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Most notably, the teardown reveals that the iPad Air 2 is thinner and lighter than the original Air because it has a much smaller battery.

This explains why the listed battery life for the iPad Air 2 is the same 10 hours as the Air 1 and why, in practice, some reviews have found that the new Air 2 actually has less battery life than its predecessor.

Curiously, the teardown also found that the iPad Air 2 does have an NFC chip even though reviews of the tablet show that NFC isnt available.

Just like the original iPad Air, iFixit found that the iPad Air 2 is almost unrepairable, netting a Repairability Score of just 2 out of 10.

Like the original iPad Air, the only way into the device is by removing the screen and theres so much adhesive that theres a significant risk of cracking the display while trying to leverage it out.

The Lightning connector is still soldered to the logic board, too, meaning it cant be easily or cheaply replaced and yes, removing the battery and its oodles of adhesive glue goo still requires a lot of fiddly elbow grease.

The tube thing is heated in the microwave, then used to melt the glue.

Speaking of the battery, the iPad Air 2 now has a 27.62 Wh (watt-hour) battery, as opposed to the 32.9 Wh unit in the original iPad Air a reduction of about 17.

Amusingly enough, that reduction is almost exactly tied to iPad Air 2s thickness, which is 18 thinner than the original iPad Air (6.1mm vs.

Apple maintains that the iPad Air 2 is still capable of the same 10 hours of surng the web on WiFi, watching video or listening to music, but some reviews have found that there is indeed a battery life hit.

Rounding out the rest of the teardown, iFixit found the same NFC module thats present on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, 2GB of Elpida RAM, and a new 8MP iSight camera that, despite the same name and pixel count as the camera on the iPhone 6 Plus, clearly isnt the same piece of hardware (which explains why the iPad Air 2 still doenst take great photos).

The WiFi antennas have been moved to the top of the iPad Air 2 (they used to be along the bottom), which should improve reception a bit.

The NFC module is a bit weird, considering the iPad Air 2 apparently (according to both reviews and Apple) doesnt have NFCcontactless payments enabled.

Maybe Apple will enable NFC at a later date iPad Air 2 logic board.

Orange RAM. Red the A8X SoC.

Green the NFC module.

A closer look at the iPad Air 2 logic board, showing the A8X SoC So, there you have it: If you were wondering how Apple could make a very thin and light tablet even thinner and lighter, it wasnt some magical feat of engineering they just made the battery thinner.

Apple was obviously hoping to compensate for the smaller battery with the new A8X SoC and no doubt some other small system-wide power savings elsewhere but seemingly didnt quite pull it off.

Its worth pointing out that the iPad Air 2s 10-hour battery life is still comparable to other flagship tablets on the market but it is somewhat ironic that its beaten by last years model.

Now read: The iPad Air 2, with a tri-core CPU, is almost as fast as a modern PC Featured image credit: iFixit.

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Ipad Air 2 Motherboard