Five years of iPad

This week five years ago, the original iPad was introduced. While the core experience of the iPad is more or less the same today, the hardware had come a long way in half a decade:


Specification: 2010 iPad: iPad Air 2:
Height: 9.56 in 9.4 in
Width: 7.47 in 6.6 in
Depth: 0.5 in 0.24 in
Weight: 1.5 lbs 0.96 lbs
FaceTime Camera: N/A 1.2 MP
iSight Camera: N/A 8 MP
Battery: 10 hours 10 hours
Resolution: 1024×768 2048×1536
PPI: 132 ppi 264 ppi
Clock Speed: 1 GHz 1.5 GHz
Cores: 1 3
RAM: 256 MB 2 GB

Having an original iPad next to an iPad Air 2 shows just how far Apple’s come. While the numbers above show the weight and thickness changes, the difference in the bezels alone make the original iPad feel older than it is.

While the iPad Air 2 is a good bit thinner than the original iPad, becuase of the original’s curved back, it’s only apparent when the devices are photographed face-up. In fact, the entire iPad Air 2 is as thick as the sidewall on the original iPad.

Thickness and weight aside, the basic recipe for iPad hardware hasn’t changed much. Sure, the 30-pin Dock Connector and rotation lock switch are gone and the iPad picked up TouchID last year, but looking at these two devices side-by-side, it’s hard to believe there have only five years have passed between them.