A couple of sucky things about Samsung and their phones

[thewayne]

This is pretty disgusting. If you take your Samsung phone into Bob's Cellphone Repair Emporium, you've just given ALL your information directly back to Samsung! Bob is contractually-bound by Samsung to provide, among other things, "customer’s address, email address, phone number, details about what is wrong with their phone, their phone’s warranty status, details of the customer’s complaint, and the device’s IMEI number, which is a unique device identifier". Among many other things. Doesn't matter whether or not you bought the phone direct from Samsung or from a third-party, or even used. Bob is required to upload this information daily to Samsung.

But that's not remotely the worst part.

Let's say you dropped your phone and broke the screen. You can get a genuine Samsung screen for, I don't know, $300 or so? Or you can get a generic screen which functionally is just as good for $150 or so. Maybe the color isn't as good, but it works pretty much as well.

If you take that phone, with third-party parts into Bob's, Bob is required to remove ALL non-Samsung parts and DESTROY them. It's in Bob's contract with Samsung. He can lose his contract with Samsung, and thus his access to Samsung parts, tools, and repair manuals if he doesn't do it. So now you have to pay even more money for that new battery to get your phone fully functional again.

https://www.404media.co/samsung-requires-independent-repair-shops-to-share-customer-data-snitch-on-people-who-use-aftermarket-parts-leaked-contract-shows/

https://it.slashdot.org/story/24/05/23/1849224/leaked-contract-shows-samsung-forces-repair-shop-to-snitch-on-customers


The second part is bad for people who like to DIY repairs. I've talked about iFixit before, in fact I just bought a new toolkit from them (20% off sales are attractive). Samsung and iFixit had a partnership going that supplied the latter with parts and all sorts of things from the former. Unfortunately, as the CEO of iFixit puts it, "Samsung's approach to repairability does not align with our mission."

From the story: “Samsung does not seem interested in enabling repair at scale,” Wiens [co-founder of iFixit] tells me, even though similar deals are going well with Google, Motorola, and HMD.

He believes dropping Samsung shouldn’t actually affect iFixit customers all that much. Instead of being Samsung's partner on genuine parts and approved repair manuals, iFixit will simply go it alone, the same way it's always done with Apple's iPhones.

While Wiens wouldn’t say who technically broke up with whom, he says price is the biggest reason the Samsung deal isn’t working: Samsung’s parts are priced so high, and its phones remain so difficult to repair, that customers just aren’t buying.

Most importantly, Samsung has only ever shipped batteries to iFixit that are preglued to an entire phone screen — making consumers pay over $160 even if they just want to replace a worn-out battery pack. That’s something Samsung doesn’t do with other vendors, according to Wiens. Meanwhile, iFixit’s iPhone and Pixel batteries cost more like $50."

https://www.theverge.com/samsung/2024/5/23/24162135/ifixit-end-samsung-repair-parts-deal

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/05/23/1528236/ifixit-is-breaking-up-with-samsung

Comments

[ndrosen]

I do not intend to get a Samsung phone.

[thewayne]

There's a new line of phones out there that are 100% user repairable with manuals, easily-obtained tools and parts, and a good, clean Android OS.  They're getting great reviews.  Samsung seems to want to lock people into their ecosystem even tighter than Apple.

[darkoshi]

Which line is that?

[thewayne]

The Fairphone 5 is fairly well-regarded, however, the company is focused on Western Europe and I don't know if they work in the USA or how easy it'd be to get one here.  There are a few open source phones, it's a small but fervent niche.  Fairphone 5 - Wikipedia

[darkoshi]

Thanks, I hadn't heard of them before.

[gingeriana]

there's no return from Google Pixel for me personally
but as a former user of a samsung phone, i should say their monopolistic attempts are looking incredibly sad

[thewayne]

Samsung et al has problems.  Their profits are down, they recently announced that every manager is now working six-day weeks to improve profitability.  A couple of divisions were exempted, but it's expected they'll get the order soon enough.  But attitudes like this, when they become more widely known, are guaranteed to drive away customers, not to mention this 'remove and destroy' order and their data collection is probably illegal in the EU.

[garote]

Frankly I’m just surprised it took this long for the reckoning to start. You need a really deep bench of software architects and coders to make a phone that competes with Google and Apple these days, and Samsung is a great hardware engineering company but has always presented a relatively hostile internal environment to software teams.

They’re not in any existential danger though, for sure. They make an astonishing range of good hardware, as well as components.

[warriorsavant]

EU is very tetchy about data protection. Also about requiring repairability.

[thewayne]

Indeed so.  While I didn't include that directly in the article, I did mention it on one of the comments.  I have no idea if they're making the same contract demands in Europe.

[moonhare]

So messed up. I hate how all cell phones are so expensive and yet so fragile.

[disneydream06]

That deserves a massive WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hugs, Jon

[kellan_the_tabby]

currently even happier than usual that I do my own repairs o.0

[silveradept]

Oof. I like Samsung tablets and was thinking about whether to get the cracked screen repaired, but now that's not nearly such an attractive prospect, and maybe I have to hold out for getting some other device as a tablet. If only the PineTab or other kinds of devices were further along in their development so that they could be daily drivers.

This is the kind of behavior where Samsung, the company, needs a punch in the nose from the appropriate regulators so they understand this kind of behavior is unacceptable.

[thewayne]

There is a new tablet coming out, I didn't see a price point.  Android OS, EInk paper white,  NO CAMERA.  Sounds quite nice.  I was reading about it on Slashdot this week.  I believe the implication was that it would be user repairable, but I could be mistaken on that point.

[silveradept]

Sounds interesting, but I also user my tablets for video content, so unless the e-ink is color and the refresh rate is awesome, it's not usually the thing that I want.

[thewayne]

I am pretty sure it was color, dunno the refresh rate.