liquid retina lcd panel in stock

Replace a scratched or cracked front panel glass digitizer screen or a malfunctioning "Liquid Retina" LCD display. This part is compatible with an iPhone 11.

A new screen and digitizer assembly will renew the appearance of your front panel, restore touch function, and eliminate the dead pixels or flickering on an aging display.

Replace with this part requires transferring several small parts from your original assembly. It does not include the front camera, earpiece speaker, or LCD shield plate. It also does not include display adhesive.

Apple has used Retina Display screens in the iPhone and other devices for years, but it launched the iPhone 11 with a different type of screen: a Liquid Retina Display (LRD), which is a type of Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) only Apple uses.

Liquid Retina Display differs from other types of screens in some subtle, background ways; to understand what an LRD is, you first have to understand what a basic Retina Display is.

Essentially, a basic Retina Display is a screen with so many pixels packed tightly next to each other that you can"t see individual pixels or jagged lines on the screen, even when looking very closely. The result is a super-high-resolution screen with a high pixel density, which makes the images and videos appear much more clearly than with other types of displays.

A Liquid Retina Display builds upon that basic retina display by adding a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), a standard type of screen found in computer monitors, laptop screens, smartphones, tablets, and other devices for many years. It"s a tried and true technology that"s been around for years.

LRD uses 10,000 LEDs in its pixelated display and combines the haptic effects and contrast ratios from basic retina displays to produce a higher level of pixels per inch (PPI). That can give a screen a paper-like effect with improved brightness and color.

The technologies used to manufacture the screen are the major difference between the Liquid Retina Display screen in, say, a standard iPhone and the Super Retina XDR display of an iPhone Pro.

The Super Retina XDR screens found in some Apple products use Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) screens, a more modern screen technology that delivers brighter colors and deeper blacks while using less power than LCDs.

Screen Technology:Liquid Retina Display screens are made using the older LCD technology rather than the newer OLED used in Super Retina XDR and HD displays.

Pixel Density:Liquid Retina Displays have a pixel density of either 326 pixels per inch (ppi) or 264 ppi (on iPads). Both the Super Retina HD and XDR displays sport 458 ppi pixel density.

Contrast Ratio:The contrast ratio on Liquid Retina Displays is 1400:1. A Super Retina HD display has a 1,000,000:1 ratio, while a Super Retina XDR has a 2,000,000:1 ratio. Contrast ratio effects the range of colors the screen can display and the depth of its blacks.

Battery Life:This is less easy to quantify since so many things go into how long batteries last, but OLED screens in the Super Retina HD and XDR screens generally use less power than the LCD screens in the Liquid Retina Display.

An always-on Retina display is a feature of the Apple Watch that means features such as the time, watch face, and most recent active app are always visible.

Apple recommends cleaning your MacBook Retina display (or cleaning any Mac display) with the cloth that came with the device. Or, use any dry, soft, lint-free cloth to wipe away dust. If more cleaning is needed, dampen the cloth with water or a designated screen cleaner and gently wipe the screen. Ensure moisture doesn"t get into any openings.

Liquid Retina and Liquid Retina XDR screens can be found across Apple’s smartphone, tablet and laptop lines. Here’s everything you need to know about them.

A Retina display is any screen with a pixel density high enough that Apple has determined your eyes won’t be able to make out individual pixels at a “normal” viewing distance. The idea is to describe a screen that is smoother and more natural-looking than a non-Retina display.

Apple has introduced several variations on the Retina display over the years, including Retina HD, Retina 4K, Retina 4.5K, Retina 5K, Retina 6K, Super Retina HD and Super Retina XDR – as well as Liquid Retina and Liquid Retina XDR.

The name Liquid Retina simply refers to any Apple product with an LCD screen that has a high pixel density. A Liquid Retina XDR display is a higher resolution take on Liquid Retina that employs smaller mini-LEDs for a brighter image, with XDR standing for ‘Extreme Dynamic Range’.

However, neither is as bright as the Super Retina XDR display found on the iPhone 13, which swaps out the LCD technology for OLED. OLED also brings along additional benefits, like deeper blacks and a longer battery life.

It’s important to note that Retina and Liquid Retina are trademarked Apple terms. This means that, just because a non-Apple device doesn’t carry the Retina name, that doesn’t mean the display can’t rival that of Apple products.

You’ll want to look at specs like the size of the display and pixel density to get an idea of how competing displays compare to Liquid Retina ones. It also helps to take a look at the screens in person to decide which looks best to your eyes.

