Google Pixel 6 Pro camera repair manual and new benchmarks tip good and bad news

A leaked Pixel 6 Pro camera repair manual, for instance, shows that you won’t be able to simply swap the camera kit with the same one produced as a replacement part and expect the same results as from a brand new phone. Here’s the telltale Pixel 6 Pro camera repair sign:

• If the camera or logic board needs to be replaced, you need to use a “GEO” camera module provided to Authorized Service Providers; this module is different from the production camera module that is paired to the original logic board.
• The “GEO” module needs to be “calibrated” to the device’s logic board with vendor-exclusive calibration software. As of writing, 2021-10-10, this software hasn’t leaked anywhere publicly and it’s unclear if the modules are calibrated by the vendor pre-shipping to the ASP or are calibrated by the ASPs themselves during the repair.

What all of this means is that the Pixel 6 Pro camera may be individually calibrated in the factory akin to what some manufacturers like OnePlus, Oppo, Apple, or Samsung do with their award-winning per-unit display calibration. 

Just like Apple which also does individual calibration and a camera or display replacement would properly work only in its authorized centers. Otherwise, you risk small inconveniences like Face ID not working if you put a third-party display in an independent repair shop, for instance. 

We already know quite a lot about the Google Pixel 6 Pro specs as well as those of its smaller sibling the Pixel 6, and one of the most interesting leaked details are of Google’s homebrew Tensor chipset core counts and clock frequencies – 2x 2.8GHz X1, 2x 2.25GHz A78, and 4x 1.8GHz A55 cores with ARM Mali-G78 GPU.

Moreover, synthetic benchmarks don’t tell the whole picture about real-life performance, and, knowing Google’s software and hardware optimization prowess, the Pixel 6/Pro performance should be smooth as silk with the Tensor processor.