One improvement over the bigger model is that you can pull a tab to get the battery out.
What does the Pixel 6a include? PBK Reviews has taken the device and torn it to pieces. It has pretty simple parts for a pretty simple phone.
The screen is held in place with glue and plastic clips. When you heat that up and pull it off, you’ll find a big graphite heat sink. Like the bigger Pixel 6s, the USB-C port is soldered to the motherboard. This makes it harder to fix the port than if it were a plug-in solution.
The back is made of plastic, and just like the front, it comes off with some glue and plastic clips. When you get the back off the frame, it’s very flexible. PBK Reviews says that the Pixel 6a’s frame has a strangely large cutout that was once meant for wireless charging, but the phone never came with that feature.
Even though iFixit has an official partnership with Google for parts, it no longer breaks down Pixel phones. However, PBK gives the phone a 7 out of 10 for being easy to fix. The phone loses points for having a USB-C port that is soldered on and a fingerprint reader that probably can’t be taken off the screen without breaking. PBK Reviews didn’t like how much glue was used to hold the battery in place on the Pixel 6 Pro. To get it off, I had to soak the battery in alcohol and pry at it a lot. On the Pixel 6a, you just pull the pull tab to take out the battery, which is a nice improvement.
We also see the first sign of Google’s poor quality control when PBK says his unit was scratched when it arrived because there was something in the box. When the phone starts to ship on July 28, we’ll know more.