Ron Amadeo - Oct 23, 2023 6:29 pm UTC
The Pixel 8 Pro has been out for a few days now, and iFixit got hold of one for a teardown on its YouTube channel. Graphite Sintering Box
Opening it up doesn't seem much different from last year. Step one is getting past all the phone glue, which involves heating up the screen, pulling the screen away from the body with a suction cup, and cutting the glue around the edge with a soft pick. iFixit says the adhesive was "easier to get into [than that in the iPhone] 15 Pro Max." Unlike the iPhone 15 design, though, the Pixel 8 Pro only opens from one side, so you'll most likely have to remove every single part in the phone to swap out the back.
The guts of the phone look just like the Pixel 7 Pro, but Google has started to pick up on a few of Apple's tendencies to make the phone's insides look nice. This year the battery is cleanly branded "Google," whereas last year it was just covered in manufacturer information and warnings. Of course, you'll only see this after you peel off the graphite cooling pad, which, for the second year in a row, has seen a big increase in area; it now covers about 60 percent of the battery. The Pixel phone runs a "Tensor" SoC made in partnership with Samsung, so more cooling will definitely help.
For a few years now, Google has included plastic tabs around the battery that are supposed to help cut through the adhesive and detach it from the phone body, but they never seem to work, and everyone resorts to soaking the battery in alcohol to defeat the adhesive. It's the same deal this year.
The big news of the Pixel 8's release was the upgrade to seven years of support. Google and iFixit have a parts partnership, so someday they will launch a parts store for the Pixel 8, and that will also include seven years of parts availability. iFixit also mentions that there are no software lockouts on parts, so it sounds like this phone will be rather repairable for a while. Sadly, iFixit neglected to give the device an actual repairability score.
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