The Alldocube iPlay40 and iPlay40 Pro are Android tablets with 10.4 inch displays, Unisoc T618 processors, 8GB RAM, quad speakers that sell for around $200 and up. On paper they look pretty decent, but like most Chinese tablet makers, Allodcube offers limited customer service and support for customers outside of its home country.
But the company does apparently support letting you fix your own tablet if it’s damaged. Alldocube has published what it’s calling a disassembly and repair video for the iPlay40 series tablets, although it really only focusses on the disassembly part.
Theoretically that should be enough to help users figure out how to repair or replace a dead battery, a cracked screen, a broken display, or other components. But honestly, the video is of limited use, since it’s generally a lot easier to take something apart than to put it back together, and because it’s not clear where you’d actually find replacement parts. Alldocube doesn’t appear to sell them.
It’s also worth noting that the company is only offering a teardown video for one of the many tablets it sells. Hopefully it’s the start of a trend, but there’s no guarantee that this will be the case.
Still, I suppose it’s nice to see a company following in Valve’s footsteps by publishing a teardown video of its hardware that show what’s under the hood, even if neither company actually recommends you do your own repairs.
It’d be even nicer to see more companies following the lead of Samsung, Google, Apple, and others who have recently announced plans to sell official replacement parts and partner with companies like iFixit to produce official self-repair guides.
Of course, while this trend of supporting self-repair seems to be (slowly) picking up steam, it’s not entirely new. Smaller companies like Fairphone and Pine64 have been selling official spare parts for their hardware for years.
via Tablet Monkeys
Well, years ago I had an alldocube tablet (7 or 8 inches). It was good, worked well, cheap (build) obviously and tv out using the usb port was a no go but at that price the down sides are more or less to be expected.
But here’s the thing. The screen broke (I tend to overpack my backpack). Finding a replacement screen was super easy on Alexpress. Multiple sellers had replacement screens (and of course they all asked you verify you were ordering the right part number for your tablet since they are not responsible for mistakes on your end). But yeah, that bit was easy so I would not be surprised if finding parts for other tablets of theirs was not so difficult.