- iFixit and Samsung are ending their partnership on a direct-to-consumer phone repair program.
- iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens says “Samsung does not seem interested in enabling repair at scale” and that the deal is not working due to high parts prices and difficulty of repairs.
- Samsung only ships batteries pre-glued to the phone screen, forcing customers to pay over $160 even for just a battery replacement, unlike with other vendors.
- The contract also limited iFixit to selling no more than 7 parts per customer in a 3-month period, hampering their ability to support local repair shops.
- Additionally, Samsung required iFixit to share customer email addresses and purchase history, which iFixit does not do with other partners.
- iFixit says it will continue to stock aftermarket Samsung parts and publish repair guides, but will no longer work directly with Samsung on official repair manuals.
iFixit says:
We clearly didn’t learn our lesson the first time, and let them convince us they were serious about embracing repair.
We tried to make this work. Gosh, we tried. But with such divergent priorities, we’re no longer able to proceed.
All this Samsung hate.
Tell me which phone to buy. Plot twist:
- no fucking apple because the company and their phone keyboards enrage me
- no Samsung now
- no huawei or similar Chinese spyware
Bonus
- really great camera
- good photosphere software.
- imap, ical, smtptls
- 3.5mm jack
Don’t use it as a phone but as a tablet so I don’t care about
- phone
- SMS
- iMessage, naturally
Okay, confidently smart people. Go!
–…
No one’s saying don’t buy Samsung. I noticed your list of requirements didn’t include great repairability, which this article and comments are about
Motorola and Nokia have phones with 3.5mm jack, and they come with pretty clean Android, without a bunch of bloat, aggressive task killers and whatnot. Though I can’t speak for camera, photosphere or repairability.
Pixels are good in some ways, but of course, those don’t come with a 3.5mm jack.
Happy with my g84. $350AU
Dual sim Oled Headphone socket SD card option Fast charging Stereo speakers Call recorder 5g
Only gripes Camera not great Volume jumps from moderate to loud Leaving the camera app too soon after taking a picture in suboptimal lighting will lose the photo.
Edit: ok voyager, what did you do with my carriage returns?
Man, I’m glad I bought a Murena Fairphone.
I am 1000% asking Lemmy where to buy my next phone. It’ll take some setup but Stallman will be proud.
Samsung has always been garbage, and they’ve tricked you into thinking they’re premium just like Apple does. My $2000 Samsung TV from 2016 suddenly had serious light bleed at the 2-year mark. Turns out on the forums, lots of people complained about that model having light bleed at the two-year mark. The support forums morons refused to do refunds. My Samsung remote stopped working properly until I reinsert the batteries. Samsung folding phones break from folding, Samsung batteries explode, Samsung products are cheap garbage made to break that try to sell you on a single “cutting edge” feature. Samsung is planned obsolescence. Don’t buy Samsung.
I always hated Samsung for their shitty business practices, and the way they dealt with their customers in terms of device repairability
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I have to admit, Samsung have some great things in terms of hardware, but this is not one of them - and their anti-consumer practices will continue to keep me away from the brand.
There isn’t really a lot of options for a premium products.
Phones for example, sure they’re all repairable phones but they’re cheap low-end models, there’s nothing in the high-end market.
You’ve basically got Samsung and Google and then if you’re prepared to go with iOS Apple, but none of them are any better than Samsung.
Apple consistently has better hardware if you’re willing to nuke iOS, and slap on an actual version of Linux, or hell, even Windows runs better on Apple hardware in my experience.
It’s just getting it on there that’s more than a bit dodgy
There are flagship quality phones that aren’t totally impossible to repair, and at reasonable prices.
Sent from my OnePlus 12
At least from software point of view Google doesn’t make a fuss with the warranty if you unlock the bootloader of the phone, which can’t be said about Samsung (and good luck with Apple about that). It might not matter to the majority of users, but it matters to me.
In the EU at least Samsung can’t make a fuss either.
How’s that? As far as I know, once you trip Knox (which unlocking the bootloader does), you can’t restore the phone to factory state. Will they honour the warranty then?
IANAL: The short of it is that unless Samsung can prove that it’s the software’s fault that the malfunction is there, they have to repair it. A blown efuse is just as much proof as the ‘warranty broken if removed’ stickers, which is none.
There’s lot’s of cases online where Samsung/resellers try to stop people but as long as you are persistent and don’t just accept them not wanting to fix it they will repair it.
