11 ms·
Motorola and iFixit partner to sell phone repair kits
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago>battery eliminators became obsolete // Seems there would still be a [small?] market for them?
- arya169 8y agoThere's a small market for most obsolete things, usually not a profitable one.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoAye, but even in the 80s/90s I'd have thought there would be a big enough market for a mains-powered battery replacement; so "soon" after 1928 I'm surprised the market disappeared. I guess everything got designed for mains only.
- pjc50 8y agoNice! Although it's not clear from looking at the store whether this covers all the most recent models or just some older variants of e.g. Moto Z?
- DannyB2 8y ago> He challenged his engineers to design an inexpensive radio that could be installed in most vehicles In the late 1970's, as a teen, I was given an old Motorola car radio. It was all metal, greenish blue, no plastic. It had vacuum tubes! And it actually worked. It was very well built. Like a tank. I opened it up for inspection. When powered on, it made a very quiet buzzing sound. There was a "vibrator" (yes that is what it was called), used with a transformer to get the high voltages for the tubes. With just a short lead connected to the antenna connector, it could receive nearby radio stations. It's speaker had the impedance matching transformer typical of vacuum tube equipment I had seen in TVs and radios. As a teen I didn't realize how short life is and that radio might have been a good thing to hang on to.
- organsnyder 8y agoLooks like my next phone will be a Motorola! I'm tired of "upgrading" phones every couple of years because the battery wears out.
- nerdponx 8y agoFWIW, you can now get an official iPhone battery replacement for $30 on the "last-gen" models, or for free with Applecare. https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-power https://support.apple.com/iphone/repair/battery-power It looks like on some issues, we still have market power.
- craftyguy 8y agoOnly after apple was caught red-handed slowing down older phones to entice users to upgrade.
- iaml 8y agoAnd they said sorry and let users disable it. FWIW disabling it makes my phone turn off when I'm using it in cold so they had their reasons. Not only that, they released ios12 which makes my iphone 6 feel like new again, which is unprecedented in other OSes.
- craftyguy 8y agoSo it's ok to screw over customers as long as you apologize after they find out?
- Retric 8y agoIt's not screwing over customers as a slow phone is better than a phone that turns off at the same time. At most you can say they where trying to fix a hardware issue with software which is never a clean solution.
- 8y ago
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoThis is a really cool place for a company to situate themselves. I always felt Motorola was the power user brand of the Android world, and there's something very Radio Shack about being able to buy replacement parts for your phone.
- organsnyder 8y agoOne (relatively small) criticism: there doesn't appear to be a way to purchase the repair parts without getting the tools, as well. I already have a deluxe toolkit from iFixit, so I'd be getting tools I don't need—ironically, leading to some waste (though far less than disposing of a phone, of course). Edit: never mind! There is a "part only" option for each kit.
- kwiens 8y agoGlad you found the part only option. We sell both, but we find that 80%+ of folks prefer to get the kit that guarantees a complete solution.
- bloopernova 8y agoI have a lot of respect for iFixit. They at least appear to have their heads screwed on right, and the tools I've bought from them do really seem to be good quality. My only recent "complex" task that needed their tools was adding a hybrid water cooler to a 1080ti GPU. Their stuff was great, and their customer service has been good too. (EDIT: I meant to say, the addition went well due to their tools, good quality stuff means easier job with tiny screws) I'd love to see the right to repair/replace be enshrined in law. It's possible to strike a balance between tiny components and being able to replace them. My phone, a LG V20, is very thin, yet has a replaceable battery and is still waterproof to a "certain extent" (MIL-STD-810G but I'm not sure what exactly that means for waterproof-ness). Which is kind of amusing because I dropped the damn thing in the sink for the first time ever this morning. I'd love to see something like T-Mobile partner with iFixit and certify particular phones to be user or expert repairable. Hopefully this is the start of a larger movement in the world. (EDIT2: I really didn't intend this comment to sound so public-relation-y. I swear I'm not a product placement shill!)
- chrisseaton 8y agoWhat does T-Mobile know about hardware repairability? They’re a carrier aren’t they? They don’t have anything to do with any hardware.
