AirTag V2 Teardown - nRF52840 upgrade & Bigger 🧲
We just picked up a 4-pack of Apple's second-gen AirTag. That means we have a spare to tear down and check out the build of this new improved device. Even just taking it apart we've learned a lot on how Apple has improved on the assembly process. The original AirTag used a lot of glue to keep it together and weatherproofed. This version uses just a couple small dabs to adhere the PCB to the outside, otherwise it's just sandwiched layers of battery holder + PCB + magnet buzzer + NFC antenna (https://www.adafruit.com/product/365) + buzzer coil.
Inside, we see a move from the nRF52832 (https://www.adafruit.com/product/3406) to the newer nRF52840 (https://www.adafruit.com/product/4062) which has more flash and RAM. There's still the Apple-silicon ultra-wideband chip with two tiny antennas on the PCB. The NFC antenna fits neatly at one end. The speaker assembly is larger thanks to a bigger magnet and coil - it must use the case as a resonating cavity.
We love the high-density, all-black goth design of Apple hardware. We don't expect to be able to make something like this in house at Adafruit any time soon but there's always neat techniques to learn when seeing how the best-of-the-best do it.Note, we mentioned that the nRF52840 adds Angle-of-Arrival (https://blog.adafruit.com/2021/08/19/eye-on-npi-xplr-aoa-direction-finding-and-indoor-positioning-explorer-kit-eyeonnpi-digikey-ublox-digikey-adafruit/) sensing that should help determine what direction and distance a target object is at, but that’s actually in the nRF5340
