Analysis of the new Apple iPad
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 9, 2012 1:37 AM ESTA Much Larger Battery
Apple claimed no decrease in battery life for the new iPad compared to last year's model and only a 1 hour drop over LTE. The problem is that the combination of A5X SoC under GPU load, the LTE baseband and driving/lighting all of those pixels in the Retina Display has a significant impact on power consumption.
Apple addressed the issue by increasing the new iPad's battery capacity by 70%. If the leaked PCB photos are accurate (they look to be), Apple increased battery volume by shrinking the motherboard size and increasing the thickness of the tablet.
The new 42.5Wh battery is downright huge. To put the new iPad's battery in perspective, this is nearly the same battery capacity as the what was shipping in the 2008 13-inch MacBook Pro. This is also a bigger battery than what's used in the 2011 11-inch MacBook Air:
Over the next two years you can expect to see the line between ultraportable and tablet blur considerably. Looking at where the new iPad falls in the chart above really begins to exemplify just how blurry that line is going to become.
With the display off, the new iPad looks and feels a lot like the iPad 2. The additional thickness is hard to see, but the additional weight is definitely noticeable. The new iPad isn't as heavy as the original model, but it's clearly heavier than the iPad 2. I don't believe the added weight is a deal breaker, but it is a step backwards. Maintaining battery life however obviously trumps added weight.
The math is pretty simple. If Apple is claiming 10 hours of battery life with a 42.5Wh battery, the new iPad with the iPad 2's battery would likely be good for just under 6 hours. Such a drop would be unacceptable and thus the new iPad gets a bigger battery and incurs additional weight from the new battery and display components.
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WaltFrench - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Methinks much of the extra battery drain is (1) LTE and even more, (2) the hi-res screen, which appears less efficient. Assuming it's important enough to spend a few engineer-months on it, turning off unused GPU capacity would seem to moot the question of extra units.tipoo - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Possibly a stupid question, but are we sure they are the same? They specifically said saturation at the keynote, and they've used the term gamut before. Some Android phones displays have lots of saturation, but less gamut.gorash - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
It would suck if all they did was increase the saturation via software. That's kinda what I assumed.jabber - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
...seems far less press hyperbole this time around.Maybe folks are just bored with tablets now.
Torrijos - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
First off I've been trying to find the anandtech article on mobile multi-threading analysis mentioned in the article to no avail so if anybody can point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.On the subject of multi-threading, it feels to me that besides benchmarks, there isn't a lot of usage model that benefit from 4 vs. 2 cores on mobiles platform right now.
While Apple has a tight control on multitasking, leading to a lower charge on the CPU, they also have been trying to facilitate the real life use of multiple core with Grand Central Dispatch, that they were pushing even a year before the release of their first multi-core mobile device.
My question would be are the benefits of multi-core architecture real in mobile devices right now?
Even on mainstream desktop computers we now barely see multi-threaded mainstream software (not talking about pro or engineering), so how many software are optimized for multi-cores on each mobile platform (iOS, Android, W7)?
Also to benefit from better multi-thread performances what version of the OS have to be used in Android?
Even the web benchmarks used to test multi-threaded performances have to be taken with a grain of salt since network performances would probably end up annihilating the benefits of a faster CPU in real life usage.
While it's always nice to speak of hardware specs, I feel we still lack a good usability measure on mobile platforms, besides ideal webpages loading that would be hampered by real life networks.
WaltFrench - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Mostof the time, most apps are twiddling their thumbs waiting for user events. Other functions maybe look for network events. But if few iOS apps make use of multi-threading, it must be because the extra work and risk of introducing bugs doesn't result in an app that is perceptibly better to the user.tipoo - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
70% is a massive increase in battery capacity. I wonder if that was mainly for the LTE, or if the Retina display sucks lots more power too? For less intensive work where the CPU and GPU can idle a lot like web browsing, would it likely last longer than the 2?tipoo - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
Also I've been wondering, they didn't say anything about the CPU part in the keynote but would it require that new heat spreader just for moving from the MP2 to the MP4 graphics? The PS Vita does not have one yet has twice the CPU cores and the same MP4 graphics, maybe the CPU cores are clocked higher?solipsism - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
it's for the Retina Display and associated components as the system still gets 10 hours for web surfing, watching video, or listening to music with the WiFi-only model, just like with the previous iPads. They do omit the standby time this time around. WIth a 70% larger battery isn't in safe to assume it should have increased by around 70%?tipoo - Friday, March 9, 2012 - link
I feel like if it went up by 70% they would have said so. But on the other hand in the one without the wireless radios, I don't see why it wouldn't have.