Galaxy S24 FE: Samsung still stalling on repairability
“Marketing Ads Without Substance“these are the terms iFixit described Samsung's repairability policy recently. Widely criticized for its lack of involvement in this area, the manufacturer has not yet made much effort for the release of its brand new Galaxy S24 FE
A video recently posted by the YouTube account PBKReviews allows you to actually see what the brand new mobile from the world's leading manufacturer has in its guts. Unfortunately, unlike Apple which has started to take the subject of repairability seriously, Samsung still delivers with its S24 FE a cell phone that is sadly complex to repair.
21 screws later
As the PBKReviews video shows, accessing mobile parts is not too complex (compared to the rest of the industry of course). The motherboard, the photo block, the battery and (almost) everything else are accessible once the back of the mobile has been taken off (with a blow of a heat gun). Unlike other phones, there's no cable holding the back cover to the rest of the phone, so there's no risk of tearing off a connector in the process.
Unfortunately, this is one of the few positive points when it comes to disassembly. Once the phone is exposed, you will need to remove no less than 21 screws to start accessing the different parts. To access the battery you will then need to remove the wireless charging coil, unhook the two cables which connect the motherboard to the daughter card and finally pull on the adhesive hook stuck to the battery.
A very difficult screen to change
If you want to change the screen on the other hand, good luck. You will first need to remove the back cover, then the wireless charging coil, remove the two aforementioned ribbons, disassemble the speaker and the daughter card, then disconnect the screen and peel off the cable. Then, you can tackle taking off the display by passing the front side with a heat gun and gently lifting the part with a suction cup, taking care to pass the cable through the skeleton of the phone.
Unlike iPhones which can be opened from the front and back to facilitate changing the screenthe S24 FE needs to be stripped almost from start to finish to simply change the display. Screen which, as we recall, is typically one of the components that causes the most breakdowns and breakages on our mobiles. This lack of attention from Samsung is also reflected in the repairability index where the mobile gets a sad 9.5/20 in the disassembly section.
Samsung lacking industrial will
If overall, the phone obtains a good 8.4/10 in total on the French index (and 8.5/10 at PBKReviews), it is mainly thanks to the price of the parts and the availability of the disassembly guide. Spare parts and guide which are still not available on the official Samsung website at the time of writing these lines. The repairability index is also not yet displayed on the product sheet of the site.
