they managed to keep the power supply unit built in, especially when the Xbox One has such a massive power brick.
Ootori also elaborates on the system’s high-bandwidth GDDR5 memory, and its specialized secondary processor which allows network operations to continue in the background while the system is in standby mode. The system also has a massive heatsink with copper pipes, along with a quiet running centrifugal fan to keep things nice and cool.
Check out the video below for all of the juicy details:
While I’m sure that iFixit will do a much more in-depth teardown after the PS4 is released, it’s cool to see Sony sharing so much too.
[via WIRED]
In the weeks before the PlayStation 4 is released to the public, a rather non-traditional teardown of the machine has commenced. What you’re seeing here is a collaboration between Sony‘s engineering director Yasuhiro Ootori and Wired, taking apart the PlayStation 4 piece by piece inside Sony headquarters. This tour is not the same sort of […]
While the majority of the insides of the Google Nexus 5 are, today in iFixit‘s teardown session, not appearing as big surprises, there are quite a few points of interest to be seen. Inside this beast of a smartphone you’ll find – to every repair shop’s glee – plastic clips holding the back of the […]
This week the folks at iFixit have taken their spudgers to the iPad Air, pulling it apart to reveal all the little bits and pieces that together make the smallest of the larger-end of iPad units on the market today. This device is indeed just hitting the market today, appearing at Apple Stores and 3rd-party […]
Apple’s iPad Air goes on sale today – it’s easily the best iPad Apple’s put out so far, but we’re waiting with bated breath for the iPad mini with Retina display. Until then, however, the Air is also the most remarkable feat of engineering in any tablet device in terms of what goes on under the hood, or at least that’s what it looks like based on iFixit’s traditional day one teardown of the brand new device.
As it does with every new Apple product release, iFixit has managed to get its hands on one of the first shipping units available anywhere in the world, and they’ve immediately broken it open to see what makes it tick. In short, what makes it tick is a battery. It’s a huge one, and it takes up most of the space within the case – but it’s also actually still smaller than the battery of the iPad 4th generation, despite the fact that it’s a much more powerful machine.
This battery has only two cells, and is rated at 32.9 WHr capacity, while the last iPad held a three cell, 43 WHr unit. The new slimmed down lithium ion power source is supplying energy to the same screen as on the iPad it replaces, which is a 9.7-inch display. That means the increased battery efficiency is coming from somewhere else; it also probably means decreased component costs for Apple.
Other highlights from the teardown include a look at the A7 chip (which is actually a slightly different version to the one in the iPhone 5s), confirmation that it does have 1GB of RAM, and the RF components that include a Qualcomm LTE processor with 1GB of dedicated RAM itself, which helps account for the iPad Air’s magical range of LTE band connectivity.
iFixit concludes by saying that the iPad Air achieves a repairability score of just 2 out of 10, which is in line with the repairability score of Apple tablets in general. If you’re looking for something modular, however, you’re probably not looking for an extremely thin and light tablet that’s as portable as possible while still boasting impressive display and battery life. I’d never pop the case on one of these myself, but it’s definitely fun to take a peek inside courtesy of someone who’s brave enough to attempt it.
Don’t purchase a MacBook Pro this late 2013 season expecting to be able to repait it on your own any time in the near future – at least not by the judgement of the team at iFixit. They’ve made with the teardown of both the MacBook Pro 13-inch and 15-inch units from this most recent […]
The gadget-opening geeks over at iFixit have laid hands on the new Kindle Fire HDX seven-inch tablet and proceeded to tear open the device. The teardown uses a look at what the hardware inside the tablet looks like. To get inside its juicy insides required several tools designed specifically for opening plastic cases and removing Torx screws on the inside.
The Kindle Fire HDX has a seven-inch screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200, a quad-core 2.2 GHz Snapdragon 800 processor, integrated Wi-Fi, a front 720p resolution front-facing camera, and up to 64 GB of storage.
However, the company always gives products a repairability score based on how difficult it is to open them up and get at the components. On a scale of 10 with 10 being the easiest repair, the Kindle fire HDX seven-inch tablet scored very poorly, with a final score of three.
Some of the things most negatively affecting the score are a battery that’s glued firmly in place and an LCD that is fused to the front glass requiring the entire LCD unit to be replaced if you break the glass. Eesh.
[via iFixit]
Don’t purchase the Kindle Fire HDX 7 expecting to be able to repair its inner bits on your own – that’s what iFixit is suggesting this morning as they make with the relatively low 3 of 10 score for repairability on this machine. The Kindle Fire HDX 7-inch display up front, it was discovered, was […]
Google’s Gmail app for Android has remained an ad-free sanctuary, but code uncovered by Android Police in an APK teardown of the application’s latest version hints that circumstances might change. Buried within the the program is a new library called “ads,” along with messages, functions and classes mentioning advertisements. What’s more, a “ShowAdPreferenceManager()” function routes users to the ad settings page for their very own Google account. Its not clear if sponsored bits will make it into the promotions folder just like the web version of Mountain View’s inbox, but the clues suggest you should brace yourself to see some marketing relatively soon.
Filed under: Software, Mobile, Google
Via: 9to5Google
Source: Android Police
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