iPad 3 torn down and examined

The iPad 3 launched this morning to queues at stores around the world. It’s a tradition for the most die-hard of Apple fans to camp out for the latest products. Now that the crowds are dispersing, it’s time for another tradition — tearing that sucker apart.

Old favorite iFixit stepped up to the plate yesterday having procured one of the new iPads from a midnight opening in Melbourne, Australia. It’s now been officially confirmed that the iPad 3 has twice the RAM of the iPad 2. Aside from 1 GB of DRAM (comprised of two 4Gb Elpida LP DDR2 parts), iFixit found that much talked about dual-core Apple A5X processor with integrated quad-core graphics, a 9.7-inch Samsung-manufactured Retina Display, a Broadcom BCM4330 802.11a/b/g/n Baseband/Radio with Integrated Bluetooth 4.0+HS, a Qualcomm MDM9600 3G and 4G wireless modem (not the expected 2nd generation MDM9615), and a Qualcomm RTR8600 multi-band/mode RF transceiver for LTE bands. The iPad also boasts 16, 32 or 64 GB of Toshiba NAND flash memory and a 5 MP HD rear-facing camera.

“While the new iPad’s design is essentially the same as the iPad 2, which we gave a repairability score of 4, we’ve learned a lot about the design since then. We’ve spent the last year trying to repair the iPad 2 with mixed success,” writes Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit. “We are awarding the new iPad an abysmal 2 out of 10, and retroactively dropping the repairability score of the iPad 2 to a 2 as well. The adhesive on the front is extremely difficult to remove without damaging the glass, making repair and end-of-life recycling very difficult.”

Check out the full teardown here.