If you need to replace anything other than your iPhone 8's battery or display, good luck

Simple

Because for many people the risk of damage multiplied by the cost of repair (your anticipated spending amount on damaged phones or whatever) is not material. That is to say, it doesn't affect their lives in any meaningful way. So it's perfectly rational for them to not care.

Other people are taking a calculated risk. Other people use high-protection cases. Some are just thoughtless morons chasing fads (meaning really that they value others' opinions of them based on their phone selection more than they value fiscal sanity - still moronic, but at least explicable).

And then there are people who care deeply about reparability even though the cost is immaterial because they value a culture of not wasting things more than they care about the fiscal economics. There's nothing wrong with this either, as long as it's deliberate and understood (it's perfectly alright to value some things more than money - in fact, it's often a good thing).

If you do fix them for free, then you're distorting their economic calculations. So don't do that.

I must be luckly then...

I've been using smart phones for over seven years now and have not broken (or even scratched) a single screen.

Never needed to replace a battery either, though I think the one in the six year old 4S is getting close.

Agree completely. I have only once needed a replacement battery and HTC did it for £50 which I thought OK. Not great. OK

I have never broken my screen. Scratched it badly once, while shitfaced on a beach in Barcelona at 3am at San Juan, but never cracked or smashed it. Yet every 3rd iPhone user seems to have a smashed screen. Is it iPhone users that are shoddy or the hardware?

Honestly don't get why people buy stuff that they don't stand a chance of even other people fixing.

I don''t think somebody slinging £700 or more on a phone cares, mate. The iPhonewraiths buy these things because they either are so rich they don't give a tinker's cuss, or they go without food and toilet roll to afford it, because they are defined by the handset they own.

Either way, the last thing on their mind is the maintainability.

My iPhone is provided by my employer. I love it and if I drop it and the screen shatters they replace it with the latest model. Have not dropped my iPhone for while [don't want it to seem too obvious], but a couple of months after a new model comes my old model becomes slippery and when it slips out of my hand tends to land screen down onto an upward facing sharpened nail.

You might as well drive a Peugeot or something where you have to dismantle the rear axle.

Renault, not Peugeot. From some point after Renault Clio Mk2 they went nuts. While an old Renault could be repaired by a barely literate bush mechanic armed with hammer and spanners, on anything after around 2003-4 you need specialized tools, service manual and you need to remove the front bumper to change a light bulb. PSV while also a known offender is not anywhere near as bad.

In any case, while most early phones were repairable, their repairability has dropped across the board to nearly zero over the last 2 years.

It started with the IP6X and IP5X ratings. In order to have the phone water and dustproof they started gluing and sealing them. At that point I stopped trying to fix them myself. I started buying spares and waiting until my next trip to Eastern Europe so they can be fixed somewhere where labor is cheap.

With the new curved bezel-less designs I do not see how it can be repaired at all. The thing is held by glue (if not even epoxy). Chances to changing or fixing anything are near zero.

> have sent one guy's iPhone off for repair for broken screens no less than 7 times

Give him a Doro big button mobile as a 'temporary' replacement and wait a few weeks before sending the iPhone off for repair. Might teach him to stop being so clumsy.

> Why you'd buy a phone that (last time I looked) cost £70 for a screen

£30 all in from my local shop.

Battery and screen are relatively easy

Not for the average person, but the average person would struggle to add RAM to a generic PC. Those two are really all that matters, because they're pretty much the only things you can fix in ANY phone. So what do you think should be repairable in an iPhone that isn't, and can you point to more than a handful of Android phones where those things are repairable?

Re: If you need to replace anything other than your iPhone 8's battery or display, good luck

This is the El Reg equivalent of the /. "BSD is dying" comment, isn't it?

I've had iPhones for 10 years, because as a Mac consultant my client base uses them and I need to be familiar with them. I've never broken a screen. Neither have my wife or daughter, who inherits our cast-offs. They're always kept in cheap rubberised cases - the best kind, I've found. Mine lives in the patch pocket of my Craggies, and so is never subject to the bending stresses of those poking out of jeans arse pockets.

People who break smartphone screens treat their phones too casually. That's the only plausible explanation I can find.

I've had iPhones for 10 years, because as a Mac consultant my client base uses them and I need to be familiar with them. I've never broken a screen. Neither have my wife or teenage daughter, who inherits our cast-offs. They're always kept in cheap rubberised cases - the best kind, I've found. Mine lives in the patch pocket of my Craggies, and so is never subject to the bending stresses of those poking out of jeans arse pockets.

People who break smartphone screens treat their phones too casually. That's the only plausible explanation I can find.

Having had 15-20 iPhones* in the field for the last 8 years or so we've only ever had one with a smashed screen. Better repairability would be nice but it's not a priority.

*No, I wouldn't have chosen them but what Directors want they generally get.

If you're a bloke......

4 more inches in your groin

If you're a girl

4 more inches on your chest.

'nuf said.

What does it give me?

It gives you iOS, rather than Google spyware (but I agree that we do pay rather too much for that particular advantage).

The fairphone 3 will be out late next year, probably for around £500.

So more than three times the price of my rather impressive, 5.5 inch screen Xiaomi, and I have to wait another year for this "fairphone"? Having bought my Xiaomi, I can lose it, buy a replacement, have that stolen, buy another, and still have have enough change for a reasonable round of drinks.

How is £500 for a so-so phone "fair"?

"After I clean my glasses, I wipe my 7+ off with the alcohol wipe"

Been watching hot steamy pron?

It don't half sting though.