[HN Gopher] Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 ...
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Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in
US
Author : mikece
Score : 75 points
Date : 2024-01-23 16:33 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (9to5google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (9to5google.com)
| smg007 wrote:
| The Z Fold 5 is seriously expensive, so being able to replace a
| broken part myself could save a ton of cash. Plus, it's gotta be
| super satisfying to fix something that folds like magic.
| magixx wrote:
| I imagine the cost of official parts such as the screens for
| flagships like the Fold 5 are still going to be very expensive.
| Even if you need to only replace a simple/cheap part it will
| likely be a major pain that requires removal of the screens
| which if you haven't done before could result in you breaking
| something expensive.
|
| Personally for such delicate devices I would rather pay the
| difference for someone with the experience and liability to fix
| it for me.
| santaz01 wrote:
| This is huge for tech nerds like me! Samsung's DIY repair program
| is like getting a superpower to fix my own stuff
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| This is a great move. Google committed to 7 years of parts as
| well via iFixit.
|
| Of course, paired with the extra long support it now seems like
| Samsung is also possibly going to subscription models where they
| force you to pay to not have features taken away, so maybe it
| won't turn out well. Who knows.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Google only does it for phones though. If you have a watch and
| you break the screen, their only solution is to just buy a new
| one. Even though replacement isn't hard. They just don't bother
| making spare parts available.
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/11-months-after-laun...
| vardump wrote:
| Samsung should get the memory card slot back. Heck, I still miss
| easily replaceable battery from Galaxy S5!
|
| In general, I hate how Galaxy S series is just becoming more and
| more like an iPhone. (Well, other than reasonably long firmware
| update support. Great job Samsung copying that!)
|
| I used to have both Samsung Galaxy S and iPhone -- but now it's
| just iPhone.
|
| But yeah, DIY repair is great and there I wish Apple would follow
| in good faith.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Samsung should get the memory card slot back._
|
| They still have models with SD card slots, but they're never
| coming back to flagships because:
|
| 1. so they can milk you on cloud storage or on the expensive
| variants with more storage
|
| 2. access speed difference of UFS 4.0 vs fast SD cards is huge
| and unacceptable on a flagship that's supposed to compete with
| iPhones on speed
|
| 3. biggest and most important reason I learned from the horses
| mouth, people used to put the cheapest junkiest "value" SD
| cards off Amazon in them, which would be slow and negatively
| impact UX, and would also spontaneously die, taking the
| customers photos with them, so then the angry customers would
| blame the phone for both issues( _" your damn phone ate my
| photos/sd-card!"_), so they had remove it to ensure UX and
| reliability across the board
| gambiting wrote:
| >>so they can milk you on cloud storage
|
| Samsung doesn't sell cloud storage though, so I'm not sure
| that's a valid reason. With apple it's obvious, with Samsung
| I don't see it.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Samsung doesn't sell cloud storage though_
|
| Google, Dropbox and Microsoft do and they all partnered
| with Samsung at one point or another to ofer promotion or
| be defaults on their phones.
| unclad5968 wrote:
| The assumptions you have to make to arrive at the
| conclusion that Samsung doesn't put SD card slots in
| their phones so that people buy cloud storage from
| Microsoft seem a little excessive.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| It is excessive because that's not what I said. It's what
| you're saying.
| gambiting wrote:
| Well, what are you implying in your post then?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I'm implying exactly what I just said before.
|
| Google and Microsoft (and Dropbox at one point) are
| partners of Samsung, so Samsung got paid by them to
| feature their products preinstalled on their phones and
| push certain promotions with their phones(free 1TB of
| cloud storage for one year or something like that).
|
| So it stands to reason that if Samsung were to offer
| crazy amount of NAND storage out of the box, then then
| their partners in the cloud business would not be very
| happy, now would they?
|
| Not that it's the main reason why they're not
| incentivized to put lot of NAND by default, but these
| partnerships can't help either.
|
| I'm just explaining putting 2+2 together here guys, as I
| though the implication was obvious to everyone.
