My Pixel 5 barely survives a day… without screen time. When you need the phone alive to prove that you have train ticket, this can be a very expensive experience here in Switzerland. If I use the Easy Ride system of the SBB app, the app needs to be available if there’s a ticket check (and there are many.) Otherwise, you get a phone number that you have to call after you check out from the ride, and have paid (at the end of the day.) For this fun ride, you have to pay CHF 30, which is far better than the CHF 100 fine for not having a ticket, but still not great.

To replace the battery, I followed iFixit’s guide on the topic. The separate display reassembly guide is also useful. I bought a cheap pre-cut display tape from AliExpress, and a (more expensive) 4,080 mAh battery from a French seller on eBay. While I have no guarantees this is a proper OEM battery, it seemed legit enough. It’s the right capacity for a Pixel 5 GTB1F battery, unlike with the AliExpress sellers. The adhesive cost me CHF 4, and the battery CHF 25, including shipping.

I didn’t buy adhesive strips for the battery, and I don’t think it’s needed. You can use thin double-sided tape, and it doesn’t have to be precise. Just enough that the battery sits still.

The procedure was finicky, and you definitely need patience to do it. The stickiness of the tape is no joke. However, my phone is alive, so I must have done something right.

Here are my observations and advice from a first-time battery replacement guy.

Disassembly

• According to this Reddit thread, using hot air at 120℃ will not damage the display. I used 115℃, and it didn’t affect any plastic in the wrong way either, though I was pretty careful with how long and where I pointed it.
• Beginning the display removal is the hard part. You need a thin blade to start: plastic spudgers won’t do, but once you have 0.5 mm to play with, you can continue with plastic. Starting at the bottom, as iFixit suggests makes sense: there are no cameras or cables that you can damage there.
• I just kept prying around the frame, without using a suction cup. Unless you heat the entire phone at one (on a hot plate,) I don’t see how a suction cup would be enough to combat that glue…
• Be very careful to not cause dents in the display frame. There screen is sunk into the phone frame, and if you just insert the blade straight in, you’ll hit that ledge on the display. Prefer angling the blade slightly down into the phone to avoid it. And switch to plastic as soon as possible.
• The glue is really tough, so you might have to cut through it (with a plastic spudger.)
• There are four plastic locking clips on the display, so be careful with the spudger in the corners. The adhesive strip is thinner around the clips (for space reasons,) so it’s actually quite easy to work the adhesive around them.
• The display cable is in the middle of the non-button side, but it’s fairly far away from the frame and wasn’t a problem to me.
• The midframe is pretty stuck in the phone. Keep prying at it, and it will dislodge eventually. Especially the top corner above the battery seems to be tight.
• The pull tabs to release the adhesive strips under the battery didn’t work at all. Yeah, I tore them off pretty quickly. After having looked at the battery, I realize there was no way I could have pulled them out successfully. They’re just way too long, wide and fragile.
• Instead, I dripped lots of IPA behind the battery, and slowly worked it out with plastic tools. Be careful not to pry against the cameras. It’s only fastened at the top and bottom.

Clean Up and Preparations

• The “graphite tape” is fairly sturdy and can be reused. Pealing it off the old battery is no problem. There’s really no reason to completely remove it from the charging plate cover. Just lift up the ends to uncover the screws.
• The bottom adhesive strips can also be reused to some extent. The IPA needs to evaporate completely, and you can’t have pulled too much on them. They’re just common double-sided adhesive strips, e.g. Tesa have them. Remember to replace them with thin ones.
• The display adhesive has a backing you can pull much of the glue away with, but not all. Don’t be tempted to just pull it, or you’ll spend much time scraping glue.
• Scraping the glue is a pain! It is loosened a bit by IPA, but doesn’t dissolve. I guess that’s good, because you can be quite liberal with the IPA without risking everything just falling apart. (Though note iFixit says the camera lens on the display can fall off with too much IPA.) Using hot air doesn’t do much to help here, but perhaps if you have a stand so you can do it while also scraping and using IPA?
• I used (metal) flat-head precision screwdrivers to scrape along the edge. Soaking a bit ahead with IPA, and going around until all surfaces look flat and clean. The display is probably plastic, so don’t scrape too hard.
• On my old battery, there was a thin plastic strip with adhesive in the top-right corner. I transfered it to the new battery.

Applying a New AliExpress Adhesive Strip

I think the display frame adhesive kit that iFixit uses would be great… They have cutouts for things that protrude, probably making it way easier to apply to the frame.

My Chinese adhesive had four layers to it:

1. A somewhat thick tightly cut clear backing film.
2. A red thick tightly cut red alignment film. This extends over the adhesive strip, but is cut to the shape of the strip on the inside.
3. The actual adhesive strip.
4. A thin clear cover film.

The layers 1-2 are easy to remove, but they should remain! First remove layer 4. This exposes glue, and you can start lining it up against the phone. The “U” in the red film does not mean “up”… Based on the shape around the charging port, it was actually down on the phone.

Start at the bottom of the phone, since it has the fewest protrusions. Unlike the iFixit kit, you can’t just drop it in and expect everything to work. Start the bottom with the backing film attached, and then walk around the frame and lay it as tightly against the outer rim as possible. Getting the strip close to the outer rim is important to avoid the plastic clips on the display to catch the glue when reassembling. It should go without saying, but make sure the strip is not resting on the rim, or your display won’t be seated properly. You can rip up and redo within 10s of laying down the adhesive. Any longer, and it’ll probably stick really well. (If you’ve ever watched Cutting Edge Engineering and the stress of applying a bushing using liquid nitrogen, you have an idea of how stressful this is.)

At this point, the layer 2 red film is still on the strip, so the top side isn’t sticky.

Reassembling

You’ve connected the battery, placed the midframe (with all the screws!) and the charging port bridge. Now it’s time to connect the display, and add the connector lock. Remove fingerprints and whatnot. Perhaps add a note about you replacing the battery today. Blow away any dust from the cameras and lenses.

Then, gently pull off the red backing film from the glue strip while keeping the display away from it.

Hold the display hovering just above the the adhesive strip, remembering the protruding plastic clips. Line it up with the body as well as possible. Lower the top part, pushing the display against the top rim while doing so. If you feel the clips getting stuck in the glue: just push through! Work the display into the body and give it even pressure around the perimiter to finish.

Final Thoughts

I was worried I’d have to redo my screen protector with all the IPA and display twisting, but it’s still on there.

The phone turned on without issue, and the new battery was at 74%.

What would I do differently? I think cheaping out on the display adhesive strip was fine for my case, but if it was a business, I’d want the iFixit kit. Scraping the old display glue took the most time, and I’d avoid the temptation to just tear the bulk of it out, but rather combining it with the scraping.