Pixel 2 XL teardown reveals LG battery, heat pipe, and Google's first custom processor

The crafty folks from iFixit have gone through the trouble to take apart the new Google Pixel 2 XL, and it turned out that it wasn't much of a trouble, at least as far as today's sealed waterproof flagships are concerned, as we've seen recent phones much harder to repair. The Pixel 2 XL got a 6/10 score for repairability, and, despite that it is water-resistant with IP67 certification, it doesn't even need heating to open up, unlike the vast majority of today's glass-and-metal flagships.

The phone is indeed LG inside, as given away by the branding of the battery pack, as much as something built out of a motley crew of component brands - from Samsung's DDR4 RAM to an STMicro  embedded SIM module - can be attributed to a single manufacturer. When the guys reached the battery pack and the screen assembly, though, they encountered a much tighter ship, and, given that those two parts are the most likely to be repaired, they deducted from the final score. 

We know what you are interested in the most - Google's brand spanking new Pixel Visual Core processor, but, besides the internal part number of SR3HX X726C502, the teardown couldn't find anything more about it, and you'll have to wait to see it in action, as it will only be enabled with Android 8.1. The iFixit crew also found exactly where the squeeze sensors are, and what makes them tick, not to mention that they also discovered a heatpipe, which should help with performance bottlenecks under heavy duty gaming.