iPad Pro 12,9 (4th gen) + Apple Pencil 2, does not connect 😭

Thanks,

A battery dead from being depleted for that amount of time shouldn’t be in stock, especially under Tim Cook’s rule. This is his special skill after all. Also, one dead Apple Pencil shouldn’t stop all other apple pencils from connecting. That is just weird. Although perhaps I should have purchased a brand new Pencil and tested that in front of the store employees. Perhaps the demo pencils are banned from working on any other iPad? That could of course be a possibility, to prevent theft.

2 weeks into the case.

Many hours been spent on support calls with Apple. The Apple Pencil 2 has been replaced. The new Pencil has the same behaviour on my iPad Pro. Many more hours of support calls. A bluetooth diagnostics was performed on the iPad pro and sent to Apple.

I'm sending the gear back for replacement tomorrow.

Both parts agree that this is an unusual case. For two Apple Pencils to be be malfunctioning upon delivery the odds are close to zero. The odds for an iPad Pro 4th gen to be malfunctioning somehow in the Apple Pencil regards is probably too early to have any data on, since it's still very new. But I guess… extremely low odds.

I have read some people in the forums are having seemingly bricked, or at least malfunctioning Apple Pencils after the 13.4 update, and not fixed in the 13.4.1 update. Not sure how many are affected. It could be related, but there's no way for me to know or jump to any conclusions, or to estimate the scope of it. Could be related. Perhaps parts are manufactured in different factories, and there's a bad batch somewhere, yet to be identified. Who knows.

In my own analytical mind, I now kind of assume that something is wrong with the iPad Pro, and that it is somehow corrupting the Pencil once it's trying to pair and connect. What if half a firmware is sent to the Pencil for instance? Or if somehow a corrupt Pencil Firmware is being sent? Could the pencil be rendered bricked? Since there's no hard-boot button on the Apple Pencil 2, and no hard wired way of connecting it, I'm assuming it can be bricked by software failure. Or if the Apple Pencil charging module within the iPad Pro is malfunctioning and not supplying the Pencil with the sufficient amount of power? I'm just trying to suggest up with possible scenarios.

In any case. I hope that the replacement that will be sent to me in the near future will be running smooth and without any issues.

To anyone stumbling upon this thread. If you're experiencing these issues, you're probably not crazy, or doing anything wrong. You should immediately contact Apple, and even point them to this thread as a very rare case that does exist.

I will write back here once I get the replacement hardware to (hopefully) close the case.

Sorry to say. I have opened the case again. The iPad and Pencil worked fine for about two weeks. Then it stopped charging, and disconnected when on the charging magnet. I pressed “forget device” and now the pencil won’t connect again.

If two out of two cases malfunctioned like this for me, I’d be pretty nervous if I were Apple. That is a pretty tough error rate :-/

awaiting response from Apple Support.

An update…

A week ago Apple performed a bluetooth diagnostics on the new unit, and new Apple Pencil, and logged when attempting to connect three times… all according to protocol. Took a week to get feedback from that report. The feedback was:

This should be solved in iPad OS 13.5 (which was released a few days ago). I updated, but the Apple Pencil still didn't show any signs of connecting. So we did another bluetooth diagnostics thing, and they'll get back to me in about a week again.

Days from purchase: 63… (aka, imagine my frustration)

I'd be interested to know if iPad OS 13.5 solved the issue for others with the same issue? I have the feeling that my Pencil has been corrupted, and is in a crashed state. And since there's no way of resetting the Pencil, no secret buttons (?) no factory reset(?) it's effectively bricked? Perhaps a new Pencil is the only way to go now? If they have acknowledged the problem, and they say it's solved in 13.5, then a new pencil should be good. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Hashtag #neverendingcase

Update. I’m tired of waiting. Since Apple said that this should effectively be fixed in iPad OS 13.5, even if it seemingly wasn’t for me, I went to the Apple store and tried out some Apple Pencils that were on demo units. They repeatedly connected fine. My own pencil still did not. So I decided to buy a new pencil, and it works well.

Perhaps they’ve fixed this issue from occurring in the first place, but if your Apple Pencil is bricked, it won’t fix that? That’s kind of my interpretation of this.

Apple will probably send me a new pencil anyways (a fourth one!). I just bought this at the store because I‘ve frankly had enough.