Hasta La Gadget!

Lenovo’s long awaited LePad finally made its Chinese debut back in March, and while we may not ever see the tablet stateside — not as LePad, anyway — we can at least get a peak under the hood. Thanks to a teardown by IMP3, we’re seeing the inside of the machine for the first time, and while there’s not much in the way of surprises here, it’s always nice to see what makes these things tick. As we already knew, LePad’s packing the 1.3GHz Snapdragon chipset with Adreno 205 integrated graphics as well as an internal 27Wh battery. It’s also appears to be rocking Toshiba flash memory and a Wolfson audio processor. So we might not have much in the way of revelations here, but at least now you know what the LePad, or Skylight, or whatever, looks like underneath its skin.

Lenovo’s LePad gets LeTeardown originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 May 2011 16:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember when computers had removable batteries? Neither do I, but apparently they did. These days, the batteries come hidden away from the user, freed from their bulky cases so that device makers can squeeze more into smaller and smaller spaces. So it is with the BlackBerry PlayBook, freshly torn open by the ravenous zombies at iFixit. “Chipzzzz”, they cry as they rip into brand new electronics with their spudgers. “Chipzzz!”

But this hard-to-access battery (hidden behind the motherboard and speaker), along with a metal frame glued to the screen, is the only hard-to-repair part of RIM’s new miniature tablet. Everything else can be disassembled with standard tools, leading iFixit to give it a 7 out of 10 repairability rating.

So just what is inside? Well, the battery, of course, which is a 20 watt-hour model, compared to the 25 watt-hour battery in the iPad, and the 24 watt-hour in the Xoom. Then there are the camera, accelerometers, motherboard and so on, and these are all incredibly neatly lined up. It’s so tidy in there that the layout could have been designed by Rain Main.

Those speakers are promising, too. First, there are two of them. Second, each one is actually made up of two units. When I tried out the PlayBook at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, I couldn’t hear anything thanks to the trade-show acoustics, but stereo is certainly a step up from the iPad, and especially the iPad 2 which has a crappier sounding speaker than the original.

Otherwise, the PlayBook is much like any other tablet: A screen and a small board of chips, with the rest of the case filled up with batteries. To see the full (and neat and easy to repair) details, head over to iFixit.

BlackBerry PlayBook Teardown [iFixit. Thanks, Miroslav]

See Also:

• BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet Lacks All the Right Moves
• PlayBook Tablet Has a Spotty Day One in San Francisco
• Could Flash Be Holding Back BlackBerry PlayBook?
• Teardown: What’s Inside The Motorola Xoom
• IFixit
• The Inevitable iFixit iPad 2 Teardown
• IFixit Smart Cover Teardown: Contains Magnets. Lots of Magnets …

The Ion iCade, our favorite April Fools’ joke turned actual product, has just passed through the FCC and moved one step closer to retail reality. The arcade cabinet for your iPad had all its Bluetoothy bits laid bare and even brought along its user manual, in case you’re the type who bothers to read those sordid things. There aren’t too many surprises here except, perhaps, the inclusion of an Ikea-esque hex key — some assembly required. With the green light from the feds, though, that means the iCade is right on schedule for its May 31st release. If you want to ensure you nab one of the first batch, you can pre-order it now for $99 from either GameStop or ThinkGeek. And, while you wait for the blissful marriage of Atari’s Greatest Hits and Bluetooth joystick, you can peep the pics in the gallery after the break.

Continue reading iCade hits FCC, gets torn asunder

iCade hits FCC, gets torn asunder originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 22:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve seen Bluetrek’s Bluetooth headsets be twistable, touchable, skinny, and smart. Now they’re going light — and fancy. The Bluetrek Carbon has hit the FCC, showing off a carbon fiber boom (pictured again after the break) and construction said to create an exceedingly light result. Looking at the FCC’s teardown photos it’s clear to see that the stalk there is actual carbon, not some lame appliquè and, with the body of the thing being barely wider than a micro-USB port, it shouldn’t look too gaudy hanging out of your head. There’s no mention of price or availability (the FCC doesn’t trouble itself with such matters) but we’re guessing you don’t have much time left to get your ear ready for this kind of piercing sophistication.

Continue reading Bluetrek Carbon headset hits the FCC, proves hard to damage but easy to disassemble

Bluetrek Carbon headset hits the FCC, proves hard to damage but easy to disassemble originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Apr 2011 12:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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By now you’ve probably watched iFixit’s recent iPad 2 teardown video several times while drooling profusely, but we just know you’re itching to find out what’s different with the innards of the WiFi-only, GSM, and CDMA versions. Well once again, iFixit’s got you covered — via an “exceptionally cool” user-contributed post, this time. A grand total of three iPad 2s were sacrificed in this round, revealing variations in case design, antenna count, WWAN board layout, radio chipset choices, and headphone jack assemblies. Besides clearly visible changes like the black antenna window on the 3G models and the microSIM slot on the GSM version, it’s interesting to note that Apple made the same design choices with the iPad 2 and the iPhone 4. The CDMA model features an additional antenna over its GSM sibling, and uses a Qualcomm Gobi dual-mode radio which supports both CDMA and GSM — the latter being unused — along with an integrated GPS receiver, just like the iPhone 4 for Verizon. The GSM version, meanwhile, uses an Infineon chipset for GSM and a separate Broadcom module for GPS, just like the global iPhone 4. Follow the source link below for more sordid details plus high-resolution pictures.

iPad 2 sliced up again, this time in the name of radio science originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Mar 2011 03:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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