The the new 13-inch M4 iPad Pro it’s really, really thin. This will inevitably make certain aspects of device repair more difficult, which iFixit confirmed by a teardown published this weekend. But it does shine in one area – when it comes to battery replacement, Apple has made some seriously useful changes.
“For the first time on an iPad Pro, we can remove the battery immediately after removing the screen,” Teardown Tech Shahram Mokhtari said in a blog post. Mokhtari notes that “immediately is relative” because there are some screws and brackets that need to be removed before removing the battery, and the video documenting the process requires some work to get to the pull tabs under the batteries, but the new setup still shaves hours off the process compared to previous models.
“The fact that you can remove the battery without removing every major component inside this device is still a huge plus for repair,” Mokhtari says in the video. “It’s a huge improvement over the previous generation.” On the other hand, it will be quite difficult to repair without damaging everything. “Because there wasn’t enough room for screws, we found a lot of things stuck together, from the add-on board to the speakers and coaxial cables.”
And the teardown shows that the new Apple Pencil Pro is a repairable nightmare. Interrupted by the Pen while trying to get inside, Mokhtari called it “a crappy thing that can be used once the battery dies.”
