Replacing the iPad Pro OLED battery is simpler than ever

Apple’s latest iPad Pro is surprisingly sturdy despite its thinness, and it also appears to be a step forward in terms of repairability. iFixit showed during disassembly of the tablet that the iPad Pro’s 38.99Wh battery, which will inevitably wear out and need replacing, is actually easy to remove. This is a change that iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari says in the video “could save hours of repair time” compared to previous iPad Pro models.

However, to get to the battery, you still need to remove the screen, which is tightly glued, and connect it to the iPad in four places. iFixit was able to essentially remove the screen almost immediately after removing the camera and dealing with an aluminum groove underneath, making some tabs difficult to get out. He notes that for previous models, you had to remove “all major components.”

However, thinness then becomes an issue for iFixit, as many parts are tightly glued, including the tablet’s motherboard.

But the same can’t be said for the new $129 Apple Pencil Pro, which shouldn’t shock anyone. iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari was forced to cut a pencil with an ultrasonic cutter, a moment he described as “the world’s worst ASMR video”. (That happens right after the five-minute mark, in case you want to mute the video right there to avoid the tool’s jarring noise.) Unlike the iPad Pro, the Pencil Pro’s battery is the last thing he can take out.

Of course, when Mokhtari was finished, the pencil was completely destroyed. He said the website will soon have the full chip ID including an image of the MEMS sensor that controls the pencil’s scrolling feature that allows you to rotate the pencil to adjust the rotation of the drawing tools on the screen.