- iFixit and Samsung are ending their partnership on a direct-to-consumer phone repair program.
- iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens says “Samsung does not seem interested in enabling repair at scale” and that the deal is not working due to high parts prices and difficulty of repairs.
- Samsung only ships batteries pre-glued to the phone screen, forcing customers to pay over $160 even for just a battery replacement, unlike with other vendors.
- The contract also limited iFixit to selling no more than 7 parts per customer in a 3-month period, hampering their ability to support local repair shops.
- Additionally, Samsung required iFixit to share customer email addresses and purchase history, which iFixit does not do with other partners.
- iFixit says it will continue to stock aftermarket Samsung parts and publish repair guides, but will no longer work directly with Samsung on official repair manuals.
iFixit says:
We clearly didn’t learn our lesson the first time, and let them convince us they were serious about embracing repair.
We tried to make this work. Gosh, we tried. But with such divergent priorities, we’re no longer able to proceed.
All this Samsung hate.
Tell me which phone to buy. Plot twist:
Bonus
Don’t use it as a phone but as a tablet so I don’t care about
Okay, confidently smart people. Go!
–…
Edit: I love how asking a question gets downvotes. Thanks people!
Motorola and Nokia have phones with 3.5mm jack, and they come with pretty clean Android, without a bunch of bloat, aggressive task killers and whatnot. Though I can’t speak for camera, photosphere or repairability.
Pixels are good in some ways, but of course, those don’t come with a 3.5mm jack.
Happy with my g84. $350AU
Dual sim Oled Headphone socket SD card option Fast charging Stereo speakers Call recorder 5g
Only gripes Camera not great Volume jumps from moderate to loud Leaving the camera app too soon after taking a picture in suboptimal lighting will lose the photo.
Edit: ok voyager, what did you do with my carriage returns?
Xiaomi phones, if you unlock the bootloader and install a custom rom.
Sony Xperia line has a lot the things you want.
You could go with an older model and throw lineage on it too
I like the pixel line of phones. Less bloat, just Android. All unlocked.
No headphone jack on the newer pixels.
See that’s an issue.
I came out second in a fight one time on the base, and suffered hearing damage on the one side. Wheee. Wireless phones for me at least are harder to hear on, and speaker phones worse. Battery headphones? No thanks, even if the apple ear pods are fucking magical for ANC on a plane ride or train ride when she sends me hers (I don’t even pair them or play music; just light them up for blissful silence). I do find them expensive and disposable, normally, and that’s irksome to a former poor kid.
I love that I can use a good-fitting earbud set that plugs into everything I need, and each thing doesn’t need its own converter dongle to lose. It’s a huge feature for me.
Yeah, that’s a fair complaint for sure. I’m using a pixel 4a with a headphone jack and I can’t imagine living without one. I guess I’m not sure what phone I’ll get next.
I just got a Pixel 8 and I’m annoyed there’s no headphone jack. I have BT headphones as well, but my nice, non-BT headphones won’t work.
You can get a dongle though, so that’s an option.
Yeah, the headphone jack thing has been a major sticking point for me. But it seems like it’s becoming increasingly unrealistic to hold that line. Just sucking it up and getting a dongle might be the logical way to go…