why does my iPad Air 2 make loud pop noise randomly, when touching the screen, closing smart case cover, placing cursor in input text field?

I returned three and they all popped... I finally returned mine for a refund instead of an exchange. I love the Speed: 2GB of RAM, 64 Bit of architecture, the A8X processor, and A8X mobile processor, but I believe there are issues with the conductivity within the device.

I also noticed, after reading Tech guides, that there are two versions of the iPad Air 2. One UI iPad5,3 & the other is UI iPad5,4. the Benchmark on the iPad5,4 is a bit higher than the iPad5,3. Everyone I know has an iPad5,3... The Tech reviewers all received an iPad5,4 to review.

This is not a software issue either. Any motherboard that makes a popping noise is not good, especially if it is located right where the Processor and RAM are.

I have heard folks trying to talk their self out of returning their device by saying it may be "settling" computers especially SSD driven computers do not have any moving parts that would "settle". They are soldered to a mother board along with the processors, RAM, Qualcom chip, etc... In other words there is nothing to "settle" or nowhere to "settle" to. I would strongly suggest returning yours if it is making any kind of popping noise. As terrible as it may be it is the only real way to resolve the issue. Contact Apple via http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html and share your experience. Read the hundreds of Apple lovers expressing all of their efforts and remember that Apple's Flag Ship will soon have a fix...

I know this is a bit late but there are still problems with the iPad Air 2 and I wanted to let some folks know that I had problems with two sets of two and then waited almost a month and got two more. they worked fine for about two and a half weeks. I use them for business so I can say i used mine night and day and really stress tested them. Then mine started to pop every once and awhile as I touched the screen a few days later my wife's started to pop too. We took them back to Apple and they acknowledged it was a hardware issue and refunded us our money. We are going to wait, as they suggested, until after the New Year!

I wish I had better news I also have been told that this issue is not just a few here and there it is everywhere and folks are waiting for a software fix or they thought it was the speakers and did not do anything. If you have one that does this please return it...

Okay, I got back from the Apple Store not too long ago. Since they had extensive notes from the last guy after we nuked it and started over, they said they will just exchange it. He didn't listen to the recording I made but sounded pretty confident that this is a hardware issue, saying he had seen it crop up on earlier versions of the iPad as well. As he agreed that something is probably up with the speaker, I would suggest you all squeak about this loud enough in person to get a replacement ASAP. E-mails and calls can all too easily fall down a black hole with companies as large as Apple. I made the guy aware of these posts, but I'm not sure how much one Genius can do as far as kicking this issue upstairs. Honestly while this particular guy was super helpful, there were enough other people in the store to give me the sense that he had 5 other people in line and I had to get processed as quickly as possible.

The store near me didn't have my 128GB cellular configuration in stock so in 1-3 days I should be able to report back and let you know if I have a brand new model that doesn't pop.

I returned three and they all popped... I finally returned mine for a refund instead of an exchange. I love the Speed: 2GB of RAM, 64 Bit of architecture, the A8X processor, and A8X mobile processor, but I believe there are issues with the conductivity within the device.

I also noticed, after reading Tech guides, that there are two versions of the iPad Air 2. One UI iPad5,3 & the other is UI iPad5,4. the Benchmark on the iPad5,4 is a bit higher than the iPad5,3. Everyone I know has an iPad5,3... The Tech reviewers all received an iPad5,4 to review.

This is not a software issue either. Any motherboard that makes a popping noise is not good, especially if it is located right where the Processor and RAM are.

I have heard folks trying to talk their self out of returning their device by saying it may be "settling" computers especially SSD driven computers do not have any moving parts that would "settle". They are soldered to a mother board along with the processors, RAM, Qualcom chip, etc... In other words there is nothing to "settle" or nowhere to "settle" to. I would strongly suggest returning yours if it is making any kind of popping noise. As terrible as it may be it is the only real way to resolve the issue. Contact Apple via http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipad.html and share your experience. Read the hundreds of Apple lovers expressing all of their efforts and remember that Apple's Flag Ship will soon have a fix...

THe Apple Store where i live said, when I returned two iPad Air 2, that it was a hardware issue. they said the speakers where fine and it was something they have been seeing with the earlier produced iPad Air 2's. They suggested a refund. So that is what i did. I got a follow up call from the Apple Business Team and they gave us thumbs up on the iPads and we purchased just two before we commit to upgrading all of our ipads. So far so good. The thing that bothers us is we have had every gen of iPad and iPad mini and this is the first time we had any issues. We have six iPad Mini 3's and they are fine but the Air 2 intialy had popping and other problems. If this was software i really believe there would have been a update by now. I think they had early production problems with the Air 2 and maybe they one solved it or two some work and some don't. It is as simple as that especially with electronics. As a company we are going to wait until next year to start upgrading. But as far as the mini it is A nice substitute.