The 12.9-inch Liquid Retina XDR display has an IPS LCD panel supporting a resolution of 2732 by 2048 pixels for a total of 5.6 million pixels with 264 pixels per inch. To achieve Extreme Dynamic Range required an entirely new display architecture on iPad Pro. The all new 2D mini-LED backlighting system with individually controlled local dimming zones was the best choice for delivering the extremely high full-screen brightness and contrast ratio, and off-axis color accuracy, that creative professionals depend on for their workflows.

The Liquid Retina XDR display can support up to 1000 nits of full-screen brightness. It can also support up to 1600 nits for highlights in up to 40 percent of the screen area when the rest of that image is black or at brightness up to 600 nits.

Unlike the previous design that takes light emitting from one edge of the display and evenly distributes it across the entire back, the Liquid Retina XDR display uses over 10,000 custom-designed mini-LEDs spread uniformly across the entire back of the display, delivering higher LED density than any other display of its kind. These mini-LEDs are grouped into an array of over 2,500 individually controlled local dimming zones. This delivers incredibly deep blacks right next to bright image areas, achieving a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

The Liquid Retina XDR display improves upon the trade-offs of typical local dimming systems, where the extreme brightness of LEDs might cause a slight blooming effect because the LED zones are larger than the LCD pixel size. This display is designed to deliver crisp front-of-screen performance with its incredibly small custom mini-LED design, industry leading mini-LED density, large number of individually controlled local dimming zones, and custom optical films that shape the light while maintaining image fidelity and extreme brightness and contrast.

Additionally, custom algorithms run on the advanced display engine of the M1 chip, working at the pixel level to control the mini-LED and LCD layers of the display separately, treating them as two distinct displays. These proprietary algorithms coordinate the mini-LED and LCD layers across transitions to deliver the optimal visual experience. Transitional characteristics of local dimming zones, such as a slight blur or color change while scrolling against black backgrounds, are normal behavior.

The Liquid Retina XDR display delivers P3 wide color. The color gamut afforded by the P3 primaries is larger than sRGB, offering richer and more saturated colors, especially with certain reds, yellows, and greens. The result is rich and vibrant color that’s also used in the digital cinema industry. Every Liquid Retina XDR display is also calibrated at the factory for color, brightness, gamma, and white point for a consistent visual experience.

ProMotion technology automatically adjusts the display refresh rate up to 120 Hz (twice the rate of typical LCD displays) to the optimal rate for the content. The result is ultra-smooth scrolling and incredible responsiveness on the display, whether you’re using your finger or Apple Pencil. True Tone technology subtly adjusts the white balance onscreen to match the color temperature of the light around you, so images on the display look as natural as on a printed page. The cover glass on the Liquid Retina XDR display has an on-axis reflection of 1.8 percent due to a custom antireflective coating. As a result, iPad Pro delivers industry-leading reflectivity for a more comfortable viewing experience indoors and out.

With the new iPad Pro in the market, dinner table conversations will mainly comprise its M1 chip and faster performance. But has anyone noticed Apple changing 12.9 inches model’s display to Liquid Retina XDR?

Apple has been experimenting with the display technology of its devices lately. The older iPad Pro models featured a Liquid Retina, which further upgraded to XDR in April 2021.

Let us first understand what Liquid Retina Display is and why the iPad has an XDR version of it before comparing it with Super Retina (more about it later).

With iPhone 4, Apple launched its first super-high-resolution screen, Retina Display. Liquid Retina Display is an improved version of Retina screen boasting an LCD (found in laptops, monitors, and other mobile screens) with many pixels as its foundation.

In simple words, Liquid Retina comprises a screen featuring jam-packed pixels to give a high-resolution input, preventing you from seeing lines or pixels with naked eyes.

The most recent and advanced version of Liquid Retina Display, Liquid Retina XDR Display, lets you experience the objects just like the real world and refrains from hiding any details, even at the darkest hour.

Paper-like screen effect: The main reason behind having a Liquid Retina Display is its paper-like screen effect with mini LEDs in the backdrop and a higher level of PPI ratio.

Best of both worlds:In a way, Liquid Retina Display takes the good from both Regular Retina screen and Super Retina and gives you a one-of-a-kind combination. It comprises 10,000 LEDs to create a pixelated display, but the haptic effect and contrast ratio stick around the regular Retina side.

