10 Tech Products That Are Next to Impossible to Repair

[OcelotRex]

Oh, and I forgot to mention, do Apple products still rank the highest in quality and last a long time? Generally this is still true. Unlikely to need repair...

Ironic you'd state this after the recent snafu Apple had with every single iPhone of a certain age. At least they dropped the repair price to $29 after a year of silence and getting caught by redditors, not the objective tech reporting community.

throttling is so much cooler than crashing.

You must get two glasses of the kool-aid when you line up.

 

[GregonMaui]

It's not like we have any official numbers for this.
I for one have a lot of friends who had problems with their iphones/macs. It cost them a lot to repair and in some cases they just gave up and bought new stuff.

Good thing other products like surface pros, are easy to repair - in case you didn't check, they are the most unrepairable so much glue, so much. Is that a symptom of Apple you are complaining about, or the genre of devices, thin light and glued tight?

 

[GregonMaui]

Ironic you'd state this after the recent snafu Apple had with every single iPhone of a certain age. At least they dropped the repair price to $29 after a year of silence and getting caught by redditors, not the objective tech reporting community.

You must get two glasses of the kool-aid when you line up.

Oh come on, you must be not paying attention. Apple charges only $79 to replace a battery normally, that is not much of a premium to have someone else do it. Yes, some phones still have user replaceable batteries, so get one if you want one, but you pay about $50 for original equipment.

Recent snafu, lets review the facts. 1) batteries age, 2) as batteries age, ability to deliver power falls, 3) as power draw falls, phones can shutdown, 4) fix the problem by stealing Droid technology of temporarily throttling devices when power requirements cause overheating. Am I missing something?

BTW: if you read benchmarking articles why is it that Droids often have a burst speed, then it falls down and Apple has a more sustained speed. Its called thermal throttling.

 

[GregonMaui]

Ironic you'd state this after the recent snafu Apple had with every single iPhone of a certain age. At least they dropped the repair price to $29 after a year of silence and getting caught by redditors, not the objective tech reporting community.

You must get two glasses of the kool-aid when you line up.

oh, I forgot. You really think its better for a phone to shutdown than be temporarily throttled? hmmm, I'm guessing one of us had too much Kool Aid or other recreational stuff, and it wasn't me.

 

[OcelotRex]

oh, I forgot. You really think its better for a phone to shutdown than be temporarily throttled? hmmm, I'm guessing one of us had too much Kool Aid or other recreational stuff, and it wasn't me.

I take issue with the term "temporarily." Since the issue, practice, and execution of the slow down was never made transparent you cannot determine the amount nor time the phone is slowed. As to my preference that's not what is being discussed but I would prefer the occasion restart failure over a constant throttling.

The snafu was Apple hiding this practice from the end user and not allowing them to make the determination as to which outcome they'd prefer. Furthermore the creation of the slowdown is an admission that their hardware has an 18-24 month effective life due to the limitation of the battery irrespective of other handset makers. With a closed case and Apple's preference to not allow 3rd party repairs this very much appears to be planned obsolescence when you consider the lack of transparency from Apple.

Now that doesn't mean that I disagree with their solution; it was the implementation that was the error. As an owner of 4 iPads I'd prefer to set them to shutdown until the issue becomes irritating then set the device to throttle as a fix. I doubt I'd repair the older ones since they cost less than $250 to replace, keep getting faster and have more storage. My original mini 2 is getting quite long in the tooth.

 

[failquail]

This was the reason I got my LG G5 when I last upgraded, one of the very few phones on the market with a user replaceable battery.

Glad I did too, since I managed to damage the phone last month (phone fell off a table when plugged in and landed on the USB-C cable, destroyed the cable connector and damaged the USB-C port) £6 spent on ebay and I had a replacement LG module that included a fresh new USB-C port. I was very impressed.

 

[bexwhitt]

Half of them are Apple products...

Pushing the envelope has it's downsides

Apple hasn't pushed any envelopes on the computer side for many a year, they are in the gouging customer stage before becoming a phone and media only company.

 

[EClyde]

Broken glass windows. Low tech

 

[Anton Skryaga]

It's all about money (price), I think.
Let's suppose you have a phone. Something like iPhone 7 (not hi-end but solid performer for 99% tasks). One day you may drop the phone and screen will be broken. Or battery going weak after 2-3 years of use.
And you say "OMG, this thing is not repairable! And it costs $$$!".
But what if price of this phone drops to $100? $50? $20? You just go to store, buy next one, sign in and get all your content and setting from backup.

What I really want to say: If you upset about broken phone - (perhaps) this phone is too expensive for you.

Look at this situation from this point - It is possible to replace false transistor in CPU? How often did you see broken CPU?

 

[GregonMaui]

I take issue with the term "temporarily." Since the issue, practice, and execution of the slow down was never made transparent you cannot determine the amount nor time the phone is slowed. As to my preference that's not what is being discussed but I would prefer the occasion restart failure over a constant throttling.

The snafu was Apple hiding this practice from the end user and not allowing them to make the determination as to which outcome they'd prefer. Furthermore the creation of the slowdown is an admission that their hardware has an 18-24 month effective life due to the limitation of the battery irrespective of other handset makers. With a closed case and Apple's preference to not allow 3rd party repairs this very much appears to be planned obsolescence when you consider the lack of transparency from Apple.

Now that doesn't mean that I disagree with their solution; it was the implementation that was the error. As an owner of 4 iPads I'd prefer to set them to shutdown until the issue becomes irritating then set the device to throttle as a fix. I doubt I'd repair the older ones since they cost less than $250 to replace, keep getting faster and have more storage. My original mini 2 is getting quite long in the tooth.

I know this is not timely, but I take exception to several points in your reply that are a bit unnerving. Lets both agree that Apple could have handled it better. Period.

Batteries are listed for 2 years (24 months - Samsung also lists its batteries for 24 months), some were failing earlier and had been recalled, Maybe you are making a claim that there was a wider battery life issue and that more should have been recalled?

Third party battery replacements can be made at authorized repair centers. Hey if you don't like glue in devices, I hear you, but Apple is not the worst by a long shot. Here is an article on third party repairs including batteries: https://www.tomsguide.com/us/replace-iphone-battery-options,news-26295.html

iPads? I thought this issue is solely with iPhones. Google does not return results referring to iPad battery throttling, in fact results refute the issue altogether. Even if it was an issue, it is different because you may want to make an emergency call on a phone, throttling is clearly better than a shutdown in this case.

And I restate. Apple should have handled it better.