What you need to know
- Google now offers Pixel 9 series repair manuals for download from a support website.
- The manuals aren't concise, being hundreds of pages in length, but they are clear and readable even to people without prior repair knowledge.
- Google executives have said in the past that they want everyone to be able to repair their phones, and quality manuals and guides are key to that future.
Google is heavily involved in the right-to-repair movement, partnering with iFixit and backing legislation in recent years. While Samsung's deal with iFixit fell apart, Google's partnership is thriving. Some disagree on the means and methods that Google uses to design its phones and achieve greater repairability. However, now that the company has shared its Google Pixel 9 series repair manuals, it's clear that Google is at least doing one thing right.
Its guides are publicly available, easy to read and understand, and might just empower users to learn more about their devices. Google has publicly stated its goals for Pixel repairability, but unlike a few other manufacturers, the company actually backs it up with right-to-repair initiatives.
Earlier this year, an episode of the Made by Google podcast featured an interview with Steven Nickel, who runs consumer hardware operations at Google. Nickel's role includes making sure Pixels are designed with repairability at the forefront. In the interview, Nickel said that Google "want[s] everyone to be able to do repairs." That future may be far out, but there are things Google can do today to bring the Pixel repair experience closer to that dream.
"We want to get to a point where you can reach into a kitchen drawer and be able to replace your screen," Nickel added.
As it stands currently, the average person can't take apart and repair their smartphone at home, for many reasons. There are technical concerns, sure, but part of the issue is that manufacturers have spent years fear-mongering about everything that can go wrong when self-servicing your tech products. In the past, companies like Apple and others have warned about the dangers of replacing your battery, which should be one of the simplest and most-common repairs.
Of course, lithium-ion batteries can be dangerous if mishandled, but the same goes for many other things we interact with on a daily basis. For example, working on your car can be dangerous for the inexperienced, but that doesn't stop people from doing so while being cautious and willing to learn. So, empowering users and giving them the knowledge to work on their phones is half the battle for the right-to-repair movement.
There's no doubt that there are technical issues that need to be addressed before the average person can fix their phones and devices at home. Google still has work to do there, but it's dominating the other half of the battle, which is empowering users with knowledge. It first started issuing English repair manuals in December of last year, and last week, Google released the repair guides for all four Google Pixel 9 series devices.
Repair guides you'll actually understand
I think it's fair to say that consumer repair guides released by major tech companies have been a form of "malicious compliance" in the past. In other words, even the manufacturers that released repair guides wrote them for experienced repair professionals rather than average consumers. If you tried to look at one of Apple's repair guides with no prior knowledge or experience with smartphone repair, you'd probably end up so confused that you'd never try to repair your own stuff again.
I'm a bit biased as a tech reporter, but to me, Google's Pixel 9 series repair guides are some of the easiest to decipher of the consumer tech repair guides out there. In the image above, taken from the Pixel 9 repair guide, you can see a detailed and colorful expanded view of the Google Pixel 9. Each part is identified and labeled, so you know exactly where everything is located. The following page details the locations of every screw inside the Pixel 9, its size, and whether it's hidden or visible.
This might sound like a stretch, but I've read Ikea assembly instructions that were way more confusing than this Pixel 9 repair guide. It's thorough and accessible, which are two words I never thought I'd use to describe a repair manual officially-released by a big tech company. Even if you aren't ready to fix your own devices at home, simply reading through the Google Pixel 9 series manuals will teach you a lot about the devices you use.
Big tech corporations have created a stigma around independent and at-home repair, causing notions that it's dangerous or unreliable. In order for the right-to-repair movement to thrive, that stigma needs to be reversed. To me, the first step is education. Users need to learn more about their devices, how they work, and how they break and are ultimately fixed. After combing through the Pixel 9 repair manuals, no major company is doing a better job at educating their users than Google.
