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Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

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Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#41
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

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#42
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$

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#43
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash memory doesn't slow down as it ages.

> 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…

Flash memory does not erase during user actions. TRIM is done async

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#44

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 th…

> 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.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#45

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 th…

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...

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#46

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…

Maybe it is because to many people break the screen when they try to replace the battery.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#47
post #5

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…

>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…

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.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#48

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 th…

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...

That's an aftermarket part.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Galaxy S10+ came out in 2019. I believe this was the last flagship to have a microSD card slot.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#50
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Flash memory does not erase during user actions. TRIM is done async

It’s a good point, but the blanket statement isn’t true. Not all flash memory devices support TRIM.
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