Apple and Samsung tussle over whose gizmos are hardest to fix

The Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) has published a study showing that Apple has work to do to make its laptops more easily repairable. At the same time, Samsung snatched the bottom place when it comes to cellphone repairability. It wasn't all bad news for Apple, however. Mac laptops were graded bottom by PIRG for …

[martinusher]

Repair or replace?

From an environmental perspective its always a good idea to repair and so reuse anything. An organization may think differently. Local labor costs for repair technicians now run $120 an hour (this isn't what the person earns, of course, but what a business charges to cover wages, overhead, depreciation and profit) so repairing a unit may not be cost effective. Even if a unit is repairable it is likely that the repair will include a major subsystem replacement which for something like a Chromebook is effectively putting new internals in an old case. We see this not just with computers and other electronic devices -- these days when you do fix something its replacing a module rather than a component because even if it was cost effective to replace a component replacing it could compromise the integrity of the module through heat or damage to a conformal coating.

Electronics isn't what it used to be. I have old equipment which like a vintage vehicle can be dismantled and rebuilt part by part as necessary (although vacuum tubes -- valves -- are complex, precision, parts that aren't "user serviceable") but modern equipment is really single use (I'm not going to try to repair a RaspberryPi Zero, for example). Manufacturers are aware of this so while there's no excuse for deliberately making things that are known to degrade like batteries and connectors unrepairable the bulk of a unit is definitely single use only.

[DJV]

Re: Electronics isn't what it used to be

Fully agree, Martin.

I worked in TV/Audio repair between 1973 and 1984. In that time I went from working on large wooden-box chassis TVs where pretty much everything could be replaced (valves (tubes for leftpondians) in sockets, several modular boards that were still individually repairable, testing and replacing individual components etc.) - to, one day, taking the back off a plastic-cased 14" portable TV and wondering where the hell they'd managed to hide the main PCB! In this case, it was a tiny thing mounted high up on the left-hand side and almost completely out of sight.

Around the same time (1984) a TV came into the workshop. Two of its main characteristics were that it had one great big chip on a long, narrow and rather flimsy PCB. The other was that it had a mains transformer mounted on a bracket that stuck out of the back of the main plastic front casing instead of somewhere else within the casing itself. Later on, I found out why. If you removed the transformer (sometimes needed to get at and remove the PCB), the whole TV fell flat on its face as the centre of gravity of the rest of the set (including the picture tube) was further forward than the front feet!

[Gene Cash]

Re: Repair or replace?

Sure, I never expect to repair the mainboard of a phone, but then I don't think I've even heard of that being a common problem.

However, there's no excuse for not making easily-broken things like the screen, battery, power switch, and other buttons replaceable, and that is my main focus of "repairability"

It's just like I never expect to repair the motherboard on my PC, but it's easily replaced, and so are the storage devices, fans, and power supply.

[aerogems]

Re: Repair or replace?

While I agree with you, it really comes down to a matter of cost. It's a lot cheaper to just swap out whole (major) components than have people with varying levels of skill go at it with a soldering iron. Not to mention it's fewer part numbers to keep track of, easier to stock a mess of PCBs vs a few thousand resistors of different ratings and everything else that goes onto a PCB. Resistors and the like have also generally gotten so small that the only real feasible way to solder them is by machine, unless you can wield a soldering iron like a surgeon does a scalpel.

Back when I did PC repair professionally, I was both impressed and horrified at some of the ways Chinese manufacturers came up with to cut costs. Things like screws that were made out of really soft metal that would strip out every time you tried to fasten/unfasten them, and the grooves for the screwdriver were so shallow it didn't help matters. If something were made in the US, these kinds of things just wouldn't likely even occur to manufacturers. They'd just come back saying it couldn't be done for that price point because a certain qualify of components would be assumed.

