Gadgetory

Apple's iPad Mini maybe a concentration of the iPads best features but it's also a concentration of the worst as I'll show you it's just as frustrating to crack open and work on as its larger sibling I'm Bill Detweiler and this is cracking open the iPad Mini is Apple's answer to the rapidly growing market for 7-inch tablets currently dominated by Amazon's Kindle Fire HD and Google's Nexus 7 the Mini has a 7.9 inch IPS display with a resolution of 1024 by 768 a dual-core a5 processor 512 Meg's of RAM 5 megapixel rear camera 1.2 megapixel front camera and comes in either Wi-Fi or Wi-Fi + cellular models our test unit had 16 gigs of storage but 32 and 64 gig versions are also available as with the full-size iPad I began cracking open the mini by heating the edges of the front panel to loosen the adhesive that holds the glass to the metal enclosure using a series of thin metal and plastic tools I gently pried loose the panel taking care not to damage the panels ribbon cable which is located in the lower right corner I won't be able to completely remove the panel until I take out the display so I'll fold it over facedown for now next to come out are the screws that hold the LCD in place a large metal plate that sits behind the LCD and a small metal plate that covers many of the motherboard connectors I can now detach and completely remove the LCD and front panel with a little gentle persuasion the battery is next to come out the remaining components including the motherboard or their connector cables are held to the minis metal enclosure with a lot of adhesive forcing them loose could damage them and I want to put this unit back together in working order not destroy it so the only thing left for me to do here is to remove the EMI RFI shields from the motherboard for a look at the chips that power the iPad Mini unfortunately Apple took the good and bad from the iPad when building the mini the device is sturdy well built but the copious amounts of adhesive make it extremely difficult to repair in fact it's smaller size actually makes it more difficult to work on now for more information on the iPad Mini including real world tests and pricing check out Scott Stein's full CNET review and for a comparison of the mini against the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD Jessica dual court has you covered now to see more tear down photos and revive full hardware analysis go to TechRepublic comm forward slash cracking open I'm bill Detweiler thanks for watching