Ins and outs of cell phone repair

When picking a cell phone, you don’t think of the repercussions of repairing the screen when you dropped it on the ground. Probably, the most common repair on a phone is the screen and possibly the battery. I recently had the pleasure of dealing with my phone failing in slow motion to the concrete screen facing down. The horror of knowing the screen is going to shatter and then hearing the little shatter sound was not as fun as it sounds.

I immediately took off the screen protector thinking that the shatter was just that, the screen protector. I was wrong, it was the screen. My next thought was, “I don’t feel like buying another phone where do I get this repaired”. I have an android phone, specifcally as of date an LG G6. Its a great phone, I like the weight and overall feel of where the unlock button is, etc… What I didn’t think about was the teardown of the phone.

Phone are built differently

Most people don’t. So, cell phone repair involves tearing apart your phone to get to the screen. There is an approach where the phone is made with the screen put on last, while others (you guessed it) are built with the phone being built with the screen in first. What this means is that in order to repair your screen, the common problem, you will be without your phone for a good 6 hours if its built with the screen in first. If its built with the screen in last, the time to complete the repair is around 15 minutes to an hour depending on the phone.

I found a mobile phone repair place and got my phone setup to be repaired. What I didn’t know is instead of them repairing it in front of me, they took the phone to the office. This is a bit of a crazy feeling if you use your phone for so many things. After the first hour, I sort of enjoyed not having my phone. After the second hour, I started to think about how much data I had on my phone and I don’t know what they had access too (eg. accounts, notes, etc…). Then, I realized I couldn’t even call the people that had my phone because I didn’t have a phone. I’m sitting at a coffee shop without a phone and the only way to get a hold of them is to email them. Emailing in this situation seems like forever, but its still around thankfully.

Phones that are built right

While waiting for my phone, I started to think about what phones exist that are easy to repair. There are some crazy modular phones that I think in theory are great, but they look like a brick. I came across iFixIt Ratings list of phones. They score the phones on how easy they are to fix the screens, etc…

The summary is: * Android: Google Pixel phones are built with the screen last, easier to repair * iOS: most Apple iPhones are built with the screen last, quicker repair

The iPhones are the phones that are reapired in front of you, most Android phones are built so they need to be taking to a shop.

Hope this helps, would like to hear your horror phone stories below.