Smartphone Repairability Matters More Now Than Ever Before
2 min read
Summary
The advantage of buying a more repairable phone is that it will save the owner money in the long run and will also play less badly on the environment by not needing to be frequently replaced.
Fewer people are upgrading their phones as frequently as they used to and this is increasing the reliance on handset support from the manufacturer.
-flagship upgrades are not as evident for the average user as they were and a phone will do for most people as long as the applications they use daily still function.
The key area where phones degrade is in battery performance and getting a new battery put in a phone is an easy way to give a phone a second life.
Google for example uses very strong adhesive to secure the battery which makes battery replacement hard even for a technician, unlike Samsung which uses sticky tabs which are easier to remove.
Increasing the modularity of a phone also makes it easier and cheaper to repair as only the damaged part needs to be replaced rather than the entire handset and this is something Apple has improved upon with its internal design.
iFixit are one example of a website that provides guides on how to fix phones and do it yourself and save money.
