Up until recently if you broke a Samsung smartphone or tablet that wasn’t covered under a warranty, your best bet was probably to take it to a third-party repair shop or try to find reliable replacement parts and repair guides to perform smartphone surgery on your own. Now Samsung has launched a Self-Repair program. In […]
right to repair
Apple’s Self Service Repair program goes live (for iPhone 12 and newer)
Apple is making it easier for iPhone owners perform their own repairs rather than taking their phones to a shop to replace a cracked screen, broken speaker, or dead battery, among other things. The Self Service Repair program that Apple promised to launch is now live for customers in the US who want to perform out-of-warranty […]
Google partners with iFixit to offer replacement parts for Pixel phones
Google has announced plans to make it easier to fix a broken Pixel phone. Starting later this year you’ll be able to buy spare parts and tools to fix Pixel 2 and later phones from iFixit. Google says things like replacement displays, batteries, and cameras will be sold as individual parts and as parts of kits […]
Samsung introduces a self-repair program for select phones and tablets
Repairing a cracked screen, broken charging port, or other components of a smartphone or tablet can be an expensive, time-consuming, and generally inconvenient proposition, especially if it means going without a phone while you wait for somebody else to perform the repairs. While some folks are comfortable performing their own repairs at home, finding genuine […]
Lilbits: Build an Alder Lake Hackintosh, repair a Surface Laptop SE, and type on a (really) tiny keyboard
Ever wanted a 59-key keyboard small enough for wearables? A developer has created one that’s roughly the size of a Raspberry Pi Pico board, and it’s designed to work with one. Meanwhile Microsoft is following through on its promise to make Surface hardware more repairable… at least for one device. Google is now offering release […]
Apple’s Self Service Repair will make at-home repairs easier
Apple doesn’t have a great track record with making it easy to perform DIY repairs on the company’s hardware, usually insisting that you take your gear to an Apple Store or authorized repair shop instead. But starting next year, the company plans to begin offering tools, parts, and documentation for customers that want to repair […]
Lilbits: Teenage Engineering’s first PC chassis, Right to Repair, and Magic Eraser breaks free from the Pixel 6
Teenage Engineering is a company known for designing sleek-looking products including the company’s own audio products and synthesizers as well as designs for third-party hardware including the Playdate handheld game console, H smart speaker, and l-1 camera. Now the Swedish company has introduced its first PC chassis. The Computer-1 is a striking looking compact case […]
Lilbits: Firefox puts ads in the address bar, Microsoft agrees to Right to Repair, Nintendo Switch OLED launches this week
As the Right to Repair movement picks up steam, a group of Microsoft investors filed a resolution in June, asking the company to look at the social and environmental impact of making its Surface and Xbox hardware easier to repair. Now Microsoft has agreed to do just that, promising to commission an independent study and […]
Europe considers rules requiring gadgets to be repairable
Buy a desktop computer and you can probably keep using it for a decade or longer because if anything breaks or needs to be upgraded you can probably open the case and make the changes yourself. Things are little different with most modern smartphones and tablets, and many laptops. If a component breaks, there’s a […]