So you might be asking, 'Does Jerry ever get bored of making transparent phone videos?'
No.
No, I do not.
[Intro]
In front of me today we have a brand new, no notch, regular sized Pixel 3.
And it's time to make things transparent.
Google's unique 2-toned glass design feels smooth and velvety to the touch, but acts
like a chalkboard when it comes to scratching.
I want to see what this Pixel 3 looks like when we remove all the color from underneath
the back frost glass panel.
No glass phone is safe.
Heat does a good job of softening the ip68 watertight adhesive under the glass.
And then a suction cup/razor blade combination lifts up and penetrates simultaneously, slicing
through the adhesive to release the glass from the frame.
Glued shut phones are a bit harder to work on, but not impossible.
After the initial slice, I'll warm things back up until it's just barely too hot to
touch, and continue slicing around the edges with my razor blade.
Taking special care around that left side because that's where the fingerprint scanner
cable resides.
There are about 4 billion things that can get damaged or punctured in here, so I should
probably tell you to not attempt this project on your own.
As the back lifts up, we get our first peek inside.
And I can already tell, this is going to be a good one.
Take a look at the copper coiling.
The larger portion dead center on the phone is for the wireless charging, and the top
portion is for the near field communication, or NFC with a few extra orange accents around
the 2900 milliamp hour battery.
Google is looking good from the inside, and that's without even trying.
There are two silver screws holding one little plastic bracket covering the fingerprint scanner
ribbon cable.
I'll unscrew those and set the black plastic bracket off to the side.
Then I'll unclip the ribbon cable like a little Lego with a plastic pry tool.
The fingerprint scanner is adhered to the glass with the same waterproof adhesive we
found around the edges of the glass panel.
The camera lens is a super simple square, also adhered with the same black adhesive.
The dual LED flash diffuser is a tiny piece of plastic with a smidgen of clear adhesive
holding it to the glass.
Now, every clear glass phone is a bit different when it comes to coloring.
Some laminates pull off easy in a few seconds, leaving the glass clean and pristine.
Other colors are made up of super gunky, hard to remove adhesive that requires industrial
strength paint remover to dissolve.
But, the Google Pixel 3 is more of a lottery card scratch-off type of coloring.
Yeah, we might be here a while.
But at least we don't need to bust out the heavy chemicals...we'll just keep scratching....and
scratching....and scratching.
Kind of monotonous really, but slow and steady wins the race.
We are working with glass, so being gentle is important.
It's projects like these that allow for deep introspection.
Being alone with your own ideas, deeply lost in the caverns of your own mind.
Nothing is more beautiful than the sound of your thoughts.
And then your brain brings up that one embarrassing thing you did years ago that nobody else cares
about, and the subtle anxiety takes over.
Thinking is dangerous.
The hardest part of the color removal is around the edges of the glass.
There's a gentle curve around all 4 sides, making it hard for my flat razor blade to
reach.
But after about 45 minutes worth of perseverance and gentle scraping, we finally get a solid
look at what the difference is between the clear and the frosted portions of the glass.
Pretty cool.
I got a feeling that this Pixel 3 might be one of the coolest transparent phones I've
ever made.
After the last bit of tedious color removal around the fragile glass corners of the back
panel, the phone is clear and I still have all my fingers.
Thumbs up for that.
A little bit of Goo Gone and glass cleaner clears up any residue and fingerprints.
And I'll dust off the white pixel snowstorm I created, and remove any left over black
adhesive on the phone body to make sure it looks clean from the inside.
It's starting to look pretty awesome.
It's almost like Google knew I was going to do this, because literally nothing had to
be modified, removed or cut inside the phone for this to look absolutely amazing.
It would be nice to see the vibrator though.
I'll give the glass one last cleaning and plop the fingerprint scanner back into it's
hole, along with the singular circle camera lens.
The flash diffuser is a bit harder to place now that the coloring is gone.
So I'll just rest it sticky side up over top of the LEDs so it will stick to the glass
in the correct spot when I set the glass down for the final time.
I'll lay down some clear double-sided tape around the edges of the phone.
The Pixel 3 won't be water resistant anymore, of course, but for aesthetics as eye-catching
as this, it might be a worthwhile trade-off.
What do you think?
Google could totally manufacture a clear, watertight version of this phone, with basically
no changes to the internals.
Just a clear piece of glass and clear adhesive and they're good to go.
If only there was some way to contact them to ask for it.
One little snap of the fingerprint scanner ribbon back onto the motherboard just like
a little Lego.
Two screws over that black bracket, and we're finished.
Seriously amazing.
Everything still works, and no internal hardware was modified.
A fully transparent Pixel 3.
Clearly one of the best looking transparent phones in existence.
Get on it, Google!
Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already.
And if you don't want to be alone with your thoughts, go check out the Pixel 3 XL durability
test, or the off-road wheelchair contraption I built from 2 electric bikes.
Thanks a ton for watching, and I'll see you around.