How hard is it actually to desolder / remove mics and sensors from a Pixel?

The main problem with removing these items is you have to open the whole phone, which is sealed. If you wanna do this I recommend you give it to an actual repair person with professional equipment and experience to do it. It might cost you somewhere around 60-100 dollars. Breaking the water seal is not that important IMO.

you don't really need to remove the cameras because cameras can easily be blocked with black electrical tape. This leaves you the option to be able to use your camera when you want to. Electrical tape works pretty nicely.

Microphone and speaker are more difficult to mask as sound penetrates everything. So if you want that kind of assurance of security then its best to remove them entirely. These 2 components are rather easy to remove or disable without removing (cutting wire), but still require to open the phone.

The other sensors like accelerometer, barometer, and compass, do you really need them removed? I don't think they'll do you that much harm. Also removing them might be more difficult as they might all be packed together (and with other components) and close to critical components. I can't comment on them. Same goes for GPS. Remember, your location is always tracked using cellular triangulation, removing the GPS may not make much difference.

I would say don't worry so much about the other sensors (Although its your call). But mic and speaker could be disabled/removed, and a repair person could do it for you. But I would say don't do it yourself. You can also consider buying accidental damage coverage for your phone so if the repair person damages it maybe the accidental coverage will cover it.

This is all "IF" you think removing these is really that important to you.

It's not problem at all to remove all these parts including the sensors. The biggest problem is to remove the baseband and just let it connect through Ethernet. We are heavily working to achieve this. Neither me nor nitro succeeded in this so far

Has anyone tried Mic-lock. I've taken phones apart (not a pixel yet) from the past and isn't something I'd recommend for someone who never done one, 9 times out of 10 its never the same unless you know exactly what you are doing and use a new gasket. Ribbons can easily rip, removing the battery can cause a fire if not done properly, some screws are super micro size and easily dropped into places hard to get out. It may be possible to destroy the mic from the outside maybe with a pin or something. Gen 2 mic-lock might be what you are looking for.

rustam @User2288 re: speakers - from the reading I've done the speakers in smartphones are not really an issue in themselves, as they're not set up in a way that they can be turned into listening devices.

From the reading I have done, "turning the speaker into a listening device" is an old trick that goes back to the 80s in fact. An old trick that's been in the books a long time and is used by sophisticated attackers.

I can tell you that my LG v30 phone actually used the speaker as a 3rd microphone. Its in the marketing materials. Whether this can be done on a pixel or not I really can't say.

Nuttso

There is another way to remove the baseband which involves rooting your phone and deleting the baseband software packages, you can remove the IMEIs and after that it won't ping cellular towers anymore even after unrooting the phone. We have tested this with a Radio frequency tracker.

Nuttso Have you tried gently to remove the RF transceiver?


Here circled in red.