While we’re still waiting on new iPad Pro refreshes, back in March Apple announced a new-ish iPad in the form of the 9.7-inch model. This isn’t the refresh that we’re sure many iPad owners have been waiting for, especially when it is both thicker and heavier than its predecessor, but at the same time it is affordable which could help attract new customers.
Also interestingly enough for those who plan to keep their tablets around for the long haul is that the new iPad can actually be repaired using parts from the original iPad Air. This is according to the folks at iFixit who found that for the most part, the new 9.7-inch iPad is basically an update to the original iPad, which means that repairing it should not be an unfamiliar process for repair shops, plus components should already be in stock since you could repurpose parts from the original iPad Air.
However note that not every single component can be repurposed. According to iFixit’s investigation, it was found that most components should be reusable, but there are some that can’t, such as the home button + bracket, the front-facing camera, and the volume and power buttons.
They found that to a certain extent the LCD can also be reused, but not without some trade-offs. “An iPad 5 LCD will work in an iPad Air 1 (and actually give it a brightness boost). An Air 1 LCD in an iPad 5 also works, but the display was very dim (~200 nits versus an expected ~440 nits). And the left edge had weird backlight bleed.”
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