Higher pixel count:The OLED-based Retina Displays found in iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone X boast significantly higher pixel counts, thereby improving the brightness and contrast ratios.

The Super Retina boasts OLED technology, enabling it to provide high resolution along with an unparalleled contrast ratio with no backlight! Let’s compare all three to understand them better.

Super Retina is relatively new, more expensive, and an evolved technology in the display category, whereas Liquid Retina has been around since 2015 and comparatively cheaper.

The pixel ratio difference between the setup is significantly higher; OLED stands tall at 458 PPIs in leading iPhones, whereas Liquid Retina positions itself at 264 PPIs on iPads. Regular Retinas, on the other hand, have an average of 200 PPI across devices.

Well, is Liquid Retina a good contender? To answer this, one needs to know how convenient they are for eyes! After all, isn’t all the display battle about safeguarding your vision and experience?

When you compare Liquid Retina to a regular Retina, it sure holds a stronger position. However, it cannot surpass the Super Retina technology due to the high contrast levels and pixels per light ratio. As for XDR, I can’t wait to test it!

Apple’s previous gadgets with a Liquid Retina have indeed managed to keep up with our expectations so far, so I am presuming this one does not disappoint either.

Replace a display compatible with a 2016 or 2017 model A1706 or A1708 MacBook Pro 13" Retina laptop. Includes the 2560 x 1600 13.3" Retina LCD Screen, Display Cover, Bezel, FaceTime HD Camera, Clutch Hinges, Display Daughter Board, Cable Spring

Replace a display compatible with a Mid 2018 to Mid 2019 model A1989 or A2159 MacBook Pro 13" with laptop. Includes the 2560 x 1600 13.3" Retina LCD Screen, Display Cover, Bezel, FaceTime HD Camera, and Clutch Hinges.

Replace a display compatible with the model A1502 Early 2015 13" MacBook Pro laptop. Includes the 2560 x 1600 13.3" Retina LCD screen, display cover, bezel, FaceTime HD Camera, clutch hinges, Wi-Fi antenna, camera, and display data cables. Part #661

Replace a display compatible with a model A2338 MacBook Pro 13" laptop. Includes the 2560 x 1600 pixel IPS panel with True Tone, Display Cover, Bezel, FaceTime HD Camera, Clutch Hinges, Display Daughter Board, Cable Spring Mechanism.

Replace a display compatible with the model A1398 Late 2013 to Mid 2014 MacBook Pro 15" Retina laptop. Includes the 2880 x 1800 pixel 15.4" Retina LCD screen, display cover, bezel, FaceTime HD camera, clutch hinges, Wi-Fi antenna, camera, and

Replace a display compatible with a 2020 model A2289 MacBook Pro 13" Two Thuderbolt Port laptop. Includes the 2560 x 1600 13.3" Retina LCD Screen, Display Cover, Bezel, FaceTime HD Camera, and Clutch Hinges.

Replace a display compatible with the late 2011 model A1278 13” Unibody MacBook Pro. Includes the front glass, LCD screen, iSight Camera, all antenna cables, all LCD cables, hinges, and clutch cover.

Replace a glossy or anti-glare display panel compatible with the A1278 Late 2008, A1342 Late 2009 to Mid 2010 MacBook 13" Unibody models and A1278 MacBook Pro 13" Unibody model laptop. 1280 x 800 pixel Resolution. 13.3".

Replace a display compatible with the mid 2012 Unibody 13" MacBook Pro laptop. Includes the 13.3" LCD screen, display cover, bezel, iSight Camera, clutch hinges, display inverter, Wi-Fi antenna, iSight, and display data cables.

Replace a display compatible with a model A2442 2021 14" MacBook Pro laptop. Includes the 3024 x 1964 LCD screen, display cover, camera, and clutch hinges.

Replace a display compatible with a model A2485 2021 16" MacBook Pro laptop. Includes the 3456 x 2234 Liquid Retina XDR mini-LED screen, display cover, camera, and clutch hinges.

Replace a display compatible with a model A2141 2019 16" MacBook Pro laptop. Includes the 3072 x 1920 LCD screen, display cover, bezel, FaceTime HD Camera, and clutch hinges.

