LG G5 Gets a High 8/10 Repairability Score

An anonymous reader shares an article from Geek.com: The one thing that makes LG's G5, the flagship smartphone it launched in February, stand out from the crowd is its modularity. As iFixit learned, that means more than just being able to quickly swap the battery for a camera grip or DAC. In its teardown, iFixit found that LG has made it easy to replace lots of the G5's parts. The process might not be as simple as giving the phone a squeeze and sliding a module out, but it's a heck of a lot easier than it is with many phones and tablets. [...] All in all, it makes for a pretty tidy teardown and it earned the G5 an impressive 8/10.

Also

[Anonymous Coward]

My kid's lego bricks have a 10/10 reparability score.

Huh? What?

[Frosty Piss]

The one thing that makes LG's G5 stand out from the crowd is its modularity...

I know, I'm over 35 so I'm a luddite. Is this a new car? The "story" such that it is, is not really very descriptive.

Re:Huh? What?

[msmash]

Thanks for the feedback, sir. I have edited the story to add what the LG G5 is, and when it was launched.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for doing the needful.

Re:

[SirSlud]

The process might not be as simple as giving the phone a squeeze

It's no so much that you're a Luddite, it's that you're being obstinately illiterate.

Re:

[Z00L00K]

If I only had known this when I was looking for a new phone recently.

Well, done is done.

Re:

[courteaudotbiz]

In fact, it's a good thing that they have good repairability, since you have to do it so often.

I take the greatest care with my cellphones. Never dropped it on the ground, never splashed it, always put in a good grade case. Still my old LG G4 had a broken touchscreen after 6 months for no reason. Replaced it Under warranty, then after another 8 months, it was broken for no apparent reason again. Always same symptom. Touch actions get flaky, then stop working at all.

As my Korean colleague pointed it to m

Re:

[courteaudotbiz]

Excuse my English. I meant "stop working". It did not break apart, the touch screen would simply not accept any user input.

Re:

[I4ko]

Remember, LG was called Goldstar and their electronics were really crap

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[Briareos]

Actually, you can unlock the the European model's bootloader directly via the LG support site, but not the rest-of-the-world ones... WTF?

Video articles suck

[Anonymous Coward]

I can read faster than you can talk. This is why doomed Slashdot video and Fark.tv. Videos are about the presenter, not the product.

Re:

[flacco]

I too cannot abide video articles. I like to read my information.

Re:

[cmiller173]

So keep scrolling down past the video and read the step by step. It even has pictures!

Re:

[SJHillman]

It'd be nice if most videos had an easy way to speed up playback. I listen to podcasts during my commute and usually have them set to around 1.6X to 2X normal speed.

Re:

[oakgrove]

Why go through all that trouble when you can just select the 2x speed option for any video on youtube itself?

Re:ShamWOW!

[msmash]

Thanks for the feedback -- though I must note that it's not a commercial. We understand that the vast majority of Slashdot community owns a smartphone, and our readers are more opinionated and have more far wider expertise and knowledge about computing products and how different technologies work. This has also led us to believe that many of us, if not all, try not to run to a repair center everytime our device dies on us, or causes some sort of trouble. Which is why we deemed iFixit's report on how repairable a particular device is, as worthy of being something that would interest our readers. But again, let me assure you that we hear you, and take your feedback very seriously. If many readers share a similar opinion as of yours, we assure you that we would curtail, if not completely stop approving such content.

Re:

[thegarbz]

But iFixit's guide is probably an ad itself. It certainly feels like it.

Yes yes, everything's a fucking advert these days.

Re:

[thegarbz]

OH I forgot: /sarcasm

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[Khyber]

You can safely ignore any 7-digit UID feedback. Just lettin' ya know.

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[Useless]

And 6 digit ones too.

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[EETech1]

Some of us had WinMo phones on 2G, and just couldn't quite get signed up in time!

Re:

[Grishnakh]

I'm not a fan of video articles either. However, with some things, it's worth it. I haven't looked at this video yet, but I've seen similar ones on YouTube and they can be definitely worth the viewing. For a phone teardown, the video format can prove really useful because you can actually show how the phone is taken apart, instead of just writing about it. A picture's worth 1000 words and all that...

Whenever I want to see how to take something apart to fix it, YouTube videos showing the process is defin

Re:

[vux984]

But when the video is showing you **how to do something**, that's invaluable and not easily replaced by text.

The article in question:
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardow... [ifixit.com]

iFixit teardowns are pretty informative; the photo shoot and step by step explanation of the disassembly below is pretty informative and the pictures are great.

