Pixel 6a teardown reveals curved plastic back and soldered-in USB-C port

What’s in the Pixel 6a? PBK Reviews took possession of the device and tore it apart. It has pretty basic internals for a fairly basic phone.

The back is plastic and comes off the same way as the front with glue and plastic clips. Once you pry off the back of the frame, it becomes very flexible. The Pixel 6a also has a suspiciously large notch on its bezel, which PBK Reviews says was once meant for wireless charging, but the phone never came with that feature.

For some reason, iFixit no longer parses pixels (despite an official partnership with Google on parts, oddly enough), but PBK gives the phone a repairability score of 7 out of 10. The phone gets ringing due to the soldered USB-C port and fingerprint reader, which will probably not separate from the screen without damage. As for the Pixel 6 Pro, PBK Reviews expressed dissatisfaction with the large amount of adhesive used to hold the battery in place. To remove it, it was necessary to soak the battery in alcohol and peek a lot. On the Pixel 6a, the battery just pops off when you pull the tab, which is a nice improvement.

We also see the first sign of Google’s shaky quality control when PBK says its device arrived scratched from junk in the box. We’ll know more when the phone actually starts shipping on July 28th.