RF2JGW7XD–Cairo, Egypt, June 11 2022: Apple iPhone 11 with 6.1inch Liquid Retina HD High definition display and a tiny small old mini Nokia cell phone with a ke

RFRKYMT3–LONDON, UK - SEP 13, 2018: Creative room table with Safari Browser on MacBook Pro laptop showcasing Apple Computers website latest iPhone Xr smartphone with liquid retina display

RFRPNK1N–PARIS, FRANCE - OCT 26, 2018: New iPhone XR smartphone in Apple Store Computers during the launch day in male hand admiring the blue phone liquid retina display

RF2JGYA0G–Cairo, Egypt, June 11 2022: Apple iPhone 11 with 6.1inch Liquid Retina HD High definition display and a tiny small old mini Nokia cell phone with a ke

RFRPNK28–PARIS, FRANCE - OCT 26, 2018: New iPhone XR smartphone in Apple Store Computers during the launch day in male hand admiring the blue phone liquid retina display all apps

RF2JGWFN6–Cairo, Egypt, June 11 2022: Apple iPhone 11 with 6.1inch Liquid Retina HD High definition display and a tiny small old mini Nokia cell phone with a ke

RFRPNK3N–PARIS, FRANCE - OCT 26, 2018: New iPhone XR smartphone in Apple Store Computers during the launch day with screensaver on Liquid Retina display LCD

RF2JGW65C–Cairo, Egypt, June 11 2022: Apple iPhone 11 with 6.1inch Liquid Retina HD High definition display and a tiny small old mini Nokia cell phone with a ke

RFRPNK3M–PARIS, FRANCE - OCT 26, 2018: New iPhone XR smartphone in Apple Store Computers during the launch day with screensaver on Liquid Retina display LCD

RFRKYMPA–LONDON, UK - SEP 13, 2018: Creative room table with Safari Browser on MacBook Pro laptop showcasing Apple Computers website latest iPhone Xr smartphone with liquid retina display features

RFRPEY1Y–STRASBOURG, FRANCE - OCT 26, 2018: Customer POV holding new red iPhone XR smartphone during the launch day admiring the liquid retina display

RFRK1YBJ–London, United Kingdom - September 12, 2018: Liquid Retina on iPhone X R smartphone computer, seen on computer MacBook display after Cupertino keynote product launch

RFRPNK0H–PARIS, FRANCE - OCT 26, 2018: Latest white iPhone XR smartphone in Apple Store Computers during the launch day with diverse information on Liquid Retina LCD screen display

RFRPNK0T–PARIS, FRANCE - OCT 26, 2018: Latest white iPhone XR smartphone in Apple Store Computers during the launch day with diverse information on Liquid Retina LCD screen display

RFRKYKYK–London - September 13, 2018: Apple Computers internet website on 15 inch 2018 MacBook Retina in room environment showcasing iPhone Xs Max R Keynote in Cupertino introducing Liquid Retina by Phil Schiller

One of the standout features of the 2021 iPad Pro is the Liquid Retina XDR display, but it’s only found on the 12.9-inch model. Now in a new interview, Scott Broderick of worldwide iPad product marketing and Vincent Gu of the display engineering team have shared more about the challenges of the new mini-LED XDR display, why it didn’t land on the 11-inch iPad Pro, and much more.

Brian Tong sat down with Broderick and Gu for a wide-ranging interview focused on the 2021 M1 iPad Pro. One of the interesting questions many have been wondering about is why Apple kept the new Liquid Retina XDR display for just the 12.9-inch models.

The 12.9-inch iPad Pro is 0.5mm thicker and a touch heavier than its predecessor due to the new Liquid Retina XDR display. So Broderick seems to be alluding to the idea that it wouldn’t have been popular with 11-inch iPad Pro users to get a slightly thicker and heavier device.

Apple’s latest iPad Pro might look very similar to the model it’s replacing, but it contains several major upgrades on the inside. It’s got the same powerful, energy-efficient M1 chip as the latest MacBook Air, 13-inch MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and now the redesigned iMac. Cellular models have made the jump to 5G. The front-facing camera can zoom and pan to keep you in focus on video calls. But aside from the processor, the biggest technical leap is exclusive to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro: it’s what Apple calls the “Liquid Retina XDR,” a new display that adopts Mini LED backlighting to achieve higher brightness and greater contrast than any iPad (or Mac) that the company has ever made.

Unlike OLED, where individual pixels are self-illuminating and can fully turn off when not needed, Mini LED is more of a natural progression from the LCD screens that have become such a mainstay of consumer electronics. But where this new approach differentiates itself is in the size and quantity of LEDs behind the screen. During its Spring Loaded event, Apple’s Heidi Delgado said that the previous iPad Pro had 72 LEDs, but the new “Liquid Retina XDR” manages to pack in over 10,000 of them. Apple accomplished this by miniaturizing the LEDs to a size “120 times smaller in volume than the previous design.”

