iPhone Duo Only Works With the $80 USB-C Apple Pencil, Not the $130 Apple Pencil Pro

Juli Clover, MacRumors:

It’s likely the iPhone Duo doesn’t support the Apple Pencil Pro because there’s no magnetic surface for charging the pencil. The Apple Pencil Pro charges magnetically when connected to a compatible iPad, while the Apple Pencil with USB-C charges with a USB-C port hidden behind a sliding cap.

Charging is the least of the problems. Because the Duo doesn’t have the magnetic attachment for Pencil Pro, there’s no way to even pair a Pencil Pro. Apple’s entire Pencil compatibility story is a mess. But the easiest way to think about it isn’t to compare which devices support which features (like pressure sensitivity, or double-tapping) — it’s just to think about which devices can even pair with which Pencil models. Unless I’m missing an exception in Apple’s compatibility support document, if a Pencil-compatible iPad or iPhone can pair with a certain Pencil’s connector, then it can use that Pencil. The iPads with both the magnetic attachment point and USB-C can use either the Pencil Pro or regular Pencil, and the devices without the magnetic attachment can only use the regular Pencil.