I've said it before, but take any random product you like; let's use a TV for the sake of example here. You can have two models with identical on-paper specs, the only difference is one was made in the "traditional" Chinese slave labor factory (or maybe Vietnamese slave labor factory now) with all the parts sourced by the lowest bidder, and the other was made by people in the US, UK, or EU with as many component parts as possible sourced from the same area. We'll assume the difference in price is 5% higher for the locally produced model. The cheaper one would sell better by a significant margin. You could even put up signs saying, "Made with Chinese slave labor" and "Made by <region> citizens paid a living wage" and the cheaper one would still sell better. It's always a race to the bottom price-wise with capitalism. If Apple, Samsung, or basically anyone else, can save a fraction of a percent per unit, they'll generally do it because it'll add up over the volume they deal in and then they can make more money. And then, eventually, when they need to cut prices they're still making roughly what they did before.

[Neil Barnes]

Samsung

It may be that Samsung prefer you to knife the faulty equipment, as demonstrated here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyWlACuhqNg

[imanidiot]

Re: Samsung

I have some older Samsung equipment (smart-ish) TV, sound system, some other bits and bobs, because at the time they were decent equipment for decent price. Nowadays I wouldn't touch any of their new stuff with a 10 foot pole. Overpriced, bad quality control and a "f*ck you" customer service attitude. No thanks.

[captain veg]

disassembly

"A drop in Dell's disassembly score meant that Acer was able to take the top spot."

In my experience Acer kit starts to spontaneously disassemble shortly after the warranty expires. No tools required!

-A.

[aerogems]

Re: disassembly

I was doing PC repairs when some bright sparks had the ideas to 1) put desktop CPUs in laptops, and 2) sandwich two high end GPUs together in a laptop. I was working for a now defunct retail chain, and my supervisor literally had multiple stacks of Acer and Toshiba units that had failed and they were trying to get parts for.

Toshiba, to their credit, eventually got us replacement parts. They took their sweet time doing it, but they did make good on the warranty. They even sent some engineer over to inspect some of the units, though I suspect it was just a placating move since what exactly is he going to tell them that they likely didn't already know?

Acer, OTOH, just walked away from the warranty. They flat up refused to supply replacement parts. Likely because Acer operates on a fixed unit count. They order enough materials to make, say, 500 units of some model and then that's it. The intent is that all units will be fed into the retail channel. Units that fail QA testing are then harvested for warranty parts, but they don't stock parts specifically for repairs. Acer spinoff companies, like ASUS, do the same thing. In the case of these failed laptops, which were high end gaming units of the day, I'm guessing Acer didn't have any extra parts and wasn't about to place an order for a few thousand more when they only needed a dozen or so. Not sure what happened after that, it all happened well outside my pay grade, though wouldn't surprise me if a lawsuit was involved. I could be remembering things wrong as well, but I think the chain stopped selling Acer stuff not long after that. This was also around the time the retail chain's fortunes hit a tipping point from gradual decline to the Titanic breaking in half as it went down.

[Mage]

PIRG recently petitioned Microsoft to extend the life of Windows 10 to avoid millions of perfectly functional devices being sacrificed on the altar of the Windows 11 hardware requirements

Windows 11 also seems a bit pointless. MS would be better off offering a Win10 with fully themeable desktop and consistent settings in one edition (all the variations are obscene), A Windows Classic with all the best of NT 4.0/ Win2K/XP/2003/Win7 and Win98. Kill crippled "Home Editions" with free pro upgrade. Kill all the nags and dark UI to use an online MS account, the telemetry, adverts, junk (only some removable) that should be an option such as news, weather, xbox, copilot, cortana, outlook, etc.

[Dave 126]

Reliability

There was not a single mention of reliability in this article, or from this Right to Repair coalition.

When I spend money on a phone or laptop I want it to last as long as possible. Knowing how repairable an item is is meaningless without also knowing how reliable and durable it is. Every time the popular tech press recycle what iFixit et al put out, it's like looking at an equation with a variable missing. Ow, my brain.

IFixit sell parts. Their interests are not completely aligned with devices being durable. The tech press should bring a bit more critical thinking and context to this issue.

(And obviously, buy a waterproof phone and stick it in a case and use a toughed glass screen protector. Don't let the battery run down low too often, and keep it away from car dashboards in the sun. Buy a phone with a wireless charging so that it remains usable in case of damage to the USB port. )

[Edwin]

Whither Fairphone?

I would have thought that Fairphones would score highest on repairability. I appreciate they're not a huge brand but PIRG seems to be doing themselves a disservice by only talking about the big brands and not companies that seem to do this rather well...