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Google‘s latest Android smartphones are now official and available for pre-orders. If you have placed your order for the Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Pro, you might be eagerly waiting to get your hands on it. Meanwhile, there’s already a teardown video of the base model on YouTube, showing the phone inside out.
You can pre-order the phones below:
Pre-order the Pixel 8 (Best Buy)
Pre-order the Pixel 8 Pro (Best Buy)
Pixel 8 teardown gives us an inside look at Google’s hardware engineering
YouTube channel PBKReviews, which is known for tearing apart brand-new smartphones and reassembling them, has just published one such teardown video for the Pixel 8. The video kind of acts as a guide for DIY (do it yourself) enthusiasts. The YouTuber gives detailed instructions on how to get inside the new Google phone without damaging it.
At first, you should remove the physical SIM tray, which sits on the left side of the phone when the screen is facing up. You can then proceed to remove the screen. Apply some heat to loosen the adhesive under the display and use a pry tool to carefully cut through the adhesive. A suction cup can be used to lift the screen as you push the pry tool under it.
Once you have completely cut the adhesive, carefully lift the display from right to left. This is because the screen has a cable under it on the left side. You have to remove a metal covering before you can disconnect the cable from the main board. The screen then comes off along with the under-display fingerprint scanner. Put it aside and you have a clear look at the Pixel 8‘s internals.
This isn’t the easiest phone to repair
Google has kept everything in place with 14 screws, a few of which are hidden under the graphite film. Removing the screws frees up the massive aluminum plate that runs top to bottom. It comes off with the vibration motor attached and makes room for battery removal. Simply disconnect the battery cable and use the provided pull tab to peel the battery off. You have to be careful to not pull the tab itself out, as the YouTuber did in this case.
If the pull tab doesn’t work its magic, you’ll have to use isopropyl alcohol to dissolve the adhesive and use a pry tool to remove the battery. The rest of the setup is mostly connected via Lego-style connectors, though you have to remove two more screws before the main board can be lifted off. Like before, Google has soldered the USB-C charging port to the main board on the Pixel 8 as well. This affected the phone’s repairability score, with PBKReviews rating it 7 out of 10. You can watch the full video below.