Why do our devices break? No matter the obsession with maintenance, cleaning, and general care, sooner or later they will throw in the towel. A dead battery, a damaged USB port, a button that stops working… there will always be something, and in these times of runaway planned obsolescence, it can be very frustrating to find a solution. The Restart Project is an initiative that seeks to help the public repair their devices, and has prepared a database with nearly ten years of repairs, highlighting the most frequent failures of tablets, printers, and batteries.
As someone who owns a collection of out-of-commission smartphones and a couple of tablets for which it is impossible to get replacement modules, I perfectly understand the frustration of not finding a solution. Manufacturers have no interest in offering parts, and only respond with new models, maintaining that damned vicious circle of buy-throw-buy.
Fortunately, there are many people out there willing to break that dynamic, and so we come to the Restart Project. Ten years ago, the project organized its first Restart Party in a London pub, and since then it prepares all kinds of meetings where the public can learn to repair their devices. During that time, the Restart Project documented every device and every failure, and users also participated in reporting their cases, generating data on the most frequent problems in tablets, printers, and batteries. If you have ever wondered why our electronic devices break, this is an excellent starting point to find the answer.
Why do our devices break? Ten years of failures in one place
The first chart focuses on tablets, with a total of 647 devices at repair events. Screen failures represent the majority of incidents at 17 percent, closely followed by power/battery issues at 16.7 percent, and charging port damage at 8.3 percent. Software and general performance problems are close to a combined 11 percent, and only 2.5 percent had issues with the power button. The successful repair rate for tablets at these events is 42 percent.
On the printer side, paper feed problems win by a landslide with 25 percent of failures. Ink cartridges come in second with 17.5 percent, and print head cleaning comes in third with 9.6 percent. Printer statistics are even worse: With more than 800 units at events, the repair rate is below 40 percent. This only confirms the idea that printers are essentially disposable.
Finally, the study on batteries indicates that the most common solution is complete replacement, reaching 67.7 percent of cases, followed by replacing the charger or charging cable (11.6 percent), and replacing the port (11.2 percent). However, the main barriers are the extreme difficulty of removing the depleted battery, leakage or corrosion issues that make the device irreparable, batteries soldered to the PCB, and a combination of high cost and lack of availability. Want to know more? The link to the official page is below.
Official site: Click here