| gambiting wrote:
| I'm so freaking confused. The person you replied to said
| this exact same thing, but you called them out on it. And
| when I pressed you on that point.....you just repeated
| what they said? Eh?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> I'm so freaking confused._
|
| I already explained my thought process as best I can. I
| don't know what more to do.
|
| _> The person you replied to said this exact same thing_
|
| They didn't say the same thing, to my understanding.
| Maybe language barrier and cultural differences mean
| there's a confusion here.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Unclad5968 said what you said.
|
| You claim Samsung keeps sd cards off phones because they
| are motivated to by partners.
|
| Unclad said "it seems excessive to think Samsung is doing
| keeping sd cards off phones because of partners".
|
| You and they disagree, but he stated your position
| accurately I believe.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| No, I was right to disagree. He said Samsung doesn't put
| larger storage to sell Microsoft cloud storage.
|
| I said that's false because Samsung doesn't put larger
| storage for mainly other reasons, but if they did put
| larger storage, then it would be a conflict of interest
| with their cloud storage partners, so they have an extra
| incentive to stick to this, but it's not the main one
| like he claimed.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > 3. biggest and most important reason I learned from the
| horses mouth, people used to put the cheapest junkiest
| "value" SD cards off Amazon in them, which would be slow and
| negatively impact UX, and would also spontaneously die,
| taking the customers photos with them, so then the angry
| customers would blame the phone for both issues, so they had
| remove it to ensure UX and reliability across the board
|
| Thanks, that's really interesting and a bit disappointing to
| be honest. I wonder if optionally "bundling" high quality
| microSD cards at the time of sale might've helped?
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> I wonder if optionally "bundling" high quality microSD
| cards at the time of sale might've helped?_
|
| High quality SD cards have always existed but consumers
| have been avoiding them because "the other one's much
| cheaper and I'm no sucker to pay more for the same amount
| of storage".
|
| Also, Amazon is full of counterfit SD cards. That's why we
| can't have nice things.
|
| So it's understandable phone makers are trying to avoid
| these extra hassles causing consumer frustration and
| support tickets.
| jamesrr39 wrote:
| (3) is interesting, but when you are the phone manufacturer
| that has to be so easy to mitigate:
|
| - slow = notification with "slow photo write to SD card, use
| a better SD card for better performance"
|
| - failure = they could offer a built-in app with reliability
| stats for the SD card currently inserted
|
| At Samsung's size and amount of money to solve these
| problems, the skeptic in me feels like (3) is a convenient
| excuse for (1), or to excuse just copying what Apple does.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Assuming the average user wants to look at apps or believe
| the phone sure. If not there's no winning here and I can
| see why making it so the user just can't mess up on
| choosing storage and doesn't have to be presented all this
| information/responsibility when they do is still a much
| better image of the phone's storage quality.
|
| Doesn't mean it's any less aligned with getting to charge
| more for storage. Just means it can still make plenty of
| sense as an excuse. Power users have consistently turned
| out to be a poor target for phone makers.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Your suggestion feels like a lot more work and effort that
| still leads to terrible UX, slow phones and unhappy
| customers.
|
| 1. Customers being nagged their SD card is slow will hate
| the phone, not just the SD card they just bought and can't
| return. How will the users know which cards are fast
| enough? Most average users are not tach savvy at all and
| are easily duped by marketing fluff.
|
| 2. SD cards can also die out of the blue. Good luck trying
| to predict when with an app. You might as well just offer
| them data recovery services while you're at it for when
| they loose all their photos.
|
| It's easier to just skip SD cards and offer fast and solid
| UFS storage at a higher cost, that you can vouch for,
| instead of something that could always be flaky for reasons
| outside of your control.
| jimbobimbo wrote:
| Wow. It looks like I must upgrade my phone soon. So far I
| hung up on the missing audio jack, but I didn't realize the
| SD card is also missing in Galaxy S. WTF, this sucks.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Not sure if you're sarcastic or not, but SD cards have been
| absent from flagship Androids for about 10 years now. Wait
| till you find out the batteries are not swappable anymore.
