iPad mini 8 teardown shows unused space beneath a smaller 18.9 Wh battery

Bilibili creator Gua Ge Shuo Shouji (瓜哥说手机) has published a teardown of the iPad mini (A20 Pro), Apple's eighth-generation iPad mini. The video shows a section of bare chassis directly below the battery, even though the new model has less battery capacity than the iPad mini 7.

The cell, model S2503 from Huizhou Desay Battery, is rated at 3.855 V and 4,900 mAh (18.89 Wh). This matches the 4,900 mAh figure on Apple's EU energy label and the 18.9 Wh listed in Apple's specifications. The iPad mini 7 uses a 5,034 mAh, 19.3 Wh battery, and the iPad mini 4 and 5 were both rated at 19.1 Wh, making this the lowest battery capacity in an iPad mini since the first-generation model. Apple rates both the iPad mini 7 and the new model at up to 10 hours of web browsing or video playback.

The empty area sits between the bottom of the battery and the USB-C flex cable, to the right of the lower speaker. The creator states that moving the speaker would allow for a battery with several hundred mAh more capacity. Measured against the battery and chassis dimensions in the video, the bare section is roughly 48 × 13 mm. At the current cell's energy density, filling it would add approximately 1.3 Wh, or around 340 mAh, for a total of about 20.2 Wh. Matching the iPad mini 7's 19.3 Wh would take roughly a third of that space. Still, these estimates assume the area offers the same depth as the battery bay, which the video does not show, and the bigger battery would require either an L-shaped cell or a relocated speaker.

The iPad mini (A20 Pro) starts at $699 for the 128 GB Wi-Fi model in the US and features a 60 Hz OLED screen. The 128 GB and 256 GB variants use a 5-core A20 Pro chip.