iFixit Ends Repair Relationship With Samsung

People are complaining at Samsung for making it difficult to repair/replace parts on their mobile phones. The blame needs to be directed at us the consumers because it is use with our relenting desire and pressure to want mobile phones to be lighter in weight, more compact but yet still deliver on high performance but the only way for mobile phone companies to achieve what us consumers want is to build the phones in such a manner that it makes it difficult for the phones to come apart and for parts to be replaced easily. Mobile manufacturers are only doing what their customers are asking of them. Whilst many of us are happy with slightly chunky mobile phones that are easy to repair, there is an even more larger number of people who are not happy with chunky phones and want them more thinner and streamlined. The only way for manufactures to achieve this is to use build methods that are not conclusive to easy repair.

It is about time people stopped looking to blame mobile phone manufacturers for the way they build their phones but to look at themselves and ask 'Am I the problem why phones are being built the way they are'.
 
flexwithmarius said:
At the end of the day, it’s business. You gotta source parts from the most cost efficient supplier to keep retail prices down.
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I guess I should be thankful that a Mac memory upgrade from 8GB to 16GB is only $200 and not $400. Thank you Apple for keeping memory upgrade prices down.
 
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Analog Kid said:
Want to reduce ewaste? Tax ewaste. Charge a $100 deposit on every phone purchased that can be reclaimed when the phone is returned for recycling.
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And give thieves another reason to go out and steal phones?

Instead of people going around to pick up bottles and cans to recycle, thieves will be going around to collect steal phones to turn in for $100 recycling credit.
 
decafjava said:
A necessity given the issues with e-waste.
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Exactly. Despite Apple's dishonest environmental messaging, they're done an awful lot to make their products unnecessarily hard to repair over the years, and have deliberately slowed old devices as well. This leads to new purchase, but unnecessary e-waste. Clearly they're not the only ones, when you see bullsh*t from Samsung like combining the batteries with the screens.
 
sw1tcher said:
Haters who will buy Samsung products or products containing Samsung components (i.e. Apple devices) and thereby support this immoral company. 🤣

Wait. I just had a thought. If Samsung is immoral and Apple is willing to do business with an immoral company, what does that say about Apple? 🤯
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If apple is immoral, what does it say about their customers? Every macrumors reader except the trolls would be immoral then. Qed 😂
 
HQuest said:
In other news, “in exchange for selling them repair parts, Samsung requires independent repair shops to give Samsung the name, contact information, phone identifier, and customer complaint details of everyone who gets their phone repaired at these shops, according to a contract obtained by 404 Media. Stunningly, it also requires these nominally independent shops to "immediately disassemble" any phones that customers have brought them that have been previously repaired with aftermarket or third-party parts and to "immediately notify" Samsung that the customer has used third-party parts.”
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Authorized shops for apple basically do the same thing. to be part of apples program to get authorized direct from apple parts they have to use a repair system that links all of that same info back to apple right away. Then they log 3rd party parts found.


The system being used is an all in one solution on apples side to gather all of that info. ITs required otherwise they can't register parts, pair them etc on iphones.

So
 
cicalinarrot said:
Never trust corporations.
Their "good" choices are just for marketing, so it's for money just like all other choices.
Seems obvious but we tend to forget it because they give brands a personality, it feels like they're people. They're not (don't give me "corporations are people", that's nothing more than a play on words based on legal corporate personhood). They're complex money-making machines with no respect for human beings.
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That "people" thing drives me insane. One second they are insisting a corporation is NOT a person. They demand different tax rates and tax breaks, because, hey we're a corporation. Then when they want to throw millions at politicians to lobby for more tax breaks, all of a sudden a corporation IS a person. Because they say, money equals speech. And you cant deny A PERSONS free speech. But..........you said you weren't a person two seconds ago when you wanted that corporate tax break??? Now when we try and limit your influence on politicians, your a person??? GTFO!!!!!!!
 
This "right to repair" fantasy is all virtue-signaling nonsense. And iFixit plays into the nonsense in order to try to grow their own business as well. The idea that iFixit is in this to save the planet is silly.

