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As an Apple fanatic, I ordered the iPad2 from Apple yesterday morning and sitting here imagining what it would be like to play with. As I read the various reviews from the zillion web sites who cover it I came across one on 9to5mac that spoke about a teardown of an ipad2 on ifixit.
My Question – Can I UPGRADE the Toshiba 16GB Flash memory chip to say a 64GB?
At first I wondered, why would you ever tear one of these apart?
However, thank you ifixit for doing it because it’s nice to know the component breakdown from an independent source vs. Apple. In the breakdown they mentioned the following components:
- Toshiba TH58NVG7D2FLA89 16GB NAND Flash (THAT’S IT)
Question? Can I UPGRADE the Toshiba 16GB Flash memory chip to say a 64GB?
Answer: Not sure, this is the participation part as I would like to hear from the experts out there who know. Seems that iPads (non 3G models) are essentially the same device but with upgrades to the flash memory. It also seems that it would be possible to interchange these flash chips, right?
Ok – so let’s assume it’s possible to change the iPad flash memory. Does Apple lock up the full supply chain of these from Toshiba or is it used in other devices? I did a search for the part on Avnet and noticed that stock or ordering was not going to be easy…
So what are your thoughts? Has to be a way to bypass Apple’s pricing for flash memory and upgrade your ipad.
2 Comments
Isn’t the flash soldered to the board? Also, how would that affect the firmware and the boot sequence?
Since I posted the question I have not heard of anyone changing it out or whether it’s possible. Update in from http://www.ifixit.com/ – Not Possible! The NAND flash is soldered to the main board, and it does not have an interface that’s compatible with an SSD (or space inside for a drive).
It is hypothetically possible to replace the flash chips with larger capacity chips, but that would require a sophisticated surface mount de/soldering setup. In English: a semiconductor company could do it, but probably not an individual.