Replacing the OLED iPad Pro battery is easier than ever

Apple’s newest iPad Pro is remarkably rigid for being thin, and apparently also a step forward when it comes to repairability. iFixit shows during its teardown of the tablet that the iPad Pro’s 38.99Wh battery, which will inevitably wear out and need replacing, is really easy to get hold of. It’s a change that iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari says during the video “could save hours in repairs” compared to previous iPad Pro models.

To get there, you still have to remove the screen, which is glued and attached to the iPad in four places, but iFixit was essentially able to pull it out almost immediately after removing the screen (after removing the camera assembly and dealing with an edge of aluminum below this, which made access to some guides difficult). For earlier models, he notes, it is necessary to remove “all the major components.”

After that, however, thickness proves to be an issue for iFixit, as many of the parts are glued together, including the tablet’s logic board.

But you can’t say the same for Apple’s new $129 Apple Pencil Pro, which shouldn’t shock anyone. Mokhtari was forced to cut the pencil using an ultrasonic cutter, a moment he described as “the world’s worst ASMR video.” (That happens just after the five minute markin case you want to mute the video right there to avoid the tool’s screeching noise.) Unlike the iPad Pro itself, the Pencil Pro’s battery was the last thing it got.

When Mokhtari finishes, the pencil is completely destroyed, of course. He says the site will soon have a full ID chip that will include images from the MEMS sensor that powers the Pencil Rotation feature that lets you rotate the Pencil to adjust the rotation of on-screen art tools.