The AirTags have been officially available since Friday, April 30th. Now iFixit has published the first part of its two-part series on the AirTag teardown.
iFixit has During the teardown, iFixit compared Apple's AirTags with the Tile Mate and Samsung Galaxy SmartTag. It quickly became clear that the AirTags feature an "impressively compact" design. Compared to their competitors, the AirTags are the smallest, with most of the internal space dedicated to the battery itself. Another notable design difference is the AirTags' lack of an integrated keychain hole, which iFixit attributes to Apple's history of "turning essential features into premium accessories."
AirTags: Apple has worked more space-efficiently
An X-ray image of the three devices also reveals that Apple did indeed try to save space. On the other hand, the Tile Mate and Galaxy SmartTag appear to be overly bulky, and despite their larger footprints, neither tracker includes ultra-wideband technology like AirTags. The Tile Mate, Galaxy SmartTag, and AirTags all feature replaceable coin-cell batteries.
AirTags and the Galaxy SmartTag use the .66Wh CR2032 battery while the Tile Mate uses the smaller .39Wh CR1632 battery.
All three trackers can be opened with a little force - no other tools are required! However, the AirTag is by far the most difficult, especially if you've had a snack beforehand and have greasy fingers. Imagine being able to open a stubborn pickle jar with just two slippery thumbs and you'll get the idea!
Interestingly, a vise and some plastic skewers are perfectly sufficient to fully open the AirTag, according to the repair professionals. The AirTag has a built-in speaker that emits sounds when pinged by a paired iPhone via the "Find My" app during setup and other situations. However, given its small form factor, Apple had to find a new way to integrate a speaker into the tracker. For the AirTags, Apple opted to use the entire casing as a speaker driver, with the bottom of the cover acting as a magnet for the speaker.
Details about the board are to follow
Did you notice the "button" on the underside of the cover? It's not a clickable button like the Mate and SmartTag have, but rather the magnet we saw in the X-ray image earlier. It sits directly inside the donut-shaped logic board, which is embedded in a copper coil to form a speaker. That's right—the AirTag's casing is essentially a speaker driver. Current is sent to the voice coil, which drives the magnet attached to the diaphragm—in this case, the plastic cover that houses the battery—which produces the sounds that guide you to your lost luggage.
As we discovered earlier this week, it's possible to drill a hole through AirTags to compensate for the lack of a built-in hole for the key ring. This will, of course, void the warranty, and while it's possible, it's risky. As iFixit notes, "drilling in the wrong place can cause serious damage." Finally, iFixit promises to provide more details about the circuit board in the second part of the teardown. (Image: iFixit)
