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Ron Amadeo-November 1, 2021 at 6:13 PM UTC

The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro are already on the market, which means it’s time to dismantle. PBK reviews videos about Pixel 6 Pro and Pixel 6 for us to choose from.

Turn on any mobile phone and you will find a lot of heat dissipation. The back of the screen is covered by copper, so it is a big heat sink. Below the display, the inside is covered with a sticky heat-dissipating graphite film, which makes the phone look messier than the well-planned inside of the iPhone 13. Here is more heat dissipation: the chip connected to the main aluminum midplane with thermal tape.

The back of the screen is also interesting. On the left is the under-display fingerprint reader, and you can see why the company prefers these components to capacitive rear fingerprint readers. The optical reader is an ultra-thin sticker on the back of the display-it looks only about a millimeter thick. You can also find the cutouts for the brightness and proximity sensor under the display, which, like the fingerprint reader, are hidden under the display.

PBK Reviews found some interesting differences between Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. On the Pro model, the haptic motor is located at the bottom of the phone, while the baseline Pixel 6 is located at the top. The bottom is a better position, because that is usually where your hand is, allowing you to get a stronger sensation from the tactile motor. Depending on the region and carrier, some models of Pixel 6 have millimeter waves and some do not. If you get a model without millimeter waves, you will find...a metal placeholder in the millimeter wave dots.

This teardown confirmed our suspicion of the Pixel 6's 5G millimeter wave capabilities-it doesn't seem to be well thought out. For starters, millimeter wave is not an excellent mobile phone feature. It has received great attention because operators use millimeter waves to justify the 5G speed claims in their commercials. However, the truth is that almost no one can reliably access millimeter waves. A recent OpenSignal survey showed that users using compatible devices only spend 0.8% of their time on millimeter waves.

Even if you can find the millimeter wave network through the Pixel, the Pixel 6 has only one millimeter wave antenna, which is located on the top edge of the phone (in a very visible plastic window). Most of the reasons for including millimeter waves in mobile phones revolve around its reputation for supporting high download speeds. Most of this speed is used for media consumption, in this case, the mobile phone will be in a horizontal state. But the antenna is on the top, the millimeter wave signal will be blocked by your hand in landscape mode. Compare this Pixel design decision with the design decision in the Galaxy S21, which has two millimeter wave antennas, each of which is located on the long side of the phone. The millimeter wave signal of the Galaxy S21 works better in either lateral direction The possibilities are even greater. Qualcomm's original millimeter wave document recommended four antennas, one on each side of the phone, because it is easy to block millimeter wave signals by hand. Most people may never find a millimeter wave signal, but even if you can find it on the Pixel 6, the antenna location makes it look like a spec sheet fill.

Regrettably, iFixit seems to have abandoned the Pixel product line. The last full dismantling of the site was Pixel 4. One thing I really miss is iFixit's investigation of the chips on the motherboard, neither of which is mentioned in the videos. It would be nice to look at Google Tensor SoC, discrete Samsung Exynos 5G modem, and any other components used by Google, but this video is purely about replacement parts.

As for repairability, the USB-C port is soldered to the motherboard, which makes it more difficult to repair normally damaged components. As usual, everything is stuck together, which means that any repairs may compromise the water resistance of the device. PBK Reviews also tried to replace some parts to see if there were any iPhone-style software locks that prevented repairs. Although the screen replacement was smooth, I encountered an error message when replacing the fingerprint sensor. A later update to the video description pointed out that they later visited Google's official repair site, run some calibration software, and then reset the device to factory settings to make the sensor work properly.

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