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Samsung Finally Starts Selling Parts for Smartphone Repairs at Home. Sort of (msn.com) 23

This week Samsung said customers can finally start buying replacement screens, rear glass and charging ports for home repairs from repair resource site iFixit, as well as from Samsung's Experience stores across the country, according to the Washington Post.

But their article warns that for now the program is limited to just "a handful of higher-end models" like the Galaxy S20 and S21 series smartphones. ("We plan to expand to more models as the program matures," said a Samsung spokesperson.) You can't, for example, buy just a screen to replace a broken one in your Galaxy phone. Instead, Samsung says you must purchase an entire screen "assembly," which includes the display itself, the metal frame that surrounds it and another battery. Essentially, that means replacing the entire front of the phone and then some.

That also means that, for the time being, Samsung doesn't have a way for you to purchase a genuine battery on its own to replace the one that isn't holding a long-charge or bloating — a common issue in devices that are used and charged regularly. The Samsung spokesperson told The Washington Post that "additional parts will be added as the program ramps up," though co-founder and CEO Kyle Wiens says iFixit will continue to sell third-party replacement batteries....

And we're not kidding about how fiddly these guides can be: according to iFixit, the process of replacing a Galaxy S20's screen assembly requires 41 steps, and that doesn't include putting the phone back together.

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Samsung Finally Starts Selling Parts for Smartphone Repairs at Home. Sort of

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  • Cellphone companies treat their customers like dirt. We customers aren't given a good warranty on a very expensive product. We have to put up with fragile and unserviceable products. And we are spied upon, as a norm.
    • And customers continue to step up and hand them cash. Maybe we're training cellphone manufacturers to force us to upgrade all the time?
      Why are there people lining up around the block waiting for the latest iPhone? It's the consumer that's driving this, not the cellphone companies.

    • and keep buying this trash. It's the same reason people are okay with spyware devices in and on their homes that spy on them and everyone they meet. It's the same reason people keep grifters like Fuckerburg in business. They follow the flock.

      People who know better like us, are then left with no viable options. Good luck starting your own vertically integrated competitor - you'll need billions.

    • by fermion ( 181285 )
      Samsung is the phone that most people have worldwide. Their market are people who might pay a couple hundred a year total in usage charges. Apple can design and redesign based on usability, with retail price a secondary issue. Outside the US and Europe there are also hoards of people who will fix your cell phone for the equivalent of a few dollars, so the limiting factor is the cost of replacement parts.
  • Now let's get to a lifespan longer than 3 years and we'll be accomplishing something.

    • Buy an iPhone if you want a longer lifespan than 3 years. My 2016 iPhone 7+ is running the latest version of iOS fully supported by Apple.

      • That is good. Have you had the battery replaced? We just had a bad experience with battery replacement on my wife's Pixel 4 at a local shop (screen went berzerk the day we got it back) and it wasn't cheap ($75) so I'm thinking an OEM-backed replacement may be the way to go after all.
  • by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Saturday August 06, 2022 @11:17AM (#62767178)

    Actually replacing parts in devices like that is hard and getting harder. Very few phone owners have the skills to succeed. Repair technicians need to be able to stock parts

    • Yeah, when they said you had to buy an entire assembly instead of just the screen at first I thought they meant Samsung was starting to make higher end phones more modular, with assemblies that could be snapped out and replaced by normal people. That would be neat and useful, and replace the need for third party phone repair companies, although I'm guessing it's impractical due to the added space it would require for the joints and connectors, tolerances are already very tight on a smartphone.

      This new prog

  • by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Saturday August 06, 2022 @11:22AM (#62767186) Homepage Journal

    Moto commits to making parts available for three years minimum, and they are readily available.

    And you can get an unlocked phone with zero crapware on the system partition, with a 3.5mm jack. (You may have to uninstall a couple of apps from the user partition, but you can actually uninstall them.)

    Further, unless there are restrictions on the SoC itself, they still offer bootloader unlocking.

    Stop giving Samsung money.

    • Stop giving Samsung money.

      Why? You have so far not mentioned a single Motorola feature I care about. Maybe *you* should not give Samsung money if their phone doesn't suit *your* individual needs.

  • ...when can I buy a spare dynamite cartridge for my Galaxy Note 7 [nbcnews.com] ?
  • The only smartphone company that doesn't allow everyone and anyone to repair their phones is Apple, amirite?

    Samsungs have been successfully repaired by Children, it is just that easy, and the costs are minimal.

    • They are starting to change their tune on that but doing in their own, Apple sorta way Apple Shipped Me a 79-pound iPhone Repair Kit to fix a 1.1-ounce battery [theverge.com]

      Apple also gets knock on benefit due to their popularity. There has never been a lack of cheap knockoff repair parts for iPhones but Androids have been hit and miss.

    • I'm guessing you're just playing on slashdot's unreasonable hatred of everything Apple. I've repaired over, oh, 75 Apple phones, as well as a few iPads, and once you get the hang of it, after a phone or two, you don't even really need instructions for different models. In fact, I prefer not to fix non-Apple phones because they're inconsistent and take longer.
      • I'm guessing you're just playing on slashdot's unreasonable hatred of everything Apple.

        Exactly. Mentioning Apple gets a cacophony of hatred for things that are universal, usually under some "right to repair" rubric. Yet not a mention of the other phones.

        Maybe our RTR guys need a PiPhone: https://www.raspberrypi.com/ne... [raspberrypi.com] or https://projects-raspberry.com... [projects-raspberry.com] .

        I've repaired over, oh, 75 Apple phones, as well as a few iPads, and once you get the hang of it, after a phone or two, you don't even really need instructions for different models.

        You do have more experience than me there. I do some phones, and a lot of radios and iMac stuff. And you are right about the design philosophy.

        In fact, I prefer not to fix non-Apple phones because they're inconsistent and take longer.

        I've found for those, I try to find a YT video of a teardown, for fear of making things wo

  • lost Qualcomm as a fab customer, lost their own socket to Qualcomm, struggling improve NAND layers meanwhile Micron and SK Hynix are up around 236+ layers

  • Having been down the road of getting my phone repaired by someone who wasn't a distributor / authorised repairer and then dropped my phone in water and being told "We'd fix your screen, but we never said we'd make your phone waterproof again"...

    I want to see / know that they're providing the same glue / seal kits that they use in the factory as opposed to whatever the third party repairers are forced to use. While the back of my phone might fit onto the case again, it's not providing a waterproof seal. I wa

    • There are waterproof cases for smartphones. Most phones should survive a quick dip, so long as you dry it after. But if you're going to the beach, maybe investing in such full-body cases would be a good investment.

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