I am now on my third new iPad that I exchanged the previous one for, and I think the third time is a semi-charm.
The one I got today, after checking the serial number against the web link I provided earlier in this thread, shows a production date of week 8 (February) vs. my previous one which was week 9 (March). Here are a few very interesting things of note that I'd like you all, as well as Apple of course, to be aware of. Some of them may sound crazy, but is honestly true.
1) I believe I am having the same battery charging issue, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, but it is an inherent design flaw in every unit out there, and of this I am almost certain. I believe the people who are claiming they have no charging issues are not running at 100% or even 95% brightness, with auto brightness turned off, location services on, send data to Apple turned off, are not using a high-speed Wi-Fi connection of at least 10Mbps down and 2 Mbps up, are not using a high signal strength/power output wireless router, and do not have a consistent (all the time) level of 3 bars Wi-Fi reception. I believe if you meet all those criteria you will have the same battery draining issues, and if you don't, show video proof of everything I just said and if you still show a constant 100% charge level when plugged in and at least using one app, I will send you some cash and personally send your video to the senior people I have been dealing with at Apple so they can show the engineers and solve the dilemma of why some are faulty and others aren't.
2) When I took my new iPad out of the box today, before even turning it on the first thing I noticed was that it felt lighter and closer to the iPad 2's weight. I had been using the iPad 3 since release date and have become accustomed to its weight. I am the type of person that notices the slightest thing out of place in a sea of clutter, have a very sensitive sense of smell, and can detect minor differences in weight and size. Either the replacement iPad I got today was underweight according to spec, or the previous iPad was overweight according to spec. Reps at the store also honored my request to check this out and were surprised at the difference, exactly as I was. I always thought that the difference between 1.33 and 1.44 lbs should not be that noticeable but yet my iPad felt much heavier than that difference would account for. I never thought to weigh the previous iPad but tonight I weighed the new one and it was 1 lb. 7.6 oz, which sounds like 1.44 lbs to me. This could only mean that the iPad I returned was overweight, by how much I don't know but it felt like anywhere from 1 to 3 oz heavier. I wish I would have thought to weigh the previous one when I had it, which would bring about an entirely new issue and explain why many people have said the new iPad feels significantly heavier.
3) On the previous iPad I had slight yellowing in one corner of the screen and significant color variation when viewing off angle which isn't typical for IPS panels. A rep told me the color shift seemed to be common and was likely normal but the yellowing is a known issue and Apple will replace those anytime during the full year of your basic AppleCare. When angled one way the screen became very yellow in hue and when angled the opposite way (both in portrait orientation) the screen became very blue in hue. As a graphic artist of 17 years I know color and calibration backwards and blindfolded and have been using IPS panels since their creation. This is not normal at all. The new replacement iPad I received today has perfect color from every corner when viewed on angle, no dual-light bar color variation issues, and only a slight lessening in brightness at off-angle viewing which is perfectly normal and is exactly how the iPad 2 admirably performed. In addition, I believe this screen to be made by a different manufacturer and if not, certainly better quality control was implemented. The screen looks crisper, sharper, the pixels even look smaller which is likely an illusion due to the outstanding display quality. The colors don't have the over-saturation that the last iPad had but still have all the higher saturation levels that they should, without there being excessive reds, magentas, and purples like there were on the previous iPad I returned. The screen quality on this replacement iPad is definitely a notch above what I returned and looks even closer in pixel density to the iPhone 4S. Again, I'm sure this is just an illusion because of how much cleaner the screen looks but I have done a screen capture and have emailed it to my Mac to open in Photoshop to see the pixel count, which I will do shortly. I can tell you though that Mail on the iPad said the message was 5MB which means the picture was 5MB.
4) This replacement iPad has not gotten as hot, nor has the charger gotten as hot as the one I returned. You'd think Apple would have stuck the A5X chip in the middle of the PCB on the left side instead of on the bottom where we hold it. Had it been positioned in the middle the heat wouldn't bother our hands whether viewing it in portrait or landscape orientations.
5) The Wi-Fi turned itself off, in the middle of what it said was a restore in progress when I went to the iCloud section to see if I could do a backup. Also the restore took a ridiculously long time (hours) even though the speed test app showed Wi-Fi was plenty fast. I've done several wipe and restores on the iPad I replaced and the iPad 2 and they never took this long. The Wi-Fi only turned itself off after it appeared everything had already been restored, apps installed and loaded. But why did it turn itself off? I certainly didn't tell it to.
6) At the Apple Store we had to transfer my Verizon service from one iPad to the other, and this took some time. The rep even had to call Verizon back because the reprovisioning just wasn't taking. Finally, after thirty minutes or so it activated and was transfered. Later this evening at one point when I was turning LTE on to use for a few minutes, it said no Internet connectivity available. I had to turn the Cellular Data button from on to off and back to on again to get it to work.
7) On my previous iPad the Personal Hotspot feature just would not activate. It kept spinning away every time I tried to activate it over the course of my whole time with it, until only last night did it decide to arbitrarily activate on its own. Since then the Personal Hotspot option has been on the left side of the settings menu, waiting for me to use it, which I tried to see if it works (and it does), and then turn it off again.
8) Finally, I have noticed imperfections in the aluminum frame bezel around the screen on the iPad 2 and the iPad I replaced today. They looked like little scratches but for those who know about CNC machining know that they are not scratches but inconsistent routing from movement of the bit. Sometimes you will see a notch where the bit lifts after it completes its routing cycle around the whole frame (which looks bad, too) but this is not what that is. I guess they could be scratches if the workers manhandled the piece, but then you wouldn't see similar patterns on multiple products. This would likely not bother most but it is a QC issue nonetheless. Usually CNC machining done in China is horrible (and I have had several parts manufactured there where they had to redo it three times because they were careless and scratching my parts to be used on a headphone amplifier I designed, and after the third screw up I demanded half my money back because I was able to mix and match some parts from different runs but not all. And the problems were mainly caused by scratching items placed on rough surfaces and packaging them poorly, only some were actual CNC problems) but Apple has extremely high quality machining done at Foxconn and demand the very best precision work. Aerospace tolerances? No. But for aesthetic purposes? Top notch. A good percent will always fall through the cracks though and after these workers have been slaving on their feet for 16 hours they probably won't notice the smallest aesthetic problems.
So all in all we have an iPad with many issues that need to be addressed. Hopefully most of you ended up with the higher quality display. Hopefully Apple will fix all these problems and soon before even more people flock to the stores. Heck, the rep I dealt with today said he has already had his iPad replaced, while two others claimed to not know about the problem even though the helpful rep indicated they were fully aware of the problem. The worst thing you can do, Apple, is to hsve your employees lie and try to cover up an obvious screw up. You want to remain worth over half a trillion dollars, pay for your mistakes and pay whatever it costs to fix these iPads, and issue a statement NOW that you are working to correct the problem as fast as you can, and actually mean it! The consumer should be able to make an informed decision about your product before they spend their hard earned money on an item they will have nothing but hassles with. Surely paying to fix the problem is cheaper than having to waste or refurbish one or two iPads for every one sold. Do the math, Apple, and have your engineers do better math when designing battery/charging units.
(P.S. Do you have any idea how long this took to type on an iPhone?)
