Late Wednesday, the super cool cats at iFixit published their full teardown of the iPad Air 3, complete with x-rays for good measure.
Per the teardown
“Our first peek inside reveals an internal layout that’s rather different from Airs past, featuring a central logic board—as seen in certain Pro iPads […]
[That’s not the only reason the] Air 3 looks an awful lot like the 10.5″ Pro! Dual-cell battery, Apple Pencil support, and Smart connector all say “Pro” to us—we’re just missing the second set of speakers!”
iFixit also noted that the dual-celled 30.8Wh battery is a bit bigger than the 30.2Wh battery Apple promised. The new battery takes after the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, and is a big upgrade from the 27.6Wh battery found in the iPad Air 2.
Apple Pencil support is similar, as the chips are similar to the 10.5-inch iPad Pro.
While the iPad Air 3 is missing the Pro’s ProMotion 120 Hz display, users do get a full-laminated display with an anti-reflective coating that offers a P3 wide color gamut, and True Tone.
Unsurprisingly, iFixit gives the machine a low repairability score of 2/10. The good news is that a single Philips screwdriver gets you into the device, but all the adhesive makes any repair difficult, even something as basic as a battery replacement. The Lightning port is also soldered to the logic board, so if that fails, users will need to replace the entire board.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.