Though this might be the first time Mini LED has found its way into a tablet, the technology has already appeared in TVs. TCL really sparked the trend in 2019, and apparently Samsung and LG took notice: their higher-end 2021 LCD TVs now utilize Mini LED backlighting as well.

LED LCD TVs have two parts of the display that combine together to create an image. The “LCD” (liquid crystal display) part of the display creates a picture and the “LED” (light-emitting diode) part of the display makes light that shines through the picture so your eyes can see it. So the benefit of thousands of precisely controlled mini-LEDs in an active matrix backlight is more powerful light that is more smoothly distributed across the screen, more precisely controlled for sharp contrast and more effective in creating vividly saturated colors that dazzle the eye. Mini-LED simply delivers dramatically better picture performance.

The huge uptick in LEDs could also result in improved panel uniformity; some owners of the previous 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pros have observed uneven backlighting. Having exchanged one or two for this very reason, I can vouch. The “panel lottery” is a thing with pretty much any device — TVs, laptops, tablets, etc. — but making the move to Mini LED should help with consistency.

Apple first introduced its Liquid Retina Display on its first-generation iPad Pro launched in September 2015. The display soon appeared on the iPhone XR in 2018 and the iPhone 11 in 2019. Nevertheless, this display forms part of the “Retina” brand of displays with higher pixel density.

What exactly is Liquid Retina, and how does it differ from Super Retina? For starters, Super Retina Display is essentially a trademark for display panels based on organic light-emitting diode or OLED while its “Liquid” counterpart is a trademark for LED-backlit in-plane switching liquid crystal displays or IPS LCDs.

• Better LCD Technology: An IPS LCD is technically superior to other older generation LCD technologies such as twisted nematic and virtual alignment LCDs in terms of image quality. It has better color reproduction and wider viewing angles than these two, thus making it an ideal display tech for use in mid-range to high-end consumer electronic devices.

• Edge Over OLED Displays: OLED suffers from two notable drawbacks: poor outdoor visibility because it lacks backlighting and shorter lifespan due to fragility of organic diodes and uneven degradation of blue-emitting diodes from the rest. An IPS LCD can display brighter images while under direct sunlight, and it also has a longer lifespan.

• More Cost-Effective: The manufacturing cost of IPS is lower than OLED. Hence, to drive down manufacturing cost without sacrificing quality, Apple tends to feature Liquid Retina displays on some of its high-end products, including the iPad Air, iPad Pro, and the MacBook line of computers.

The Super Retina Display is currently featured on high-end iPhone products beginning from iPhone X and newer iPhone models, thereby marking an increasing shift to OLED display technology. OLEDs have key advantages of IPS.

• Inferior Contrast Ratio: OLEDs have a higher contrast ratio because they can selectively turn off pixels on dark areas of an image. An IPS LCD can only produce darker shades of grey because its backlighting often leaks out. Hence, when compared side-by-side, an OLED produces deeper and natural blacks than an IPS.

• Pixel Response Time: An IPS has a slower natural response time than OLED. However, as demonstrated by Apple, hardware tweaking can improve the refresh rate of its Liquid Retina Display to up to 120Hz. However, this feature is only reserved for high-end devices such as the iPad Pro 2018.

• Less Power Efficiency: OLEDs consume less energy because it does not require backlighting. On the other hand, an IPS LCD is a transmissive display technology that requires strong backlighting to improve its display clarity, thus consuming more power than non-backlit and self-emissive displays.

Remember that OLED display or Super Retina Display remains the dominant display technology used in the top-tier portable devices of Apple. However, the company announced in 2019 that it is currently beginning to develop its in-house capability to deploy advanced IPS LCD based on mini-LED backlighting.

Technology enthusiasts have noted that the company would soon be using mini-LED IPS LCD on its future models of iPad Pro and MacBook Pro devices. The technology combines the inherent advantages of IPS LCDs with some of the notable characteristics of OLEDs. Thus, it would mark a new addition to the Retina branding of Apple.

