Just about every recent flagship phone is a nightmare to repair, from the Galaxy S10 to the Huawei P20 Pro. It turns out that building phones with unibody glass with a lot of glue and solder does not make it easy to replace the battery. However, the Pixel 3a and 3a XL seem to be a good change of pace because the new iFixit teardown guides claim that both phones are not too hard to repair.

iFixit destroyed both phones, but only the 3a has a detailed text guide – the 3a XL just has a video. Unlike some previous generations of Pixels, both devices were manufactured by Google (with the help of former HTC engineers). The internal configuration and the repair steps are therefore very similar.

The 3a and 3a XL are a bit of a chore to disassemble, because of the overlap of thin flat cables that could break if you're not careful. However, iFixit gave phones a 6/10 rating for reparability, modular design and standard screws to make repairs easier.

These scores are better than all iFixit Google phones recently – the 3 XL scored 3/10, and the 3 regular scored 4/10. The Pixel 2 XL and 1 XL were closer to 3a, with respective ratings of 6/10 and 7/10.