- gowld 8y agoThey sell phones along with their service so presumably they'd have an interest is selling people quality phones so they can capture more profit for the same total customer spend. but it's hard to beat the planned obsolescence model if they get a cut of the new phone sales
- bloopernova 8y ago(I freely admit this is naive and idealistic) I'd like to see T-Mobile, or some other corporation with similar influencing power, promote the right to repair. I chose T-Mobile because they have this (PR generated, for sure) image of bucking the big telcom trend and "putting their customers first". I feel that it's another niche that could help people. You have the rugged phone niche, the kid phone, the simple phone, etc etc. A repairable phone might be desirable to some people.
- omnifischer 8y agoFYI: Motorola is also friendly towards ROM development. You can easily unlock bootloader and slap lineageOS/AOSP. Of course, for people from US - it may not work if you have a carrier branded phone. https://motorola-global-en-uk.custhelp.com/app/standalone/bootloader/unlock-your-device-a https://motorola-global-en-uk.custhelp.com/app/standalone/bo...
- mrguyorama 8y agoVerizon completely locks down nearly every motorola phone they sell. It's horrible
- theandrewbailey 8y agoAs much as I hate Best Buy, it was the first realistic option I had to quickly get an unlocked phone that would work on Verizon.
- ingenieroariel 8y agoI bought it in Colombia and got the code from Motorola to unlock it, nothing seemed US or carrier specific as the initial code was obtained via adb.
- omnifischer 8y agoA majority of hn-readers are from US.
- amyjess 8y agoMy only problem is that you can't unlock the bootloader without notifying Motorola so they can void your warranty. As much as I want to root my Moto X4 to get the notification LED back, I'm waiting until my warranty expires next fall before doing so.
- icebraining 8y agoWhere do you live? I'm pretty sure that one can't renounce the mandatory warranty for stuff bought in the EU, so if you live here, you should be OK (but don't blame me if they're hard to convince!).
- diggan 8y agoSeems like none of the new Motorola kits are available in the EU store. Anyone know why?
- kwiens 8y agoSimple logistics. We're launching them first in the US, then bringing them to Europe. Stay tuned!
- qPkk4Bi 8y agoI've been out of the phone market for a while, but have we reached a point were we're celebrating that we can pay $40 to buy a kit to change the battery of a phone? When and why did this become a thing? I remember screens being a pain to replace, but the batteries just plopped right out. Edit: Sorry, that came out more cynical than I intended. I'm just curious why we did away with batteries that fall out.
- icebraining 8y agoI own a Moto G, and you don't need any special tools to replace the battery. They just make it easier. Also, the kit includes a new battery! It's not $40 just for some tools.
- omnifischer 8y agoNice that even the first MotoG still has LineageOS development active - hopefully will get Oreo from LOS!
- Fnoord 8y agoI had a Moto G2, and it was incredibly easy to break the up and down physical buttons on it whilst repairing it.
- abhiminator 8y agoI used to use a Moto G2 as well and I second this. My volume-rocker keys were super wobbly, and literally popped-out in my finals days with the device.
- ingenieroariel 8y agoI recently got a Moto S2 Play and went the LineageOS route with no Google Apps. With no IM apps installed I made it my house's router (small house) and 5-7 devices can happily connect to it. I really recommend it. Lately I have been finally understanding how Open Source and right to repair go hand in hand.
- thekingofh 8y agoCool, how did you connect it to the outer network?
- Nullabillity 8y agoPresumably the WAN connection would be over LTE.
- ingenieroariel 8y agoYep, WAN is unlimited LTE, which is around 25mbps (on a somewhat rural area). This is 5 times more than available coaxial-based bandwidth.
- sct202 8y agoThis is great! I have been looking at replacement batteries for my Moto G4, and all of the ones available on Amazon/eBay have terrible reviews on the quality.
- zrobotics 8y agoI'm somewhat (pleasantly) shocked that it is Motorola doing this. I've been a Motorola user for >15 years now, but my current phone (xt1650 moto z) had me recommending family members to go for a different brand. I've always liked the nearly stock android and build quality up until this one, which had me convinced Lenovo was destroying the brand. Of 2 identical phones bought at the same time, by 13 months I had 1) replaced 3 screens 2) replaced 2 batteries 3) replaced 1 rear camera 4) replaced 1 USB-c connector As well, this phone is just as bad as an iPhone for repairability, at least IME. Hopefully this is a trend for the brand going forward, parts availability was always one of the downsides of Android (after 1 or 2 years, even alibaba doesn't have any parts at any quality for many models). Additionally, I hope this signals to designers that there is a market for phones that sacrifice thinness for repairability and durability. It just depends on how many people buy these parts. I know I would gladly pay a premium for an OEM battery, but a market of 1 isn't significant.
