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iPhones are VERY repairable. Source: I run a repair shop and iPhones are most of our business. You want to talk about phones that are not repairable? Let's tal

iPhones are VERY repairable. Source: I run a repair shop and iPhones are most of our business. You want to talk about phones that are not repairable? Let's talk about ANY HTC phone. They're total crap to repair. The worst, though, are the cheap MetroPCS and Cricket Android phones--the ones you've probably never heard of but that we get calls about every day, like HTC Desires, Samsung Galaxy Core Primes, and a whole line of tiny LG phones with odd model numbers. THOSE phones are completely unrepairable--not because we can't get the parts, but because the repair, which runs $80 or so to fix a broken screen, is almost twice what it costs to just buy a new phone. These phones are unabashedly sold to poor and even to homeless people, who then get the choice of desperately trying to continue using them when they inevitably break, or ponying up another $50 to buy a new one. It's a way, way worse model than iPhones, and one the HN community probably isn't familiar with (I didn't know anything about this until I started running a repair store.) It's a pretty disgusting market.

TwoJob 10y ago
so, make the phones more expensive so it makes financial sense to repair them? rather than making the repair less expensive?
- jessaustin 10y ago
  You're responding to someone who runs a repair shop... Seriously though it reads as if that shop has fair repair charges, and it's simply easier (thus cheaper) to repair an iPhone than some no-name android. This conforms to my experience with other sorts of equipment. You'll always pay more when the case has panels attached by screws, rather than two plastic shells that can only be mated once.
  - takno 10y ago
    I've only ever broken one screen on a phone, and that is not so broken that it is unusable. I appreciate other people break screens more often, but never breaking the screens is a fairly common situation. Given that old iPhones continue to trade at a multiple of a cheap android, you could probably pay for at least 2 screen repairs with the difference, and you would be paying for those well down the line. The economics for somebody who is not exceptionally clumsy probably still supports buying the cheap android. That probably doesn't help the repair shop guy too much, but making the poor support his dying business model doesn't sound fantastic on the ethical scale either
abrowne 10y ago
I agree, even as a major iOS detractor, that recent iPhones are amazingly repairable, while there's an opposite trend for many (most?) high-end Android phones these days. But is it really "disgusting" that a phone is cheaper to replace than repair because it is extremely cheap to begin with? Following that argument, they would solve the problem by raising the price of the new phone.
- ericabiz 10y ago
  You have to put yourself in the shoes of the poor or homeless person who walks through the door of our repair shop. They don't have enough money to buy a computer. So their entire life is on that phone: photos, contacts, documents, email. They've applied to jobs through that phone. Everything is centered around that item. Then it breaks. And since the software is usually so crappy on it, there's no consistent way for them to have backed it up. Sometimes the contacts are on the SIM card--sometimes not. Sometimes they've backed up to the Google cloud; sometimes they didn't understand what that was, so they just hit "skip" when it asked them to set up that account. So when that phone breaks, they've lost EVERYTHING. Now I know there are some folks on HN, because I've been around here long enough, who would say "They should just learn how to back it up!" And to that I would say, who is teaching them? Can you? These people are sometimes barely literate, often only with a high school education (or less.) We can't expect them to understand what a "Google cloud" is. And heck, even as technical people, many of us don't back up stuff properly, especially personal items. So when that phone breaks, they've lost a lot. Personal photos of their kids. Important contacts. The calendar that reminded them where that job interview next week was. Many of these same folks would be far better served buying a used iPhone 4S, which is $55 to fix when a screen breaks. But the difference between $50 for a Cricket HTC Desire and a $100 iPhone 4 could be a week or two--a week or two during which they cannot survive without their phone. That's why I say it's a disgusting market.
  - abrowne 10y ago
    Great explanation.
  - noir_lord 10y ago
swang 10y ago
Sounds like, "Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness" > The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. > Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. > But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. > This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness. https://thebillfold.com/to-terry-pratchett-who-gave-us-sam-vimes-boots-theory-of-socioeconomic-unfairness-a33858c1c74c https://thebillfold.com/to-terry-pratchett-who-gave-us-sam-v...
jdietrich 10y ago
That's a problem of labour costs rather than design. It sucks for your homeless customers, but I can't understand your outrage. By your definition, these phones would only be "repairable" if they were vastly more expensive to buy. Does it really help low-income customers if the cheapest phones available are several hundred dollars? These phones are primarily intended for the developing and middle-income world, where lower labour costs make them perfectly economical to repair.
- jasonlingx 10y ago
  > It sucks for your homeless customers, but I can't understand your outrage. He's outraged because it sucks for his homeless customers.

