The technology repair advocates over at iFixit have ended their partnership with Samsung because of an apparent lack of interest from the phone maker when it comes to making repairability affordable. From June, iFixit will no longer be Samsung’s designated third-party parts and tools distributor but it will continue offering existing repair manuals.
The end of the partnership also means that it won’t be working with Samsung to create new manuals. Luckily, iFixit will still sell parts and repair kits for Samsung devices and it said it’s getting rid of its quantity limit of seven Samsung parts per repair shop per quarter.
Explaining why iFixit broke up with Samsung, it said that it consistently faced obstacles such as being unable to get parts to local repair shops at prices and quantities that made business sense. It also said that Samsung Galaxy devices were still being glued together meaning things like batteries and screens had to be sold in pre-glued bundles which increased the costs.
All these issues meant that repairing a Samsung device was too expensive and people were opting to replace their devices instead. This development seems quite ironic considering the noise Samsung has made about initiatives like the UN Sustainable Development Goals, one of which focuses on sustainable consumption.
Despite this setback for the repair website, it is not giving up on its fight for a more repairable world. These are its plans going forward:
- Throughout the summer, iFixit will expand our Repair Hubs with existing partners to support more devices.
- We’ll launch more parts in more countries for more devices.
- We will release repairability scorecards for more device categories.
- For repair service providers, iFixit will be partnering with third-party point-of-sale providers to make accessing repair content easier.
- We’ve expanded our parts catalog with over 10,000 new parts to support an even broader range of devices. Our new offerings include parts for televisions, PC desktops and laptops, coffee makers, appliances, and video game consoles. This expansion is just the beginning.
Let us know in the comments if you ever repair your devices or just sling them in the bin and buy a replacement.
Source: iFixit