- dwild 8y agoI had the Moto X Play and it lasted nearly 3 years, the battery went bad, which is to be expected. That was my only issue with it. I currently have the Moto Z2 Play, no issue and it's been more than a year now. My experience is anecdotal, but so are yours. Are you just missing the fact that you happens to drop your phone pretty often? It would still be crazy because I do drop mine from time to time and never wear phone case.
- zubspace 8y agoI own a fairphone 1 and after I dropped it once I was able to order a new screen. With instructions made by by the fairphone team I was able to fix my phone. I'm bitter though, because they soon switched development to fairphone 2 in a higher price class and I'm left with android 4.2.2. Many new apps on the play store stop being compatible. I believe, something like this is only viable, if the phone maker guarantees software updates for at least 5 to 10 years. Otherwise all that talk about environment and all is just hot air.
- openfuture 8y agoIt's too expensive, phone makers need to collectively support stuff like LOS but they can't because if they do then google won't allow them to bundle google software. This has been discussed a bit on here but this is a replay of what happened with linux and microsoft back when desktops were a thing.
- bradfa 8y agoRegarding longer software update promises, a good number of recent Motorola phones are on either the Android One or Android Enterprise Recommended lists, so they should get security updates for at least 3 years from launch and see at least 1 or 2 Android letter OS upgrades. The Android Enterprise Recommended "rugged" devices get at least 5 years of security updates, which is quite good, although Motorola doesn't make any "rugged" devices currently. Android is getting there and this announcement of factory repair parts through iFixit is awesome to see. It's probably not as easy to repair a Motorola phone as a Fairphone, but it's getting better which is the important part.
- woodrowbarlow 8y ago> Motorola doesn't make any "rugged" devices currently all of motorola's rugged phones are designed for firstnet (private, secure LTE for emergency responders). these are relatively repairable (removable battery, screws behind the battery) but i wouldn't hold my breath for consumer models. https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/products/lte-user-devices/lexl11.html https://www.motorolasolutions.com/en_us/products/lte-user-de...
- jaytaylor 8y agoPerfect timing from Motorola; amidst all the Apple iPhone and Mac proprietary repair nonsense, price gouging, and counterfeit replacement parts floating around in lieu of official ones, this is a beacon in the darkness. Techies are sure to appreciate the shift in philosophy from a well-established player like Motorola. The gap between various mobile phones is ever shrinking these days, this is definitely enough to get me to give Motorola serious consideration for my next device.
- seniorsassycat 8y agoPartnering to make repair parts available is a good step but modern phone design makes accessing the phones internals very difficult. I had a Moto X4 that suddenly stopped turning on or pulling charge when plugged in. I suspected the battery so I went to pull the phone apart. Here's ifixit's guide to replacing the battery on a Moto X [0]. Modern phones don't have screws, they use clips and glue. Waterproofing adhesive is popular on waterproof phones, maybe there isn't another way to seal a phone, but that just looking at a phones internals will break the water proofing. The battery on a Moto X is accessed from the screen side, removing the screen requires a heat gun, cutting and prying on a fragile screen. [0]: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Motorola+Moto+X4+Battery+Replacement/103231 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Motorola+Moto+X4+Battery+Replac...
- mkaziz 8y agoI used to own an original Moto G, and the only complaint I had was the crappy camera. I would buy Morotola again if they made reasonable sized phones.
- ricardonunez 8y agoThe camera is the bad part on their phones. A family member has the X4 on Fi and although miles better than the G line, it's still bad, especially on low light.
- acd 8y agoHappy to read about that Motorola is taking an initiative to make their cell phones repairable! We should not produce unnecessary amounts of electronic waste, this surely is a step in the right direction. Thanks to iFixit, Motorola and its engineers.
- tinus_hn 8y agoThis is probably a try-out. 'Motorola' is just one of the phone brands owned by Motorola Mobility, a subsidiary of Lenovo. Motorola Mobility produces mobile phones and slaps whatever label marketing thinks appropriate on it, which in some cases is 'Motorola'.
- Glyptodon 8y agoI was hoping one of the kits would offer USB port replacement. USB ports are what always seem to wear out on my phones.
- mark-r 8y agoI've been putting off getting my Moto X screen replaced - a small crack in the corner doesn't impair my ability to see the screen, and the touch interface works most of the time. Just ordered the repair kit, thanks!