iFixit's Teardown Shows Just What You'll Find Inside an Apple AirTag, and Where to Put Your Keyring
Opening with a detailed X-ray analysis, iFixit walks through exactly what goes into Apple's new trackers — and its rivals, too.
iFixit has published a detailed teardown of Apple's new AirTags, its compact entry into the object-tracking Internet of Things — and a comparison to its director competitors, Samsung's Galaxy SmartTag and the Tile Mate.
"The long-rumored, tiniest Apple product (that isn’t a dongle) is finally here. Welcome, AirTag," iFixit's Sam Goldheart writes in the introduction to the teardown. "With the entire iPhone network at its back and a truly user-replaceable battery — the first in any Apple product in years — we’re interested to see how AirTags track against tried-and-tested tech."
Unusually, the teardown begins by looking inside the AirTag - and its competitors — without actually taking it apart. "Let’s look inside from the outside," Goldheart begins, "with the help of Creative Electron’s X-ray skills. The relative darkness of the AirTag is due to a hefty central speaker magnet and its steel battery cover — both fairly opaque to X-rays. The other trackers seem sprawling by comparison — and they don’t even include magnets."
As the teardown shifts to actual physical disassembly, Goldheart notes that none of the products require tools — though Apple's design is the hardest to open — in order that their button-cell batteries can be replaced quickly and easily in-the-field. Beyond the battery cover, though, things become somewhat more difficult to disassemble: "If you plan to venture this far into an AirTag, tread carefully! The gluey clips are prone to break rather than release."
"The AirTag is the feistiest of the three when it comes to giving up the gold. [The board is] stubbornly glued in place, and there's not a lot of safe harbor for a pick. A delicately soldered antenna housing surrounds the board, and a very fragile copper voice coil lines the middle of the donut. The board is clearly designed to stay put. If you’re following in our footsteps and made it this far, it’s probably not to fix anything."
The full write-up, including shots of the three layers which make up the sandwich circuit design, is available on iFixit's website — as is a guide to drilling through a surprisingly empty section of the device in order to fit a keyring, something missing in Apple's own design.