You really need to be careful with your Pixel 9 Pro Fold

We’ve got good news and bad news. The good news? You can repair your Pixel 9 Pro Fold‘s screen if you happen to accidentally break it. The bad news is the cost won’t be far off from what you paid for the phone in the first place, even if you decide to repair it yourself. The inner screen for the device is available from iFixit for a whopping $1,199 — quite the pretty penny when you consider the phone itself starts at $1,799.

It’s a jump up from the cost to buy a replacement Pixel Fold screen, which was “only” $899. For what it costs to repair the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s screen, you could buy an iPhone 16 Pro Max. That’s a lot of money for a DIY repair, a process that should (in theory) make repairs a lot less expensive. By the way, the $1,199 is just for the part itself — the full repair kit adds on just $8, bringing it to a total of $1,207. The kit includes all of the necessary tools, including a pair of tweezers, screwdriver, bits, spudger, picks, and more.

The rest of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold components were already released earlier this year for much more reasonable prices; in fact, the most expensive component other than the screen would be the rear cameras for just $250.

We looked for less expensive sources for repair components, but had little luck. It seems that the primary culprit behind the cost is the screen itself, which is unsurprising given how it folds. Although there are third-party sites that will let you buy the necessary components, we were unable to find a trusted source that offered the screen at a lower price.

If you’re either keen to be able to repair your phone by yourself, or recognize that accidents happen, then take a look at HMD’s range of easily repaired smartphones, including the HMD Skyline. A replacement screen costs just $99 from iFixit, and we’ve seen an HMD representative change the part out in under 10 minutes. If you’re notoriously clumsy, it may be the better choice, no matter how good the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is.