iPad Air 2 teardown reveals it's almost unrepairable

iFixit has taken the iPad Air 2 apart and discovered it has a smaller battery to make it thinner and lighter.

It's not particularly surprising as many first adopters said the battery life is worse than the original tablet. The battery installed is 27.62Wh, which is almost 5Wh less than the original ultra-light tablet.

The website also revealed that there's an NFC chip nestled amongst its internals, despite the company not listing the feature in its description. It's the same one as found in the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus that both tout NFC as one of its features. In fact, one of the smartphone's main selling points is Apple Pay, which relies on NFC technology.

Reather disappointingly, the iPad Air 2 has been deemed almost unrepairable by the teardown company thanks to the strong glue used to bond the parts together.

The problem is most notable when it comes to removing the screen of the tablet, meaning it's likely to smash when you try and detach it from the rest of the unit.

iFixit said: "The newly-bonded front panel is more rigid than in previous iPad models, and therefore feels a bit sturdier to pry againsthowever, flexing the glass still disturbs the LCD, even when you aren't inserting the pick very deeply. That being the case, the glued-down display remains the iPad's only access point, so there's still a risk of damaging it even when performing ordinary repairs."

Like its predecessor, the Lightning connector also doesn't budge very easily because it's firmly soldered to the logic board so you may end up making more damage trying to take the device apart to fix something else than it's worth.

Minor changes inside the iPad Air 2 include repositioned display cables and a Apple APL1012 A8X 64-bit Processor that isn't listed in the tablet's spec list.