The Apple Pencil stylus accessory was one of the most-praised parts of the newly-launched iPad Pro — which, naturally, means that our friends at iFixit were tripping over one another to pull it apart and scoop through its gory innards like geeky zombies with a taste for tech components.
Here’s what they discovered in their customary teardown.
For starters, there’s the fact that the Apple Pencil contains a 3.82 V, 0.329 Wh lithium-ion battery, which holds just 5 percent charge of an iPhone 6s battery. There’s also a 1.0 gram logic board the master dissecters at iFixit describe as “definitely the smallest we’ve ever seen.” In order to fit it into the tiny space available, Apple’s engineers opted to fold this in half.
After praising the repairability of some recent Apple devices, iFixit notes that Apple is back to its old ways with the Apple Pencil — with the website awarding the accessory a 1 out of 10 for repairability, with layers of plastic and metal holding the interior components which are impossible to remove without destroying.
Unlike some rival styluses, the battery is also impossible to replace, which means that the Apple Pencil has a limited lifespan.
Fortunately, you’re unlikely to break it accidentally — as was revealed in a recent stress test we covered here at Cult of Mac.
You can check out the rest of iFixit’s Apple Pencil report here.
