The era of fixing your own phone has nearly arrived

[abarbarian]

Fresh off big wins with Google, Samsung and Valve, iFixit says more parts deals are nigh

 

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But Wiens says he’s not done making deals yet. “There are more coming,” he says, one as soon as a couple of months from now. (No, it’s not Apple.) Motorola was actually the first to sign on nearly four years ago. And if Apple meaningfully joins them in offering spare parts to consumers — like it promised to do by early 2022 — the era of fixing your own phone may have well and truly come.

 

 

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“The thing that’s changing the game more than anything else is the French repairability scorecard,” says Wiens, referring to a 2021 law that requires tech companies to reveal how repairable their phones are — on a scale of 0.0 to 10.0 — right next to their pricetag. Even Apple was forced to add repairability scores — but Wiens points me to this press release by Samsung instead. When Samsung commissioned a study to check whether the French repairability scores were meaningful, it didn’t just find the scorecards were handy — it found a staggering 80 percent of respondents would be willing to give up their favorite brand for a product that scored higher.

 

This is part of a bigger push to make almost everything repairable by owners. About time too. Will not impact me at the moment as I am only on my second phone in nearly 15 years. An my original flip phone still works just fine for making phone calls.

[crp]

well, fixing the basics at any rate