Peter Griffin: Repair or replace? Smartphone owners are looking for a quick fix

Sep 08, 2023

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As our smartphones have become slimmer and lighter, they’ve also tended to become sealed units, which is not great from a repairability standpoint. Photo / Getty Images

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After dropping my smartphone a couple of months ago, I’ve grown accustomed to surfing the web and navigating apps through a spiderweb of cracks on the screen.

My two-year-old Oppo Find X3 Lite smartphone still works in every other aspect, but I’ve been quoted around $300 to have the screen replaced. That’s a marginal proposition given I can pick up a brand new Find X5 Lite for $599.

But with little in the way of compelling new features appearing in the slew of smartphones released each year, repairability is becoming a bigger factor for buyers as they hold onto their phones for longer.

That trend, and a desire to see fewer junked electronics ending up in landfill, has spurred consumer affairs watchdog Consumer to add a repairability index (subscription required) to its overall ratings of smartphones sold in New Zealand.

The repairability data has been taken from an index published in France as part of a government mandate that requires a repairability score for smartphones to be displayed at the point of sale. Washing machines, televisions, laptops and electric lawnmowers also now come with a repairability rating in France, the first country to require such a score on appliances, which have long carried energy consumption ratings in many countries.

The factors determining repairability that the French came up with include: availability of spare parts and their price and delivery time; ease of disassembly of the product; and availability of technical documentation.

An expensive, full-featured phone isn’t necessarily likely to be easier to repair. Consumer gives the modestly priced Samsung Galaxy A54 5G ($689) a repairability score of 84%, while the iPhone 13 ($1,399) scores 62%.

My Oppo Find X3 Lite isn’t rated – ironically it may now be too old – but the newer X5 Lite model ($799) has a respectable 81% rating.

“Choosing a phone with better repairability doesn’t mean compromising on phone performance either – you can buy a reasonably priced phone that performs well and can be repaired if something goes wrong,” says Paul Smith, Consumer’s head of testing.

“This is good news for your pocket and our planet.”

The most repairable smartphone, according to Consumer’s index, is the $379 Xiaomi POCO M5, rating 90%. The lowest ranking smartphone on the index is Apple’s iPhone 11 ($799) with a rating of 46%.

The smartphone makers dominating the New Zealand market, Apple, Samsung and Oppo, all offer repair schemes, and a wide range of independent electronics repair shops can buy parts and undertake repairs, typically the repair of broken screens and failing batteries.

As our smartphones have become slimmer and lighter, they’ve also tended to become sealed units, which is not great from a repairability standpoint. Their makers claim this is to preserve their durability, preventing dust and water from getting into them. There’s some truth to that.

But the trend has had a perverse effect. It means that if you have a three-year-old iPhone with a smashed screen, you’ll likely be reluctant to pay the $300 – $400 cost of a screen replacement and just upgrade to a new model instead, junking the old one. That’s terrible for the planet.

But that is the business model of the electronics industry – built-in obsolescence.

“Many tech manufacturers intentionally make repairs difficult or impossible,” says Smith.

“Some manufacturers are glueing parts together, withholding replacement parts, or hard-coding locks that stop unofficial (replacement) parts from functioning. Such behaviour is unethical and frankly outrageous.”

France has seen that practice for what it is, unsustainable, and is nudging consumers towards buying phones that are easier to repair.

The mining and processing of precious metals and other materials that go into phones and laptops is a sizeable contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. We have a bad reputation for being incredibly wasteful with our gadgets: every Kiwi produces around 20 kilograms of e-waste each year.

Many of our discarded devices end up in landfill because e-waste recycling programmes operate on a user-pays model.

Under mounting pressure to tackle e-waste, Apple in 2021 introduced a self-repair service in the US, granting access to 200 parts and tools for the iPhone 12, iPhone 13 and Mac computers running the new M1 processor. It was a significant win for the right to repair movement. The service was launched in several European countries in December.

Apple device owners order the replacement parts they need after running a diagnostics test on their iPhone or Mac computer, and Apple sends them a repair kit on loan for a week. It can then be shipped back to Apple free of charge. Samsung offers a self-repair service in many European countries, the US, and South Korea, but is yet to make it available here.

Even armed with the right tools, most users won’t feel brave enough to tinker with the innards of their smartphone, so manufacturer-approved and third-party repair agents will be the first stop for those with broken devices.

I’m more than willing to cut out the middleman by wielding the screwdriver myself because third-party smartphone repairs are expensive.

But Consumer points out that a lot of value in a smartphone is lost because when it is discarded due to the failure of a single component, people just move on to the next one.

“Our research shows that one in 20 phones develops a fault before the five-year mark,” Smith says.

“We also found that fewer than half of serious faults get fixed. That’s a lot of faulty smartphones being thrown out or languishing in household drawers and cupboards.”

A Government-mandated ranking system like the French one might shift the needle on repairability here, but Consumer points out that the ease with which a smartphone can be repaired is just one factor it ranks phones on.

The reliability of a smartphone is a key factor, as well as tested performance and battery life, and owner satisfaction, based on survey results.

Apple’s flagship iPhone 14 Pro Max ($2,199) has a middling repairability rating of 70% but still gets the recommended tick from Consumer, one of only 17 models from five different brands that makes the cut.

Consumer is running a right to repair campaign to urge phone manufacturers to up their game. “It is not hard to make a phone repairable – all we need are instructions, the ability to easily remove broken parts, and access to reasonably priced replacement parts,” Smith points out.

“These three things are well within a manufacturer’s realm of possibility.”

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