Yes there is a video, and no I didn't watch it, but in this case having the video available is an asset. It's just another resource on an already excellent page for someone who wants more. The page is worth visiting even if you don't look at the video, and that's rare.

I don't know what people a

Re:

[Grishnakh]

I don't know what people are bitching about.

Maybe they've been burned too many times with shitty, useless videos. But yeah, done well and for the right applications, video is a great asset.

Re:

[Junta]

Of course it's a fine line to walk. When a manufacturer does do something atypical, it does deserve attention, when good or bad depending on what it was. LG has released a device catering to the desire for modularity, it deserves a bit of credit. On the other hand, the possibilities described are pretty uninteresting to me, apart from maybe the swappable battery, but with fast charging, large batteries, and external batteries, I haven't really felt that need so much anymore.

On the other hand, the tech me

Re:ShamWOW!

[GuB-42]

A major manufacturer making phones user serviceable deserve that praise.
With the trend going to sealed batteries and glue everywhere, it is good to know some manufacturers still do things well. Kudos to the Fairphone 2 BTW, this phone even have fucking disassembly instructions printed on it.

Just look at the Samsung repairablity scores for instance (S3:8, S4:8, S5:5, S6:4, S7:3). The latest HTC and Nexus have horrible scores too.

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[phayes]

Whoop dee doo...

It's a HTC phone which means that if they haven't already abandoned updates for it, it's certainly going to happen within months. I've had 2 HTC work phones and spent way too much time asking their support why they removed upgrades for phones less than 6 months old from their web site instead of leaving the outdated but still most recent firmware up.

_Never_again_.

Some of you may appreciate spending hours and days fiddling with your phones to replace this or that (whether it's hardware or sof

Cyanogenmod Support and It'll Be My Next Phone

[slacka]

In my life, I've replaced 2 cracked smartphone screens and multiple batteries, so this is a big deal for me. If I don't have to worry about the manufacture support this will be a likely candidate for my next phone upgrade.

Looking at the specs, the only thing that bothers me is the resolution. I have 20/20 vision and I can't see the pixels on my current 720p smartphone. I'd much rather use the extra GPU power for gaming and gain the extra battery life that a lower rez screen would afford. Too bad people care

Re:

[HiThere]

Isn't LG the company that sells a TV that spys on your conversations? (Well, the one that had an article about it on Slashdot.)

Some thoughts on the G5

[LichtSpektren]

A lot of /.ers say "I won't buy a smart phone without a replaceable battery and SD card slot". Where, here you go: the LG G* series is the last flagship phones to have both of these features. Plus it has an easily unlockable bootloader, for those who enjoy flashing custom ROMs. However I would still at this point get the LG G3, as it's "good enough" and half the price. The G5 in particular is kind of a shite upgrade, with a smaller screen and worse battery life.

Re:

[danbob999]

I won't buy a phone unless it runs Linux. Oh wait...

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[piojo]

I cannot find any evidence that the LG G5's bootloader is unlocked. Every successive phone LG makes seems to be more restricted, so I expect to be SOL, just like I was with the G4.

This is turning out to be more of a pain than expected--without an unlocked bootloader, I can't update with confidence, since I don't know whether LG will fuck up the update and kill my battery life. (This is what some users are reporting for the G4.)

It's rough having to decide between modular battery/SD and unlocked bootloader.

Device replacements

[phorm]

And as somebody who self-services a lot of devices (and has a spouse with a tendency to be hard on devices), this is good information. We actually just replaced an S4 with an Asus Zenfone2 because it was the most reasonable unlocked replacement that still had a swappable battery/SD-card. I hadn't even really looked at the LG phones but it sounds like something that I should keep on the radar.

That far my main experience has been with iDevices and Samsungs. The Samsungs haven't been too bad (replacing things like the USB port connector etc is quite easy), but I've found iPhones got increasingly more painful over item, but the Sammy's were at least reasonable up to the S5.

Nice, but...

[mars-nl]

.. it's still not the 10/10 [ifixit.com] of the Fairphone 2 [fairphone.com] (spare parts here [fairphone.com]).

Anyway, nice to see a small competition heating up on other areas than size or price.

Re:

[TheLink]

Huh but that Fairphone also has a fused display right? What's the difference between that and the LG's fused display stuff?

Fairphone 2:

The LCD and cover glass are fused, simplifying removal, but significantly increasing the cost of replacement.

LG:

The fused display assembly will need to be replaced if the LCD or glass breaks, increasing costs.

So either the Fairphone should be downgraded to a 9/10 or the LG should be upgraded to a 9/10.

Re:

[mars-nl]

I guess because Fairphone 2's screen can be removed even without using tools (and a replacement can be ordered on their website) earns them a higher rating.