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The Nothing Phone 1 tried to breathe new life into a somewhat monotonous mobile industry. And while the release of the phone did attract attention, early feedback on repairability isn’t very encouraging.
Nothing Phone (1)
Introductory price €499
Amazon Warehouse
Amazon
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The Nothing Phone (1) is a phone that wants to kick in the anthill by changing the codes of the mobile industry. But on the repairability front, it is clear that the LED phone does not really do better than the competition.
Little screws, little screws, always little screws
A recent and meticulous dismantling carried out by the YouTube channel PBKreviews delivers a clear observation: changing the screen of the mobile is a bore. Blame it on a complex arrangement of parts and cables.
At first glance, the Nothing Phone disassembles like most other phones on the market. After removing the glass back, you can pop out the plastic pieces that hide the circuit boards and see the insides of the phone. Armed with a precision screwdriver and a lot of patience, it is then possible to disassemble the motherboard and the daughterboard where all the critical components of the mobile are placed.
After which the battery is removed by pulling on the adhesive strips. Finally, make way for the loudspeaker block and the charging socket which can be dismantled and changed if necessary. Tackling the screen, on the other hand, requires a good deal of patience and know-how.
A well-hung screen
The cable that connects the slab to the motherboard passes through the metal frame of the phone then connects to a kind of extension cord that passes under the battery to finally connect to the motherboard. This means that to change the screen, it is necessary to disassemble the phone in its entirety, take off the protective glass with a heat gun, slide the cable out of its location, recover the display block and replace it with a new part, then repeat the operation in reverse. All without damaging anything.
Add to that the not yet optimal availability of spare parts, and you get a phone that will have to be taken care of if you don’t want to send it back to the after-sales service on the first drop.
Repairability, a serious subject
The Nothing Phone also perfectly illustrates the weaknesses of the French repairability index. Despite this complex process to change the screen, the mobile inherits a respectable 7.9/10 on the hexagonal repairability scale. The two 5/10s that the phone obtains on the criterion of “delivery times of parts” are, among other things, caught up by the note of “soft reset” where the phone obtains 10/10 (like most mobiles on the market) PBKreviews is much harsher and gives the Nothing Phone a rating of 3/10.
Le Nothing Phone (1) et ses leds — © The Digital
Let’s be clear, the phone imagined by Carl Pei, the former founder of OnePlus, is not the worst phone in the world to repair. But in 2022, when we claim to make a phone that will shake up the market, there is something embarrassing about not making progress on repairability. L’recycled aluminum and bamboo fiber boxesthat’s good, but it’s not really enough.
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