There’s also some cases of going through the small claims court to handle this (which doesn’t cost anything if you win) Small claims court
Also: This ONLY applies to the normal EU warranty which you always have, any extended warranty does not need to repair your device if you’ve rooted it.
You might be right (I hope you are), but it’s yet another gamble I’m not willing to take. Moreover, even if you don’t have to resort to warranty, you have limitations after you trip Knox if you change your mind or if you want to resell the device.
that’s fine but the number of people on the globe who refuse to buy from them is literally a rounding error
Yeah they have some cool gadgets and designs, but this kind of shit + the software side has always kept me away from the brand
If you’re technically inclined, you buy a Samsung phone only once.
But in my defense, the Galaxy S3 is legendary up to this day. They didn’t got better since then.
S4 Mini.
CMM
If you kept it long enough… The last update made it unusably slow, was the only phone I ever destroyed and sent for recycling as there was no way I could sell that thing to someone.
Also last Samsung phone I ever bought for that reason. Actually could be the last Samsung anything I nought come to think of it
I think s10 might have been peak.
I had the original Galaxy Note and loved it. Then I went to oneplus one and loved it. Then I went Nexus 6 and liked it enough. Then I got the first Pixel.
I’ve been pixels ever since. But there was a deal on the Galaxy flip5, $0 up front, $300 over 2 years. I couldn’t pass it up, for the novelty if nothing else.
There’s a lot I like about this phone, but a lot more that I don’t. I’m looking forward to going back to Pixel when I can.
This phone is missing so many standard features, and so many others are locked behind Samsungs walled garden that I refuse to sign up for. It’s just a mess. I’m frequently frustrated.
I highly recommend the pixel fold if you want a folding phone but don’t want to go with Samsung. It’s a better form factor anyway and it closes all the way.
I love the displays they put into cheap phones, but other than that they charge too much a premium for features that now should be standard such as fast and/or wireless charging
Isn’t iFixit an Apple authorized repair center? Tf they breaking up with Samsung for when they’re just copying what apples been doing.
I do not believe iFix it is an Apple authorized repair center. They do not sell “genuine” OEM Apple parts.
Changed my phone last December… increasingly glad it wasn’t a Samsung.
Out of curiosity, what did you buy?
Motorola G73. Fits well with my needs (no mobile gaming, not a lot of social media), good battery, great screen even if it’s not amoled. Got it under 200€, a good deal IMO. Little regrets learning, afterward, that Motorola now is Lenovo and is supposedly hard to root/change rom, will have to research.
So, at this point it is cheaper to change iPhone battery in Apple Store. Wow.
This article is primarily about Samsung, but yes, there is a brief mention of iFix its battery prices, which are $50.
Apple charges $99 for a battery swap on a new phone. Component + labor.
Samsung’s replacement is $90 if done at a service center, so it was more expensive to buy the parts (because they included the screen for some reason)
So if I were to order a battery replacement part from Samsung would it already be paired with a screen? Or could it be future proofed with a bit of DIY engineering? Cause I love my S22 Ultra, and am tired of upgrading every 2-4 years because the battery starts holding less and less charge.
I think it’s more if you want to replace one you have to replace both, and if you don’t glue the battery to the screen the phone will fall apart, that’s what I’d do if I was an evil corporation and wanted customers to buy a new phone instead of repairing
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Two years after they teamed up on one of the first direct-to-consumer phone repair programs, iFixit CEO and co-founder Kyle Wiens tells The Verge the two companies have failed to renegotiate a contract — and says Samsung is to blame.
“Samsung does not seem interested in enabling repair at scale,” Wiens tells me, even though similar deals are going well with Google, Motorola, and HMD.
Instead of being Samsung’s partner on genuine parts and approved repair manuals, iFixit will simply go it alone, the same way it’s always done with Apple’s iPhones.
(While Samsung did add the S23, Z Flip 5, and Z Fold 5 to its self-repair program in December, that was with a different provider, Encompass; iFixit says it was left out.)
Some of those guides also mention a Samsung Self Repair Assistant app, which is weirdly not available in either Google Play or the Galaxy Store and has to be sideloaded in the US.
We can’t comment further on partnership details at this time,” reads part of a statement from Samsung head of mobile customer care Mario Renato De Castro to The Verge.
The original article contains 748 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 75%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