TwoJob 10y ago

so, make the phones more expensive so it makes financial sense to repair them? rather than making the repair less expensive?

jessaustin 10y ago
You're responding to someone who runs a repair shop... Seriously though it reads as if that shop has fair repair charges, and it's simply easier (thus cheaper) to repair an iPhone than some no-name android. This conforms to my experience with other sorts of equipment. You'll always pay more when the case has panels attached by screws, rather than two plastic shells that can only be mated once.
- takno 10y ago
  I've only ever broken one screen on a phone, and that is not so broken that it is unusable. I appreciate other people break screens more often, but never breaking the screens is a fairly common situation. Given that old iPhones continue to trade at a multiple of a cheap android, you could probably pay for at least 2 screen repairs with the difference, and you would be paying for those well down the line. The economics for somebody who is not exceptionally clumsy probably still supports buying the cheap android. That probably doesn't help the repair shop guy too much, but making the poor support his dying business model doesn't sound fantastic on the ethical scale either

abrowne 10y ago

I agree, even as a major iOS detractor, that recent iPhones are amazingly repairable, while there's an opposite trend for many (most?) high-end Android phones these days. But is it really "disgusting" that a phone is cheaper to replace than repair because it is extremely cheap to begin with? Following that argument, they would solve the problem by raising the price of the new phone.

ericabiz 10y ago
You have to put yourself in the shoes of the poor or homeless person who walks through the door of our repair shop. They don't have enough money to buy a computer. So their entire life is on that phone: photos, contacts, documents, email. They've applied to jobs through that phone. Everything is centered around that item. Then it breaks. And since the software is usually so crappy on it, there's no consistent way for them to have backed it up. Sometimes the contacts are on the SIM card--sometimes not. Sometimes they've backed up to the Google cloud; sometimes they didn't understand what that was, so they just hit "skip" when it asked them to set up that account. So when that phone breaks, they've lost EVERYTHING. Now I know there are some folks on HN, because I've been around here long enough, who would say "They should just learn how to back it up!" And to that I would say, who is teaching them? Can you? These people are sometimes barely literate, often only with a high school education (or less.) We can't expect them to understand what a "Google cloud" is. And heck, even as technical people, many of us don't back up stuff properly, especially personal items. So when that phone breaks, they've lost a lot. Personal photos of their kids. Important contacts. The calendar that reminded them where that job interview next week was. Many of these same folks would be far better served buying a used iPhone 4S, which is $55 to fix when a screen breaks. But the difference between $50 for a Cricket HTC Desire and a $100 iPhone 4 could be a week or two--a week or two during which they cannot survive without their phone. That's why I say it's a disgusting market.
- abrowne 10y ago
  Great explanation.
- noir_lord 10y ago

swang 10y ago

Sounds like, "Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness" > The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. > Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. > But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. > This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness. https://thebillfold.com/to-terry-pratchett-who-gave-us-sam-vimes-boots-theory-of-socioeconomic-unfairness-a33858c1c74c https://thebillfold.com/to-terry-pratchett-who-gave-us-sam-v...

jdietrich 10y ago

That's a problem of labour costs rather than design. It sucks for your homeless customers, but I can't understand your outrage. By your definition, these phones would only be "repairable" if they were vastly more expensive to buy. Does it really help low-income customers if the cheapest phones available are several hundred dollars? These phones are primarily intended for the developing and middle-income world, where lower labour costs make them perfectly economical to repair.

jasonlingx 10y ago
> It sucks for your homeless customers, but I can't understand your outrage. He's outraged because it sucks for his homeless customers.