Pixel 7 Pro teardown shows better cooling and cleaner layout than last year's model

The Pixel 7 Pro's (bottom) innards are much neater than the Pixel 6 Pro's (top). The graphite thermal strip (the glossy black material on the Pixel 6, the matte black sticker on the Pixel 7) has more surface area on the hot parts of the Pixel 7. Review PBK / Ron Amadeo

The Pixel 6 thermal strip was cut to bypass that mmWave antenna wire, but the wire was rerouted on the Pixel 7 and now goes around the perimeter of the battery. Review PBK / Ron Amadeo

The back of the screen is a large copper heat sink. PBK Reviews

The motherboard. PBK Reviews

The Pixel 7 is still on the way, but that's not stopping the internet from tearing it down already. In what is becoming a tradition, PBK Reviews is the first to rip the device, specifically the Pixel 7 Pro. Now we can make some fun comparisons between this teardown and last year's teardown.

Just as it looks from the outside, the Pixel 7 Pro is pretty close to the Pixel 6 Pro, but you can notice some improvements. Google did a much neater job with the graphite thermal strip this year. The Pixel 6 Pro had three different sections of thermal tape, but now there's a monolithic block of graphite covering the cameras, SoC, and battery.

On the Pixel 6, the graphite sticker had to be made up of several parts, because Google didn't want to cover the mmWave antenna wire, which last year ran over the battery. On the Pixel 7 Pro, the mmWave antenna cable is much longer and runs around the perimeter of the battery under the metal midframe. Without a cable, the thermal strip can have a much larger surface area above the battery, camera, and SoC. Google has removed some of the thermal banding that used to be near the USB-C port, but with the process node shrinking and more banding concentrated around the SoC, this should hopefully lead to a healthier phone. fresh.

Enlarge / Google also shared this image of the Pixel 7's aluminum body. Google

It would probably be better to have no mmWave antenna at all, since mmWave barely exists anywhere and seems like an overrated dead-end technology. Even if you're pro-mmWave (I guess that would make you the CEO of Verizon?), the Pixel 7 Pro only has one antenna on the top of the phone. Other phones, like the Galaxy S22 Ultra...