Apple Pencil iFixit teardown reveals small, folded logic board

Weighing just 1 gram, Apple had to actually fold the board in half in order to get it inside the Pencil.

As you can imagine, with the Pencil needing to be cut open the device will not be easy to fix as the casing is damaged when the Pencil is taken apart.

Editor Jacob Kastrenakes called the Apple Pencil “one of the best” he has ever used, adding that the Surface Pen “can be a little less natural” but benefits from having a hardware eraser – which the Apple Pencil doesn’t have. As for specs, the board contains an ARM-based CPU, a Bluetooth Smart radio, an ST Microelectronics AS5C Y533 (which is also found in the Apple TV), among other things.

On the outside, the Apple Pencil looks like, well, like a disposable plastic pen, but a teardown by fix specialists iFixit shows that it’s crammed full of tiny technology that you’ll never be able to see unless you smash it open.

Another standout technological complexity is the actual tip of the Apple Pencil, which comes equipped with three minute sensor ticks, which iFixit presumed helped with measuring movement and detecting levels of pressure; the chip embedded in the nib reads “8529043 343S0008-A1”.

Apple claims that the iPad Pro gets around 10 hours of battery life which was seemingly confirmed by various reviews of the device. So, if you break it, you’ve really, really bought it.

Apple describes the speakers as “innovative”, arguing that the new, bigger design gives “the speakers 61 per cent more back volume compared to previous iPad audio designs”.