If you’ve been dying to see what’s inside the Nexus 6P then the team at iFixit have your back. The phone has just started reaching the hands of consumers in the US, and in their usual fashion the iFixit guys have quickly taken it to pieces to see what makes it tick.
The Nexus 6P is harder than most phones to get into, with its aluminium body that was going to be a given. Ingress into the device is gained by means of heating up the small plastic strip at the back of the phone which then pops off to reveal screws. That’s not all though, you’ll also have to pop the what they call ‘tight-fitting, easily shattered, glass’ covering the camera bump or ‘Visor’ as Google call it before unscrewing stuff under there.
If all this sounds like a chore – it seems it is. The whole lot leads to a very underwhelming 2 out of 10 for repairability. They liked the Solid external construction, and once you’re through the complex opening procedure, the battery is easily accessible, but that was about it and there were a number of factors which led to the low score:
- It’s very difficult—although not impossible—to open the device without damaging the glass camera cover. Because of the unibody design, this makes every component extremely difficult to replace.
- The display assembly cannot be replaced without tunneling through the entire phone. This makes one of most common repairs, a damaged screen, difficult to accomplish.
- Tough adhesive holds the rear cover panels and battery in place.
There was an interesting find underneath the aluminium shell on the Nexus 6P, the fingerprint sensor, or Nexus Imprint, turns out to be square instead of round like the one on the Nexus 5X, making this a square peg with a round outline.
If you want some more teardown porn you can head across to the iFixit website to check it out.
At least the battery is not “smaller than promised” like iPhone..