Six things we learned from iFixit's iPad Pro 11, Apple Pencil 2 teardowns
Including the tech behind the Apple Pencil 2's touch.
The Apple iPad Pro 11-inch and its new best friend, the Apple Pencil 2, enter the pantheon of iFixit teardowns. Published Monday, the iPad Pro teardown reveals that underneath the new gadgets' slick surfaces lies a tap-happy array of sensors, smaller battery, the usual gluefest and a field of magnets.
The Pencil 2 offers the most interesting reveal, showing the capacitive touch array that Patently Apple surfaced from a grant earlier this year, and which powers the new tap-to-wake and -pair capability. You can also see the copper coil where it magnetically attaches to the tablet and charger and its mate on the iPad Pro (top photo).
Other highlights of the teardown:
- The speakers can't be replaced and because there are eight -- four woofers and four tweeters -- it adds a lot of magnets.
- A slightly lower capacity battery than when it was 10.5 inches: 29.45 Watt-hours, compared to 30.8 Wh. (We haven't finished our battery testing yet, so it's not clear how it affects battery life.)
- iFixit points out that dropping the physical home button removes a common point of failure.
- The only easily swappable component is the modular USB-C port.
- Because
Apple
fused the LCD and front panel glass, the iPad Pro's easier to open, but the thin bezels and scattered connections make it harder to remove the screen and will make it more expensive to replace.
See the full teardown below.