Hasta La Gadget!

This morning, I wished for a peek inside the workings of Apple’s iPad Smart Cover. Barely hours later, I get an e-mail from iFixit’s Miroslav Djuric, pointing me to iFixit’s teardown. Amazingly, the step-by-step photo essay is even more interesting than I thought it would be. Did you know, for example, that there is something called “magnetic viewing film” that lets you “X-ray” anything with magnets inside?

Before we begin, I’d like to complement iFixit in its choice of color. If you’re going to cut any cover open, it should be that horrible baby-blue one. (I have my eye on the pink one when they finally arrive in Spain.)

The guide starts with a look at the magnets and sleep sensor inside the iPad 2 itself, which iFixit previously disassembled. Along the right side are the magnets which hold the Smart Cover closed. These alternate their polarities, plus-minus-plus-minus. The magnets inside the cover run the other way, making the cover always sit in the right direction.

The other side of the iPad has the super-strong magnets that clamp the cover’s hinge to the frame. These are actually inside the back cover, and are curved to fit the shape of the iPad’s edge, ensuring they get as close as possible to the case on the other side of the aluminum shell.

Then it’s on to the Smart Cover, and the magic that is magnetic viewing film. This is kind of like e-ink. The film sandwiches a mixture of metal flakes and oil between its flexible sheets. In the presence of a magnetic field, the flakes align. Depending on the direction they line up in, they either show a bright reflective side or a dark edge. This makes a picture that is a good approximation of the magnets beneath.

The film shows the magnets inside the cover. On the right side, there is a grid of three columns and five rows (with one magnet “missing” top left), along with the sensor-triggering magnet. This may seem like overkill to hold it shut, but remember these magnets also have to keep the case rolled closed when folded up into a triangular stand (they attach to a steel plate in the far-left panel).

On the other side are six magnets, arrayed long-short-short, short-short-long. If translated into Morse code, this would read “DU.” Apple conspiracy theorists should start work on this right now. The patterns, combined with varying poles, means that the Smart Cover can only be attached the right way.

Finally, a word on the strength of the magnets from iFixit:

We just can’t keep these things off of one another! The iPad 2’s frame magnets made a solid two-inch leap across the table by the time we took the shot. Their attraction for one another is amazing!

iPad 2 Smart Cover Teardown [iFixit]

See Also:

• The Inevitable iFixit iPad 2 Teardown
• Photos: iFixit Rips Open iPad 3G
• iPad 2 Cover Is Smart, All Right — If You're Steve Jobs
• Smart Cover Colors – Wired.com

If iFixit had been around when God created the Earth, then Kyle Wiens and crew would have been up before the first dawn — Torx drivers at the ready — and grabbed the first sunrise as it came over the lip of the virgin Earth. Then they would have opened it up, photographed its nuclear inner-workings, and then waited six billion years or so for someone to invent an internet to post the pictures on.

So it is of course the natural order of things that iFixit should open up the iPad 2 to find out what is inside. Short answer: not much. Long answer: almost nothing but batteries.

Opening the new iPad is a lot trickier than the last one. Where the iPad 1 used Apple’s usual array of clips to hold on the screen assembly, the iPad 2 front-panel is glued on, requiring a heat-gun, some skill and a big pair of balls to remove safely.

Once inside, you see the batteries, which are thinner and wider than before. They hold almost the exact same charge, though: 25 Watt-hours vs. 24.8 Watt-hours of the original. Laid up beside the batteries is the tiny logic board, with Apple’s A5 chip, the touchscreen controller, the Wi-Fi chip (iFixit tore open the Wi-Fi-only model), memory and everything else. The interior of the iPad really is almost nothing but battery.

Arrayed around the edges, and squirreled away into the nooks and crannies of the stiff unibody case are the various camera assemblies, the gyroscope and accelerometer and the volume, mute and power switches. And that’s about it. Sadly, the one thing I really wanted to see isn’t shown, that’s the magnets which are used to hold on the Smart Cover. Perhaps we’ll see these in a repair guide in the future. I’d also like to see the inner-workings of the Smart Cover itself.

Internally as well as externally, then, the iPad 2 is but a small evolution from its predecessor. An that’s no bad thing. As some wags on the Twitter have noted, Apple will likely make more money selling Smart Covers than its rivals will make selling tablets.

iPad 2 Wi-Fi Teardown [iFixit. Thanks, Miroslav!]

iPad 2 shipping estimates now three to four weeks, retail availability hit and miss originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 13 Mar 2011 15:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

iFixit may have physically uncovered Apple’s latest silicon, but it’s the processor gurus that have discovered what’s truly inside — using software benchmarks, they’ve unearthed the speeds and feeds of the Apple A5. As you’ll no doubt be aware having read our headline above, there actually isn’t a 1GHz CPU at the helm, as AnandTech and IOSnoops report the dual-core ARM chip is dynamically clocked around 900MHz, likely in search of reduced power consumption. Perhaps more interestingly for all you gamers in the audience, the iPad 2 reports that it has a dual-core PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU on the die as originally foretold — and, spoiler alert — it mops the floor with both the original iPad and the Motorola Xoom. Though the new chip didn’t quite demonstrate 9X the graphical prowess of its predecessor, it rendered 57.6 frames per second in a GLBenchmark test where the (admittedly higher-res) Tegra 2 tablet managed only 26.7fps, and last year’s iPad pulled only 17.6fps. That’s some serious Tai Chi. Hit up our source links to see the difference it can make in games like Infinity Blade.

Update: Though it sure sounds like there’s a dual-core ARM Cortex A9 in there, that’s not yet a proven fact — we only know that it’s a dual-core ARM v7 chip which performs relatively similarly in non-graphical tests. [Thanks, Jim]

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

iPad 2 specs discerned, 900MHz dual-core ARM CPU and PowerVR SGX543MP2 GPU blow away graphical benchmarks originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AnandTech (1), (2)  | Email this | Comments

Now that many of you have collected and used your second generation iPad tablets for a few hours, we’re starting to see the inevitable reports of defects. Thus far, two issues have bubbled to the surface. The first issue — yellow spots beneath the LCD glass — is reminiscent of the same fresh-from-the-factory iPhone 4 issue that resolved itself just as soon as the bonding agent used for the LCD glass had time to evaporate. The second issue, which is being conflated with the first, is characterized by light bleeding through from the outer edges of the LCD panel. The bleeding is most noticeable when watching a dark scene in a movie or using an app with a black background as demonstrated in the picture above and video embedded after the break. For those affected, the issue can be minimized or exacerbated by adjusting the brightness in settings. So what say you dear reader, are you also a bleeder?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Is your iPad 2 backlight bleeding? (video)

Is your iPad 2 backlight bleeding? (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 12 Mar 2011 08:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  I Am Phones (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments