The Pixel 9 Pro Fold has come a long way since the first generation Pixel Fold. That’s because unlike other foldable smartphones that have landed on our teardown table, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold takes a crack at repairability in a way that other foldables never did. And that’s a big deal for an $1,800 device that may or may not break within days of the warranty expiring.
Putting Foldables on the Repairability Map
We have the obvious repair wins, the highly modular design that separates high mechanical wear parts like the USB-C port and isolates it from the logic board, making replacements cheaper and easier. There’s the logical and intuitive layout of the internals and the uniform adoptance of 3IP screws that makes disassembly easy for the layman.
Then there are the less obvious repairability wins, from repair guides and a detailed Bill of Materials to spare parts that are available without malicious restrictions, the Pixel team has gone to great lengths to support your right to repair the device you paid for and own.
There’s really only a single criticism I’d direct at the Pixel 9 Fold from my own disassembly experience: the battery removal tabs. These tabs simply do not work, with or without the application of heat. They are flimsy and break often, require a second pair of hands to secure the device, and they fail to cut through adhesive reliably. Whether they should even try to cut through adhesive is debatable.
Stretch release adhesive might age and break over time but at least they give you a chance at removing the adhesive. Pull tabs don’t even work when the adhesive is brand new, they literally have no redeeming qualities when compared to other battery release mechanisms. Even the more robust pull tabs Samsung uses in its phones work better than this, though they aren’t necessarily the easiest to use either.
A Closer Look at the Hardware
As for the device itself, it prompted one of my colleagues—an iPhone user since forever—to say “this is nice, I’d switch to Android for this”. It’s a nice device alright, all the more interesting to examine through the lens of the Neptune CT scanner, but for all the complexity of creating a foldable I was surprised to see how much space is dedicated to the two battery cells. Over half of the phone’s internal area is occupied by the lithium polymer battery cells!
Divided into three parts, the hinge mechanism looks to have drawn inspiration from the Galaxy Z Fold5’s gearless hinge design. Unlike the Z Fold5 and Z Fold6, the two sides of the device fold flat against each other when closed without leaving any kind of a gap. This isn’t the first foldable to achieve such a flat seamless fold but it’s no less an impressive feat.
The logic board is probably the strangest component inside this device, mainly nestling next to the camera array but also snaking down and around the smaller of the two lithium polymer batteries to terminate alongside the USB-C board. It’s not just an odd shape, it’s also an extremely delicate one. My colleague Alex advises that we should be careful not to drop our logic board. He doesn’t elaborate as to why.
A smartphone wouldn’t be complete without an array of cameras and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s 48MP wide, 10MP ultrawide, and 10MP 5x optical zoom telephoto cameras should be able to handle anything you throw their way.
The CT reveals how the 48MP wide camera and 10MP telephoto achieve their optical image stabilization (OIS). The secret lies in the high density neodymium magnets—seen here in bright red and orange—which are glued to the camera lens and aligned over an opposing electromagnet composed of a tightly wound copper coil. The electromagnet is glued against the outer metal housing. The lens is suspended above the sensor allowing the electromagnets to manipulate the lens position by increasing or decreasing the magnetic force applied to each of the neodymium magnets.
This particular implementation of OIS is called lens-based OIS because the sensor remains stationary while the lens adjusts its position. Modern iPhones use a sensor-based OIS system called sensor-shift and, as the name suggests, the lens remains fixed in place while the sensor itself is manipulated by magnets.
The optical zoom camera also employs a lens-based OIS system (you can see the image sensor sitting at the end of the component) but adopts the same neodymium magnet and electromagnet combination for a second purpose: to move multiple lens elements back and forth to achieve the 5x optical zoom. There’s quite a bit of mechanical action going on in very tight quarters here!
There’s much more to see here and thanks to our friends over at Lumafield, we can share what we’ve found on their Voyager software package. Take a peek at the scans and nerd snipe me in the comments if you spot anything interesting!
Moving Towards Repairable
Overall, the foldable phone category remains very tricky from a repairability standpoint. There’s no denying that the inner screens are delicate and prone to damage, and the mechanical nature of the hinge mechanism provides additional avenues for dust and liquid ingress that may eventually become a problem.
Setting aside the downsides of owning a foldable smartphone, I am excited to see Google and the Pixel team devoting so much time and energy towards improving the overall repairability of the device. The effort is seen and appreciated by device owners and as a technician, I look forward to seeing how manufacturers will continue to innovate for repairability.
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