iFixit is ending its self-repair partnership with Samsung

Summary

• iFixit’s partnership with Samsung is ending due to inability to make repairs accessible at scale.
• Samsung’s costly genuine parts and difficult phone design contribute to high repair costs.
• Samsung limited iFixit’s ability to distribute parts, hindering environmental impact and repair accessibility.

Samsung’s PR team is not having a field day. A report earlier in the day shed light on the smartphone giant’s (reportedly) egregious contracts with third-party repair shops, which essentially force the independent shops to feed Samsung a direct stream of customer information in return for access to the company’s repair parts. Now, a second blow to the South Korean company’s repairability front comes in the form of an ending partnership.

iFixit, a name synonymous with device repairs, repair guides, resources, parts, and thorough product tear-downs, has ended its partnership with Samsung. This comes roughly two years after the two joined forces for a self-repair initiative, which saw iFixit becoming an official source for DIYers and third-party repair shop owners to order genuine Samsung repair parts, including screens and batteries, charging ports, back glass, and more. The initiative started with parts for the Galaxy S20, S21, and Galaxy Tab S7+ series, but was expanded to support later-released devices, including some of the company’s Galaxy Books too.

In a statement given to The Verge, iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens said that the company tried to renegotiate their contract with Samsung, but failed, saying that “Samsung does not seem interested in enabling repair at scale.” In the same vein, a new blog post on iFixit detailing the parting of ways reads, “as we tried to build this ecosystem we consistently faced obstacles that made us doubt Samsung’s commitment to making repair more accessible.”

What went wrong?

iFixit suggests that it will try to keep the customer impact at a minimum and continue to sell parts and repair fix kits for Samsung devices, including original and aftermarket parts, similar to iFixit’s Apple repair parts. “No existing information will be removed from iFixit, but we will not collaborate directly with Samsung to develop new manuals,” wrote iFixit, adding that it will no longer be an official third-party part distributor for Samsung starting June 2024.

iFixit says that it tried to make the partnership work, but parts sourced from Samsung were very costly, and it couldn’t “get parts to local repair shops at prices and quantities that made business sense.” For example, Samsung reportedly only offers genuine replacement batteries glued together with a display. So, if a Samsung phone user wants to replace their device’s battery, they’d need to buy the battery plus screen combo. Pair that with the fact that Samsung’s phone design remains difficult to repair, adding to overall repair costs.

Further, it doesn’t look like Samsung wanted the self-repair model to scale. Wiens indicates that iFixit’s agreement with Samsung limited it to providing local repair shops with no more than seven parts per repair shop per quarter. “We haven’t been able to get parts moving at the volumes needed to move the environmental needle,” said Wiens.

Adding insult to the injury was the fact that Samsung excluded iFixit from distributing parts for Samsung’s latest devices, including the S23 series, the S24 series, the Galaxy Z Fold 5, and the Galaxy Z Flip 5. The part distribution for those models was handled by Encompass.

This isn’t the first time the two have gone at it. Back in 2019, Samsung forced iFixit to take down its Galaxy Fold teardown, presumably because it discovered who supplied iFixit the handset, and that supplier then requested the takedown. You can read more about the fiasco below. Alternatively, you can check out iFixit’s blog post for all the deets regarding the partnership’s untimely end.