| antongribok wrote:
| Galaxy S10+ came out in 2019. I believe this was the last
| flagship to have a microSD card slot.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Interesting. I had a OnePlus 3 since early 2016 and that
| already dropped the SD card slot for UFS storage way back
| then so I assumed all flagships did the same.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 1) Samsung actually stopped their cloud drive service. They
| have a dumb deal with Microsoft now but they're not really
| upselling you there anymore. The expensive higher-storage
| variants yes though.
|
| 2) Be aware by the way that on the Samsung S23 and S24 base
| models you are _not_ even getting UFS 4.0! The 128GB model
| comes with UFS 3.1 only. All the 256GB models and up are 4.0.
|
| 3) Nah.. If they cared about performance and UX they wouldn't
| sell us the Exynos version in the EU. Point 1 - upselling to
| a higher version is the real reason.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Point 1 being true (upselling for more money), doesn't
| negate points 2 (potential cloud partners deals) and 3 (SD
| cards shitify the UX) also being true.
|
| Regarding Exynos, Devil's advocate take: Most customers
| won't be able to tell the difference between Exynos or not
| in real world tasks, but they will definitely tell the
| difference between reading off SD and UFS.
|
| They don't put Exynos in the US because Qualcom owns that
| modem market there as even Apple still uses them. Maybe if
| the EU had any alrge domestic competitors left in these
| spaces(phone modems and mobile phones), the situation would
| be different, but since we don't, we're at the mercy of US
| and Asian giants for selling us their consumer hardware.
| poisonborz wrote:
| The problem is mostly Android. Google gutted the API/usability
| of SD cards citing security risks.
| david_allison wrote:
| Not just SD cards. Local storage outside the app private
| folder has also been completely gutted (replaced with APIs
| which attempt to unify cloud and local storage).
|
| I re-downloaded the test APK from[0] and tested on my S21
| [Android 14]
|
| Legacy storage takes ~2-3ms to create a file. SAF takes
| ~20-60ms
|
| [0] https://magicbox.imejl.sk/forums/topic/storage-access-
| framew...
| creole_wither wrote:
| Samsung still makes a phone like that. The Galaxy XCover6 Pro.
|
| https://www.samsung.com/us/business/mobile/phones/galaxy-xco...
| blopp99 wrote:
| This is great. The main reason people change phone in the last
| couple years has been for battery degradation and screen
| breakage. Changing those for many people is not an option because
| is not really possible to get the same quality parts as OEM
| afterwards.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| Also because of flash memory degradation. You may notice that
| older devices are slow even after a full factory reset. The
| memory chips are reaching their limits.
| malfist wrote:
| Flash memory doesn't slow down as it ages.
| skyyler wrote:
| Doesn't it degrade with use? I thought with modern wear
| leveling you get degraded performance for a long time
| before it just stops working, but I'm no expert. I'd love
| to learn more about this actually
| SushiHippie wrote:
| What _may_ be the cause that the storage gets slower on
| older devices is, if they are nearly full. At least I
| heard this about SSDs. Please someone correct me if I
| remember this incorrectly
| malfist wrote:
| It does degrade, but not performance. The degrading
| happens when blocks hit their wear limit and can no
| longer be used. Flash memory typically includes
| additional blocks to replace those that are at their wear
| limit, but that will eventually exhaust and then the
| drive will be in a failure state. This can sometimes be
| that the drive stops working, or that it shrinks it's
| capacity, but the bandwidth and access speed
| characteristics remain constant throughout it's life.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| > The degradation increases the amount of negative charge
| in the cell over time due to trapped electrons in the oxide
| and negates some of the control gate voltage, this over
| time also makes erasing the cell slower, so to maintain the
| performance and reliability of the NAND chip, the cell must
| be retired from use.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory
|
| IIRC from when I worked making microcontrollers, there is a
| feedback loop on the erase that makes sure the bits all
| read 1 as they should. This takes longer based on how many
| write/erase cycles have occurred.
|
| I'd have loved to find an actual data sheet to show you as
| an example, but here is something I found:
|
| https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/arm-based-
| microc...
|
| > The erase time is worst case for a single sector when
| doing sector erase, or the whole bank if doing bank erase.
