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My wishlist for the perfect Smartphone for repairs

by Phillip Aiken April 23, 2020

If you are a technician like me who fixes phones a lot, you encounter many situations where a part in a device is really easy to replace. Then you encounter some parts that are really hard to get to. Don't you wish there was a device that had every part easy to replace? Well here's my list of easy repairs I wish existed in one phone.

1. Removable battery that requires no tools

Everyone knows how easy it is to remove a battery when theres nothing but a back plate with a little tab to pull with your fingernail and out puts the battery. While many phones still have that design, many are moving to enclosed or "entrapped" batteries that require partial and even entire disassembly to get to. Samsung devices are know for easy battery removal for the older devices. iPhones have never made batteries easy to remove. If all phones had "pop out" batteries, that would be a dream come true for replacement.

2. Screens that attach to the frame and require no screws, just heat.

Many of the Samsung Active series and the Note series and the J series use this design. Simply heating the screen and prying it off, then connecting another one without touching a screwdriver is amazing. It makes repairs so much faster. Unfortunately, most smartphones have the LCD cable screwed down under a metal plate under other parts, with some deep under the motherboard and 20+ screws. Having a screen only held on by adhesives on the front of the phone makes repairs so much faster and easier.

3. Easily replaceable charge ports

iPhones have parts that are replaceable without soldering but have almost 20 screws to remove just to get to it. And many android phones still have charge ports that are soldered to the motherboard, or charge ports connected to other parts that are located under the super fragile screen. If charge ports could be more like some of the LG models and Samsung models where its on its own daughterboard or its own assembly that simple disconnects from the motherboard and maybe has one screw, that would be a wish come true.

4. Modular parts.

The LG G5 is one of the few phones that allowed you to swap out batteries and the charge port with one button. The Moto Z10 has a screen that pops off with a couple of screws that need to be removed removed, no heating or prying needed. Imagine if parts could come off that easy? I'm not talking about the modular phone that Google made, but parts that were designed to "snap" off with little or no screws and no adhesive?

My conclusion

Come to think of it, if repairs were like these I mentioned in my wishlist, they would probably put repair stores out of business. People would purchase their own parts and just "pop" the broken one off and pop the new one one. This gets me thinking, maybe I don't want repairs easy, the harder they are, the more money you can charge and the more job security you have. So I think I will scrap this list and just accept the way a device was made, especially if its hard.

Check out some of my repair guides at www.repairx.org