Modern electronics are extremely complex. And the consumers WANT it that way. Smaller, faster, lighter, waterproof, more power efficient. These are the pressures that Apple et al face. Right to repair? That goes against what consumers actually want (Smaller, faster, lighter, waterproof, more power efficient).

Modern electronics left the consumer-capable repair space decades ago. And that's as it should be; 99.999% of buyers don't want to sacrifice what they want in their devices (smaller, faster, lighter, waterproof, more power efficient) so that the .001% of users MIGHT be able to repair them. The whole idea is dramatically inefficient and silly.

If environmental concerns need to be addressed, then address them. But that won't happen through "right to repair."
 
Shirasaki said:
Maybe companies like Apple should pay customer to recycle their old devices.
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That is pretty much what I said:
Analog Kid said:
Charge a $100 deposit on every phone purchased that can be reclaimed when the phone is returned for recycling.
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Apple paying customers will just mean Apple passing that cost on to customers, so either way it's a deposit and refund.


Shirasaki said:
Also, unless that amazing looking robot Apple showed in a video can be deployed in more locations, there will still be big monkey fingers ************ stuff inside.
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Those robots aren't more broadly deployed because they're not fully utilized where they are. People don't recycle. Repairability doesn't change that, it makes it worse. At least when things are repaired by the vendor, or traded in for a discount on the next model, the hardware is aggregated in one place and the vendor can reuse or recycle it.

People advocating for self repair as a mitigation for ewaste don't understand the big picture. Self repair as a form of self determination I get-- I still don't really agree, but I can understand that point of view. Self repair as a means to reduce landfill overlooks the realities of the technologies, the actual environmental costs of the self repair system from top to bottom, and broader human behavior.

Just like the push to USB-C chargers does nothing to reduce ewaste. It creates a ton of newly useless cables and accessories with non-USB-C connectors, and forces people to buy a whole new set of cables and accessories, but doesn't drive a reduction in waste in any way that I can see.

If you want to reduce ewaste focus on ewaste. Focusing on something else, in this case repair, hoping is solves ewaste is the path to unintended (though in this case fully predictable) consequences. So far most of the times people use ewaste as an argument for a change in behavior it's not for a change in their own behavior, it's for a change in a company's behavior and the underlying motivation isn't usually ewaste, but they throw that argument in because it sounds like moral high ground.
 
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Tevos said:
iFixit is great company, but sometimes they should not publish some stories. Like did they expect for Samsung (or Apple for that matter) to play ball? For Samsung it was short-term PR win and now they have nothing to gain from extending the deal.

Both Apple & Samsung are equally bad in terms of reparability. While Apple has better track record at long-term hardware support they offer, both scalp customers in every imaginable way. I dumped Samsung in general because of their super shady business dealings (e.g. evading sanctions on Ruzzia), outrageous data mining practices and locking private customers out of enterprise drives support behind corporate wall of stupidity.
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I beg to differ. Ifixit is a trash company.
 
Timo_Existencia said:
If environmental concerns need to be addressed, then address them.
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Ok then. Advocate companies to produce less so we build less ewaste. Or if you have better ways to address environmental impact then I’m all ears.

Oh wait, companies don’t want to build less because their profit margin would be lower or per unit price would be much higher. Darn, one of the best way to reduce ewaste can’t really be materialised.
 
Shirasaki said:
Ok then. Advocate companies to produce less so we build less ewaste. Or if you have better ways to address environmental impact then I’m all ears.

Oh wait, companies don’t want to build less because their profit margin would be lower or per unit price would be much higher. Darn, one of the best way to reduce ewaste can’t really be materialised.
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Companies don't want to build less because consumers don't want to buy less, don't want tech to stop evolving. Just like you'll never stop the drug war by destroying drugs as long as there are people who want to consume drugs.

The point here is the "right to repair" movement has exactly zero shot at achieving anything of substance. People can rant about these things all day long on the internet, but the leverage to make change will not be found going down this avenue. In the end, as I said above, this rant simply becomes empty virtue signaling.
 
realdangerdan said:
Does anyone really expect anything else from a company devoid of morals, who’s sole focus is to imitate and undercut its competitors?
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Like Apple is any different in the repairability scope. Their customer repair scheme is ridiculous and more expensive than having it done at Apple.
 
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