iPad Air 2 will be powered by a powerful A8X chip

The new iPad Air 2 is supposed to be launched on 16th October but before that, the rumour mill has already churned out multiple leaks about Apple's new tablet, expected to be called the iPad Air 2, to be the slimmest iPad ever and now a Taiwanese site has posted few purported images of the tablet's internal components. 

Apple has traditionally used “X” versions of its main chips with enhanced graphics for its iPads. A Taiwanese on Saturday shared some images and are showing a logic board with the new A8X chip. The report adds that the A8X chip on the tablet is a faster upgrade, as expected, to the existing A8 chip on iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. So we can expect better performance in games and other graphics-heavy apps and websites. 

The images also show various components which include pictures of the home button, flex cable, front panel, and volume control flex cable. The home button can be seeing of having Touch ID. The logic board also appears to contain a noticeably different layout when compared to the board from last year's iPad Air. For instance, the SIM slot appears to be directly on iPad Air 2's logic board, while the component was located in a separate compartment for the iPad Air. The front panel assembly and the Touch ID cable suggests that the alleged iPad Air 2 might also integrate the functionality just like the iPhone. 

While specifics of the resolution in questions aren't known yet, it is definitely a possibility that Apple is going to ship a sharper display than the current 2048 x 1536 pixel panel. However, more GPU horsepower isn't the only thing the A8X chip is expected to bring to the table. Allegedly, the RAM is also increased to 2GB, which should enable heavier multitasking. 

The rest of the novelties iPad users should expect are Touch ID, thinner profile, 720p FaceTime camera and Apple Pay. Internal storage options are said to be 32GB, 64GB and 128GB. 

Meanwhile, in a separate leak via Macrumors, it is speculated that after the iPad Air 2 announcement on Thursday, Apple may also announce the launch of Apple Pay on this Saturday, October 18, as seen on a leaked memo out of Walgreens. 

Source: Apple.club.tw via: Macrumors