iFixit Teardown Reveals: AirTag 2 Speaker Can Still Be Disabled!

Released just last week, the AirTag 2 has made its way to iFixit, which has provided its signature teardown in the (short) video below. The internals of Apple’s tracker have not seen much change, however, a noticeably larger speaker (which is 50% more powerful) and the compact motherboard houses a new nRF52840 chip for Bluetooth and NFC, as well as the Apple U2 chip for Ultra Wideband, enhancing the precision of its tracking capabilities.

There had been numerous speculations suggesting that Apple would make the speaker more difficult to disable to prevent malicious use (the AirTag emits a periodic ringing if it moves when away from its owner). Although the speaker has indeed been enhanced for greater power, iFixit observed that the wiring of the speaker is remarkably simple, as can be seen in the image below.

A quick touch with a soldering iron to the two connectors, and the speaker is disabled, yet the AirTag remains operational: Apple appears not to have implemented any software safeguards that would allow the tracker to detect such a modification and consequently disable its geolocation functionality.