Have the same issue. Looks like no-one has found a fix. Mine only does this when on the charger and a audio notice happens for something like a email arriving. The speaker amplifier is likely not powering up cleanly without pop-clicks. It only happens when the unit has been sitting and apple likely powers down the amplifier into low power mode. If the audio notices for emails are back to back the first results in a pop/click when it powers up the amplifier and the rest are ok until some time has passed again.

There is only a few possible outcomes here. 1)The power up sequence apple uses for the amplifier needs modified to remove the issue and could be fixed with a software update. 2)The amplifier design is buggy and will always result in a pop/click during power up and most people just don't care to go check out the case. In this case a replacement does no good they are all bad. 3)The amplifier chip in units with the issue are out of spec and did not correctly get screened during test. In this case a replacement would solve the issue. What really concerns me is that this pop/click is likely damaging to the speaker long term.

Likely why this is hard for most to reproduce is that you must first let the amplifier enter low-power or shutdown mode. Then only the first sound when it powers back up results in the pop/click. For me seems to only happen when on the charger. What is a pop/click? Type "pop click amp" in google for some more technical details.

Bought my original Air Pad 2 128gig WIFI only on Thursday the 23rd and noticed the random popping noise every once in a while. Some days it did not make the noise. Sometimes it made the noise when touching the screen and once or twice it made the noise just sitting on my desk. It was very infrequent, but I was still concerned that there was a problem after paying a lot of money for it. Called Apple support on the 29th and they suggested I do a full restore. Apple support said they did have notes about other people with the problem. I restored the iPad and about an hour after the restore the noise happened again. Just once. Apple support called back on the 30th as a follow up and said I could do an exchange. Since the Apple store where I bought it was only a short drive I took the iPad back to the Apple store yesterday, 10/31, for an exchange. Took most of the evening to do the restore with all the music and movies I had to put back on it. This morning I used iTunes to move some icons around on the home screen and then ejected it. I put it down on my desk to check some of the apps. About 2 minutes into checking apps when I touched the screen I got the popping noise again. I am traveling for the next few days and am going to see how "bad" the noise problem is. I really don't want to do a refund, but I think I just might when I get back if the problem keeps happening. I like the iPad Air 2 very much after using my iPad 2 for 3 and a half years. I am hoping it is a software issue that will get a fix soon. If not I just might ask for a refund then wait and see if I repurchase another one after I see there is a solid fix.

exchanged mine and so far the new one has not popped. 2-3 days now without popping, the first one did it many times a day. Hopefully this unit really is now problem free.

PLS do not wait replace it. It is another way Apple gets the message that there is a problem with there product.

Sadly, a fresh restore doesn't seem to help either. I had the store totally nuke it (no backup), and set it up again only to have the same random popping sounds when typing out messages and occasionally when putting the iPad to sleep. This is pretty frustrating since it's not necessarily something that stands out in a noisy Apple Store, and I'm not getting any distortion when I play music (yet...enough pops and those tiny speakers might start getting distorted, and I'm not putting up with that on a brand new iPad!

To be fair though, the guy took about a paragraph of notes, so the problem is not only documented, but they will likely not put up a fight if I go back to swap it out tomorrow.

I got a pop sound as well thru the speakers. I was surfing on a bit coin site and it popped. That was the first day I had it, and it's been fine since. i did also get some crackling from the speakers trying the audio message feature in iMessage

Requested an exhange online.

Here's the latest on my end: I have been able to reproduce the pops pretty regularly when using a messaging app of any sort (Facebook Messenger, LINE, etc.), and so I recorded it with my iPod Touch (yes, I still have one) in order to guarantee that someone at the Apple Store can hear what I'm talking about; it's super clear when wearing headphones.

So this leads me to believe that it is some sort of software issue, as someone pointed out either here or in another thread. I turned "Adjust Volume with Buttons" on but it still happens. It's almost as if the keyboard clicks are playing at a different volume from notifications or message-sending sounds, and the combination of both causes the keyboard click to come through SUPER loud. It's strange that you say you don't get this on 8.1 with your original iPad Air. I think I'll point the guy at the Apple Store toward this thread while I'm at the store (I'm trying to get this documented in their system so they can keep kicking it up the chain in person in addition to our work online here) and see what they suggest.

I'll update this again when I get back from my appointment.

We are not engineers, when you move the ipad it has motion sensors in it we really don't know what's happening software or Hardware wise. and the fact its so intermittent is very odd and does make it hard to gauge. I suggest people contact Apple and report the issue try and get to a senior level tech or, that's the only way they will get a fix or if you are not happy return the devise within the time frame. Mine goes for days not popping, then will randomly do it, popped using Siri and the home button last night. All I can do is contact apple as I have no idea what's going on.