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

Blastoidea

Speakers and microphones are equivalent devices.

csis01

Blastoidea From a mechanical point of view, yes, you can wire a speaker into a microphone jack and it will operate as a microphone. But what he's asking is if the speakers are wired into anything capable of sampling FROM them. They are not.

Nuttso

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

Hathaway_Noa

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.

SunnySota

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

I've tried the first gen mic-lock before and it didn't seem to do anything, as it blocks one microphone, but the others can still stay active. Not sure if the 2nd gen would be any better / different.

User2288

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.

rustam

User2288 Good to know, thanks

csis01

User2288 No, it didn't use the speaker as a 3rd microphone. It had a special combined speaker/microphone.

In order for a speaker to be used as a microphone, you need to apply the same bias voltage to it as you do a microphone. It doesn't just magically become a microphone. It has to be wired special for it, and when it is, it can't be used as a speaker.

Nuttso

Hathaway_Noa thx we are aware of this. We need it physically disabled.

krayo

Hathaway_Noa hey mate, is there any ways to getting in touch?

Nuttso

The reason is because even if you delete the whole baseband stack an adversary with full control could still manage to make it connect to a base station. We would really appreciate if someone could help with this. We would also pay for the devices.

Hathaway_Noa

Nuttso I will have a look into this, if I come across a solution I will let you know. I will play around with my ifixit kit with some older pixels that I've laying around at my place.

Nuttso

Hathaway_Noa cutting the antenna sadly isn't enough. There is still some signal left.

Hathaway_Noa

Nuttso Have you tried gently to remove the RF transceiver?

![https://imgur.com/6vl8h95](https://)

Here circled in red.

Nuttso

Hathaway_Noa let me ask them

User2288

csis01
LG very clearly stated in its marketing material that it has two microphones, and it uses the speaker as a 3rd microphone in high volume environments in order to capture a non distorted sound with better base capture. I am 100% sure about reading this on LG website at the time. I also had used it in such environments and the phone is one of the best sound recorders in the whole phone market.

Its possible that they used special components for the speaker. All of the LG V series' audio components were special. That was why people bough them.

I do understand a little bit about the electronics of this myself, but not enough. The last stage of the audio component is the amplifier. Various kinds of signal return dampening is used in the amplification stage (that I don't understand that well either) to control the signal "feedback" that gets pushed back into the amplifier from the speaker. So how it all works exactly I don't know for sure. But I'm sure an ask on audiophile forums might actually clear this up a lot. I am an audiophile type and into expensive audio equipment. So I've done some reading on this stuff. However the exact functioning and signal dampening of the amplification stage to deal with the return signal is not something Ive delved into too much, as I'm sure you'd understand why. But the idea that the return signal has voltage and could technically be captured is one with merit.

Again, whether this is the case on all speakers, or on the pixels, I just wouldn't know and can't make any statement on. I would only say don't "assume" that it "can't" be done.

csis01

User2288 It was a COMBINED speaker/microphone. As in the single device had two devices within it.

Eirikr70

rustam I'm quite curious about your threat model. I suppose you have in a way or another dangerous activities. Hope for the best.

User2288

csis01
Cool. I wouldn't know so I'll take your word for it.

I have also seen DJs in clubs and bars literally hold up their DJ headphones and yell into the headphone speaker and have their voice come out the main speakers and make an announcement. The voice was very bassy and muddy, but intelligible. I suppose they might have temporarily plugged the headphone into the microphone input of the mixing board. But point being that the speaker can pick up environment sounds and feed it back into the cable. But having the amplification/dac component capture incoming sound is a different story.

skdfsl0921

Hathaway_Noa
I'm not sure why the advice around these parts is always not to desolder your phone from a privacy conscious point of view?

What if a 0 day is found which has the power to somehow turn on your mics, gps or other kinds of sensors

or god forbid, what if the admin of grapheneOS gets compromised and forced into providing a dodgy update. I know everything is open source, but let's be real most of us are not technically gifted enough to understand and read the code, so it would probably take some time before the bad update was realized.

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