| In bank erase all the sectors are being erased at the same
| time so the time of the bank erase is equal to the time to
| erase the slowest sector.
|
| > Erase time degrades with the number of write erase
| cycles. Sometimes during erase traps (an extra electron or
| hole stuck in the oxide lattice) are formed in the erase
| oxide. These traps make the next erase harder. Some of the
| traps will anneal with time and high temperature.
| malfist wrote:
| Flash memory does not erase during user actions. TRIM is
| done async
| thebruce87m wrote:
| It's a good point, but the blanket statement isn't true.
| Not all flash memory devices support TRIM.
| christkv wrote:
| The curren iFixit prices even look reasonable. Color me surprised
| that they seem to actually provide replacements at a reasonable
| cost and have not mounted a "DIY" program in name only.
| justapassenger wrote:
| It's great, but also a bit sad, that what used to be an industry
| norm not that long ago (easily accessible repair parts) is now a
| heavily celebrated news.
|
| Hopefully it's a sign that trends are reverting in the broader
| industry.
| davidspiess wrote:
| I am currently looking for a new reliable OLED TV. Knowing they
| added the S90C to their repair program is very reassuring.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| My dad just got the 83 incher and it's magnificent.
| Unfortunately, it looks like they only added the 77, but who
| knows what the future holds.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| This is cool, they even have some parts like the buttons and
| glass in different colours. So you could even use it to pimp your
| phone (I wouldn't break the waterproofing just for that but if
| you need to get in there anyway...)
|
| One thing that's annoying though is that with the S23 you need to
| buy a new screen when you want to change the battery. The battery
| is only available as a screen+battery kit. Weird.
|
| I mean, when you replace the screen it makes sense to stick a new
| battery in, sure. Especially because the old battery might be a
| few years older or have damage from the impact (safety). The
| other way around, not so much. Why waste a perfectly good screen
| just to change the battery? This is really dumb and drives the
| price up. It also causes unnecessary e-waste.
|
| Now, this is in Europe where Samsung have a real parts shop of
| their own ( https://samsungselfrepair.shop ), I see in the US
| it's different because it has to go through iFixit somehow. Edit:
| Nope, iFixit doesn't seem to sell batteries separately either.
| gg82 wrote:
| Maybe it is because to many people break the screen when they
| try to replace the battery.
| hjk_bear wrote:
| Samsung has been providing iFixit with genuine parts since at
| least the S20. Although this is a good first step it came with a
| huge major caveat:
|
| _Screen+battery are only provided as a single assembly. You can
| 't buy them separately._
|
| These are the two most common repairs on a smartphone and to get
| a simple battery you need to buy the expensive screen.
|
| I am hopeful Samsung redeems themselves this year especially with
| the introduction of the Fold5 to this program. Otherwise this is
| nothingburger only meant to appease regulators and legislators
| wkat4242 wrote:
| > These are the two most common repairs on a smartphone and to
| get a simple battery you need to buy the expensive screen.
|
| This is indeed really dumb and it's still the same for the S23
| parts which have just been released on the European store
| https://samsungselfrepair.shop
|
| They're not on iFixit yet for the US but I assume it's the same
| story.
| acquacow wrote:
| You can definitely buy the battery only, at least for the S21
| Ultra, as I just went through that.
| https://www.ifixit.com/products/galaxy-s21-ultra-replacement...
| ericpauley wrote:
| That's an aftermarket part.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Yeah I would definitely not use that. Aftermarket parts can
| be fine but with batteries I don't take risks.
| epakai wrote:
| That's really odd. I worked in samsung parts for a few years.
| While screen/frame assemblies were very common, the battery was
| always separate. Batteries generally got stored separately, and
| shipping requirements also provide some onus to keep them
| apart.
|
| Particularly after seeing the pull adhesive strips in
| Pixel/iPhone I thought that would have become the norm.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| I'm a little disappointed. My S22+ charging port is broken and
| the part on ifixit is 60$. IIRC the Samsung repair shop quoted me
| the fix to be 80$. Doesn't really seem like I'm saving enough to
| justify my labour and potential to break it due to lack of
| expertise. I highly doubt that component is actually worth 60$
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