Today the U.S. Patent Office published a patent application of Apple's that relates to a possible future Apple Pencil (USB-C) offering wireless communications. Apple notes that the transceiver circuitry may transmit and/or receive radio-frequency signals with one of more frequency bands including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) band, 5G and many others.

Apple Pencil Antenna

Considering that Apple’s focus in this patent is on providing new wireless communications to Apple Pencil, below is the full range of wireless bands listed in the patent that may be utilized: 

Transceiver circuitry 38 may transmit and/or receive radio-frequency signals (e.g., for wireless communications link 28 of FIG. 1) within one or more frequency bands at radio frequencies (sometimes referred to herein as communications bands or simply as “bands”). The frequency band(s) handled by transceiver circuitry 38 may include wireless local area network (WLAN) frequency bands (e.g., Wi-Fi® (IEEE 802.11) or other WLAN communications bands) such as a 2.4 GHz WLAN band (e.g., from 2400 to 2480 MHz), a 5 GHz WLAN band (e.g., from 5180 to 5825 MHz), a Wi-Fi® 6E band (e.g., from 5925-7125 MHz), and/or other Wi-Fi® bands (e.g., from 1875-5160 MHz), wireless personal area network (WPAN) frequency bands such as the 2.4 GHz Bluetooth® band or other WPAN communications bands, cellular telephone communications bands such as a cellular low band (LB) (e.g., 600 to 960 MHz), a cellular low-midband (LMB) (e.g., 1400 to 1550 MHz), a cellular midband (MB) (e.g., from 1700 to 2200 MHz), a cellular high band (HB) (e.g., from 2300 to 2700 MHz), a cellular ultra-high band (UHB) (e.g., from 3300 to 5000 MHz, or other cellular communications bands between about 600 MHz and about 5000 MHz), 3G bands, 4G LTE bands, 3GPP 5G New Radio Frequency Range 1 (FR1) bands below 10 GHz, 3GPP 5G New Radio (NR) Frequency Range 2 (FR2) bands between 20 and 60 GHz, other centimeter or millimeter wave frequency bands between 10-300 GHz, near-field communications frequency bands (e.g., at 13.56 MHz), satellite navigation frequency bands such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) L1 band (e.g., at 1575 MHz), L2 band (e.g., at 1228 MHz), L3 band (e.g., at 1381 MHz), LA band (e.g., at 1380 MHz), and/or L5 band (e.g., at 1176 MHz), a Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS) band, a BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) band, ultra-wideband (UWB) frequency bands that operate under the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol and/or other ultra-wideband communications protocols (e.g., a first UWB communications band at 6.5 GHz and/or a second UWB communications band at 8.0 GHz), communications bands under the family of 3GPP wireless communications standards, communications bands under the IEEE 802.XX family of standards, satellite communications bands such as an L-band, S-band (e.g., from 2-4 GHz), C-band (e.g., from 4-8 GHz), X-band, Ku-band (e.g., from 12-18 GHz), Ka-band (e.g., from 26-40 GHz), etc., industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) bands such as an ISM band between around 900 MHz and 950 MHz or other ISM bands below or above 1 GHz, one or more unlicensed bands, one or more bands reserved for emergency and/or public services, and/or any other desired frequency bands of interest. Implementations in which transceiver circuitry 38 conveys radio-frequency signals using a Bluetooth band are described herein as an example.

This future Apple Pencil may include input-output circuitry that may include input-output devices that may be used to allow data to be supplied to Apple Pencil and to allow data to be provided from Apple Pencil to external devices such as an iPad (or other devices).  This Apple Pencil could also include orientation sensors, accelerometers or other components that can detect motion and stylus orientation.

While Apple’s patent application 20250123697 dives deep into the technical aspects of the new antenna, it doesn’t provide any specific applications that would explain why Apple would even consider adding such a sophisticated antenna to Apple Pencil that could possibly use 5G.

Yet other Apple Pencil patents could be referred to assist in understanding aspects of this new Apple Pencil. For instance, this patent mentions detecting motion. In January 2024, we posted an Apple Pencil patent titled “Apple wins a patent for an Apple Pencil with motion tracking to work with Apple Vision Pro to assist users peer around 3D objects in games.” Other patents point to many features and applications aimed for a future Apple Pencil that you could discover here: 01, 02, 03 and many more.

A few of Apple’s Inventors 

• Harish Rajagopalan: Antenna Design Engineer
• Zhe Zhang: Antenna and Wireless System Engineer
• Colin Abraham: Product Design Manager
• Stephen Marrone: Hardware Engineer
• Brandon Leung: Product Design Engineer. Worked on Apple Pencil and Apple TV 4K