Opening the iPad 2 is even more difficult than getting inside the original. The front glass is glued down and has to be removed to access the internal components, and there’s a good chance of cracking that glass sheet in the process.
iPad 2: From the inside
Inside, the iPad 2 sports what’s labeled as a 3.8V 25 Watt-hour battery. In comparison, the original iPad shipped with a 24.8 Watt-hour battery.
Once the iFixit tean could get to the small circuit board, they found touchscreen controller chips from Broadcom and Texas Instruments, flash memory from Toshiba, Apple’s A5 processor, and a Wi-Fi circuit board.
Considering the limited space inside the new iPad — it’s about a third thinner than the original — there isn’t any room left over. In addition to being thinner, the iPad 2 also include a gyroscope, along with front and rear-facing digital cameras.
The iPad 2 uses standard phillips screws instead of the custom-shaped screws found in the iPhone 4, but that doesn’t make this tablet any easier to open. Considering how easy it is to break the iPad 2’s glass, opening up this tablet is probably best left to the experts.