The folks over at iFixit have torn down Apple’s $99 stylus, the Apple Pencil, to reveal all the gadgetry packed inside it. Unlike other smartphones and tablets that the team has torn down recently, opening up the Apple Pencil posed quite a bit of challenge.
To access the innards of the Pencil, the iFixit team had to cut through its plastic shell since the top and bottom of the device had no point of entry. This means that if you ever plan on dismantling your Pencil, there is no way you can put it back again in a working state. Cutting through the plastic top reveals the metallic casing of the stylus and contact points that is likely used by Apple for diagnostic and testing purposes.
Cutting through the metal casing revealed the tiny 0.329Wh battery of the Pencil. To give you an idea of how small the battery is, the total battery capacity of the Apple Pencil is only around 5% of the iPhone 6s’ battery capacity. After some more prying and digging, the iFixit team finally got to the logic board that has been folded into half by Apple to make the maximum use of the limited space and weighs only 1 gm. If not the smallest, it is easily among the smallest and lightest logic board ever to be used in a consumer device. Sadly, the teardown could not reveal the sensors used by Apple on the Pencil’s nib with the chip carrying a very vague ID number that could not be traced to any particular supplier.
In the end, the Apple Pencil scored a repairability score of 1 out of 10. There is absolutely no way to repair an Apple Pencil in case you damage it or if it stops working since opening it up will essentially destroy it. Most importantly, the iFixit team notes that the Apple Pencil battery cannot be replaced which gives it a limited lifespan.
[Via iFixit]
No comments:
Post a Comment