As part of the initiative to support the right to repair, there is a first sighting of the repair manual of the Google Pixel 6a, the brand new midrange of the Mountain View giant (which is fresh from our review). For now it is only available in French: following the SOURCE link you will find the dedicated page on the Google support site, from which you can download the PDF with the whole procedure (this is also always in French).
The manual is nice full-bodied: it is composed of 188 pages which describe in detail the operations to be carried out to disassemble it, the ideal tools for the various tasks, schematic drawings, indications, photos, technical notes of each component and much more. It is worth noting that a month ago Google announced a partnership with iFixit for the sale of original spare parts for Pixel smartphones; at that stage it seemed that iFixit would also take care of the writing of the repair guides, but it seems that this is not actually the case. In fact iFixit is never mentioned in any of the manual pages.
In short, it seems that we are still in very early stages of the initiative and several key aspects have yet to go online. For example, there are the codes of all the replaceable parts but at the moment there doesn’t seem to be a place to buy them. Not even iFixit itself still has the new smartphone in the catalog: at the moment it stops at the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, the flagships of last year. In short, we just have to observe the next steps of the initiative, which is still very promising also in the future. In the meantime, it is worth noting that some video teardowns have already been released, albeit unofficial, which allow you to understand how to disassemble the device quite clearly.
Google Pixel 6a + Pixel Buds A-Series White
459€
Google Pixel 6a is available online from Amazon to 459 euros. The value for money is discreet. There are 20 top models. To see the other 10 offers click here. (update July 31, 2022, 11.27 pm)
