New iPad 3rd Generation Release Date Arrives: Complete Teardown and Secrets You Didn’t Know About

Apple's New iPad is all set to debut in stores at 8 a.m. local time Friday and is very likely to create yet another shopping tornado across tech world.

The new device will be sold in the U.S. through the Apple Online Store, Apple's retail stores and select Apple authorized resellers. The company has already confirmed the launch stores for the U.S. with Best Buy, Radio Shack, Sam's Club, Target and Walmart.

Credit: Apple

While each of the launch stores were expected to sell the device at 8 a.m.on Friday, a recent report said that Walmart was planning to get a head start by starting the new iPad sale as early as 12:01 a.m. local time on March 16.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. local time on March 16, a limited supply of the new iPad will be available at your local 24-hour Walmart. Other retailers' doors don't open until 8 a.m. local time, so you can get to work on time and beat the rush by coming to Walmart, a report in Insanely Great Mac said.

Some people have already queued up outside many stores in the U.S. to hold the Apple's newest at first. However, they could never be the first ones to use the third-generation iPad as Australians are the first consumers in the world to own the new iPad. The device reportedly went on sale just after midnight on Friday in two Telstra stores in Sydney and Melbourne.

For more information on the new iPad's Friday launch, including pricing, availability and iPad 2 trade-ins, click here.

Complete Teardown of the New iPad

Credit: iFixit

People at iFixit managed to get their hands on the new Apple iPad and performed a complete teardown of the device. Here's what the teardown revealed:

A Big Warning: Once you unbox the device, one of the first things to catch your attention is a big warning notice on the device, telling users that the 4G services of the new iPad will not work on the Australian networks. What it means is that the Australian version of the iPad is still effectively a Wi-Fi + 3G model, despite being branded as 4G.

Unique Model Number: The new iPad has a unique model number. Unlike some of Apple's other products, the new 4G-ready iPad's model number is A1430.

High Standard Build Quality: Similar to the previous versions of the iPad, the overall build quality of the new iPad is of high standard. The device is very difficult to disassemble as a strong adhesive secures the glass touchscreen to the case, making general repairs and battery replacement hard.

Display is Screwed: According to the iFixit team, the Retina Display, made up of 3.1 million pixels, giving a pixel density of 264 ppi, is fixed firmly to the case using a set of screws.

The Samsung Irony: The model numbers included on the back of the 9.7 inch LCD led the teardown team to believe that the manufacturer of the LCD was indeed Samsung.

The Magic of the Logic Board: After the EMI shields were removed, the logic board showed the magic of the non-A5X side of it - Texas Instruments CD3240 driver device, 2 x 4Gb Elpida LP DDR2 = 1 GB DRAM in separate packages in a 64-bit configuration, Toshiba Y0A0000 Memory MCP, Qualcomm RTR8600 multi-band/mode RF transceiver for 3G and 4GLTE bands and many more.

Credit: iFixit

Under A5X Cover: Underneath the A5X cover, the teardown team discovered a piece of silicon, but not the processor itself. The team believed that to be a spacer that helps conduct the heat away from the A5X die. According to them, the A5X cover is a heat sink for the CPU, given there's thermal paste underneath and a thermal pad on top of the cover.

Micro-SIM Card Slot: Like the other iPads with micro-SIM cards, the iPad 3 4G features a user-accessible micro-SIM card slot that can be ejected with the help of a SIM card eject tool.

The new iPad can only be used on AT&T and Verizon networks, according to iFixit.

Some More Secrets

Bigger Battery, But Takes More Time to Charge: The teardown also revealed that the new iPad has a bigger battery than its predecessors, the reason why Apple managed to continue with iPad's celebrated 10-hour battery life, regardless of the addition of a Retina display and LTE technology.

According to iFixit and other reports, the new iPad's battery has about 70 percent more capacity than the one found in iPad 2. However, this also means that it takes a lot longer to charge.

It appears they've had a fairly major breakthrough in their battery technology. While the new battery clearly isn't much bigger than the old one, it can hold much more juice (42 watt-hours versus 25-watt-hours), MG Siegler of TechCrunch explained in his review. The downside of this is that I've found it takes quite a bit longer to charge the new iPad. As in several hours - you'll probably want to do it overnight.

No FaceTime Support Over 4G LTE: The new iPad will not support FaceTime over 4G network (at least not initially), according to The Verge.

Apple has been restricting FaceTime to Wi-Fi only since its arrival in 2010 along with iOS 4. Many people thought that the company would finally allow FaceTime over cellular connection, delving into the 4G LTE arena for the first time. But that didn't happen.

As per the report, starting a FaceTime call over 4G leaves the user with a message exhorting to connect to a Wi-Fi network.

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