The new iPad mini. Featuring an all-screen design with an 8.3-inch Liquid Retina display.¹ Powerful A15 Bionic chip with Neural Engine. A 12MP Ultra Wide front camera with Center Stage. USB-C connectivity. Take notes, mark up documents, or capture your biggest ideas with Apple Pencil (2nd generation) that attaches magnetically and charges wirelessly.²

Available only on the 12.9-inch version of the iPad Pro, which starts at $1,099 (£999, AU$1,649), Apple calls the screen Liquid Retina XDR. It shares many of the same attributes as

Beyond brightness and contrast, the Liquid Retina XDR screen has a P3 wide color gamut and retina resolution of 5.59 million pixels. It also has a 120Hz touch-sensing rate for smoother motion, and is compatible with HDR10, HLG and Dolby Vision HDR formats.

Mini-LED is an evolutionary technology, not a revolutionary one, and draws on existing LCD tech. All LCD-based screens, including Apple"s new iPad, use light-emitting diodes to shine through a liquid crystal layer that houses the pixels themselves. That"s fundamentally different from more revolutionary technologies, like OLED and MicroLED (see below), which omit the extra layer and allow each individual pixel to emit light.

OLED is another screen technology found on numerous displays today, and unlike mini-LED, its pixels emit light directly, no liquid crystal layer required. Displays that use organic light-emitting diodes have better contrast and off-angle viewing, although they"re not as bright. In CNET"s tests of mini-LED TVs we"ve found some benefits like better brightness for the money and more precise local dimming, but they"re still not as good as OLED TVs. Our tests of

Apple has used OLED displays in its best iPhones over the last few years, but for the new iPad it went with mini-LED instead. In addition to the brightness advantage, another reason could be battery life. Since it can individually control pixel brightness values, OLED is more power-efficient overall than LCD for mixed content. But for a mostly white screen, like when you"re shopping on white-background Amazon or working in white-background Google docs, firing up all those OLED pixels to a comparable brightness takes a lot more power. That might make more of a difference on a larger tablet or laptop screen compared to a phone.

To learn a little more about what it took to build the Liquid Retina XDR screen, Engadget spoke to Vincent Gu, a senior engineering manager for Apple displays, and iPad marketing spokesperson Scott Broderick, who was quick to claim it is "the absolute best display we could put in the 12.9-inch iPad Pro,” Broderick said.

But first, we should break down that name. As I mentioned in our iPad Pro review, the “liquid” bit refers to the fact that this is actually an LCD screen, which — unlike the OLED displays found in newer iPhones and other high-end mobile devices — relies on a bevy of small backlights to actually make the screen visible. “Retina” is a bit of classic Apple marketing fluff, which the company has used to refer to its mobile displays since the days of the iPhone 4. And the “XDR” part isn"t just meant to evoke images of Apple"s expensive, high-end monitors — it refers to the display"s "extreme" dynamic range.

The idea is pretty simple: by making those light sources smaller, Apple could fit more of them behind the rest of the LCD panel"s many layers, allowing for more precise control over what parts of the screen are lit up in any given moment. It’s a pretty standard concept in the TV world, with TCL, Samsung, and LG each with their own confusingly branded version. For what it’s worth, though, Apple insists that its own mini-LED backlighting system was designed completely in-house.

“The mini LEDs we put into Liquid Retina XDR is a truly custom-designed, Apple-proprietary technology,” said Gu, who noted that they were more than a hundred times smaller than those used in last year’s iPad Pro. To no one’s surprise, carefully arranging those thousands of LEDs was a crucial hurdle, one Apple only managed to clear thanks to engineers who custom-designed manufacturing equipment and created their own special solder.

“We had to deliver specific equipment to be able to put these over 10,000 mini LEDs into place with such precision that didn’t exist prior to us,” said iPad spokesperson Broderick. (That said, Apple declined to tell us exactly how small each individual mini LED measures, or how long it takes to produce a single Liquid Retina XDR screen.)

Beyond the lighting system, Gu also said the switch to mini LEDs required Apple to re-engineer core components of its display stack, including the optical films and diffusers that help control the flow of light and distribute it evenly across the entire panel. And then, Apple’s design and manufacturing engineers had to take that new, physically larger screen package and bake it into a kind of device that has been synonymous with portability. In other words, the whole process was... sort of a pain.

It"s a good thing for the company"s engineers, then, that the mini-LED screen is said to remain a key part of the iPad Pro experience for a while. But that"s not to say other changes aren"t in the offing. Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo suggested in a recent note that Apple could shift to using OLED displays — which are known for their deep blacks and extremely vivid colors — in the iPad Air as early as next year. (For what it"s worth, Broderick and Gu wouldn"t confirm whether Apple had contemplated using OLED panels in the iPad Pro)