The Android phone maker says go ahead, fix your own phone.
The right-to-repair movement continues to gain steam as another big tech company shows its support for letting people fix their own broken devices.
Google endorsed an Oregon right-to-repair legislation Thursday calling it a “common sense repair bill” and saying it would be a “win for consumers.” This marks the first time the Android phone maker has officially backed any right-to-repair law.
The ability to repair a phone, for example, empowers people by saving money on devices while creating less waste,” said Steven Nickel, devices and services director of operations for Google, in a blog post Thursday. “It also critically supports sustainability in manufacturing. Repair must be easy enough for anyone to do, whether they are technicians or do-it-yourselfers.”
In the Oregon repair bill, manufacturers will be required to provide replacement parts, software, physical tools, documentation and schematics needed for repair to authorized repair providers or individuals. The legislation covers any digital electronics with a computer chip although cars, farm equipment, medical devices, solar power systems, and any heavy or industrial equipment that is not sold to consumers are exempt from the bill.
Google has made strides in making its Pixel phones easier to fix. The company enabled a Repair Mode for the phones last month allowing the protection of data on the device while it’s being serviced. There’s also a diagnostic feature that helps determine if your Pixel phone is working properly or not. That said, Google’s Pixel Watch is another story as the company said in October it will not provide parts to repair its smartwatch.
Apple jumped on the right-to-repair bandwagon back in October. The iPhone maker showed its support for a federal law to make it easier to repair its phones after years of being a staunch opponent.
TLDW: They are basically advocating for selling assemblies of parts for “user safety”. So for example, if one chip on a motherboard was broken, instead of selling the individual part, they want to sell you the entire board with all the other parts attached (which can cost nearly as much as the device was new).
Video also highlights how you can buy a device cheaper than the cost of buying a genuine part from the manufacturer.
Google are grabbing good PR headlines with backing one complaint point in the right to repair scene, but then also backing a bunch of anti-repairability in the rest of their post, neatly snuggled away in a bunch of corpo talk bullshittery.
That was my sentiment exactly. The benefits of being able to buy parts to fix a device is more muted when the replacement part cost the same as a buying an entire used phone. Maybe I’m in the dark, but the cost of screens feels inflated and like a deterrent to fixing devices, in spite of it being likely the leading reason for repairs.
“buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, anyway consume product. don’t worry about how we group unreliable parts in with the expensive ones.”