Apple's new iPad Mini 4 showcases the iPhone maker's progress in downsizing their batteries without costing any battery life. Specs-wise, however, it could just be a stronger iPad Air 2.
In gadgets and other mobile devices, a longer battery life often means a larger physical battery. In Apple's case, they are continually impressing the world with their progress in shrinking batteries without downgrading its life. This means that their devices, despite being small, can still pack more battery life than most.
Apple have done the same battery shrinking process in the new iPad Mini 4. It has a 5124 mAh single-cell battery, according to MacWorld.
The iPad Mini 4's battery is smaller than the previous iPad Mini 3's 6471 mAh double-cell battery, but the Cupertino company claims that they have the same 10-hour battery life for the Wi-Fi models and 9 hours for those who use cellular data.
Apple has also improved other aspects of the iPad Mini 4. The iPad Mini 3 or the original Mini was criticized for having a lower-quality color gamuts compared to the bigger iPad Air and Air 2. The new 7.9-inch screen has noticeably better color gamuts, which are almost as accurate as it is in the iPad Air 2, according to Ars Technica.
In a sense, the iPad Mini 4 can be considered just a tinier version of the iPad Air 2. The processor is still Apple's A8 SoC (System on Chip) coupled with 2GBs of LPDDR3 SDRAM. It has an 8MP iSight camera and a 1.2MP Facetime HD front snapper. The iPad Mini 4 also supports both 2.4GHz and 5Ghz spectrums of Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac.
The teardown was done by iFixit, which has already disassembled many of Apple's products. In their teardown, they said that the iPad Mini 4 just holds the power of an iPad Air 2 in a tinier physical form.
Despite the not-so-innovative improvements, Apple's work on the battery is still impressive. The company will still sell the new iPad Mini 4 like hotcakes. The 16 GB Mini 4 costs $399.
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