Ironic video by fairphone reminding is that electronics should be repairable like bikes are… Or aren’t they?
A recent article by ifixit highlighting how bikes are getting less and less reparabile too!
https://www.ifixit.com/News/101675/bike-manufacturers-are-making-bikes-less-repairable
Bikes are repairable, but when you run out of your brake pads you must replace caliper, hose and lever.
Bikes are repairable, but when your gears are worn out, you must replace the whole gear stack and wire.
Bikes are repairable, but when free wheel is worn out, you must replace the whole wheel because Shimano doesn’t sell that particular free wheel.
I’ve been doing a lot more electronics repair recently.
Second monitor wouldn’t power on/intermittently. Went on eBay and found someone selling the main board from a unit with a broken screen. $30 which saved me from buying a $170 new one.
Soldered a new switch onto a $50 mouse for like $5
Ordered a nice keyboard with hotswappable switches, had 4 broken solder joints once I put all the switches in. Not sure if that was me or bad QC but I didn’t want to wait 6+ weeks for round trip return to China so I opened it and was able to resolder all of them and it works perfectly.
I always try to repair my electronics too. Sometimes enclosures are glued and designed not to be tinkered with. Other times things are much easier.
- I could extend the life of my washing machine that I couldn’t use anymore because two stupid click buttons didn’t work anymore. I soldered a couple of other buttons scraped from something old
- My TV didn’t work anymore. I opened the rear panel that revealed 2 boards, one for power supply and the other a logic board. i understood that in was the power supply board not working. Ordered one for 30 €and replaced it. A new TV would have been at least 300 €
But it is not something that people learn. I learned to repair my bike tube from my father. There are a lot of bike co-ops around. For electronics everything is much newer
YouTube is a godsend
The absolute irony of tech companies claiming to be for the environment while making plastic crap that is easier and cheaper to throw away than repair.
But sure, please do tell us Microsoft/Google/Apple how environmentally friendly you are because you no longer include a charger with the $1k hunk of plastic!
Compare that to bicycles. You’ll find a lot more people able to and actually taking a bicycle frame out of the garbage and repurposing it for a new bike or an exercise bike.
