A recent survey has found that over half of respondents who broke smartphones or tablets tried DIY repairs to mend them.
The survey of 1000 tablet and smartphone owners via One Poll by insurer Protect Your Bubble found that 33 per cent of respondents had broken a smartphone or tablet, and that 53 per cent of these people had performed DIY repairs.
Super Glue was a popular surgical tool, with 38 per cent saying they had used it to mend devices, while 30 per cent said they had used sticky tape, 18 per cent elastic bands, 12 per cent Blu-Tack, 9 per cent hair ties and 5 per cent chewing gum.
Men were more likely than women, but not by much at 59 per cent versus 46 per cent, to try an emergency procedure.
I was surprised to see that only 33 per cent of respondents (and if there were 1000 respondents, that’s (roughly) 330 people) had broken smartphones or tablets and of those, 53 percent (which is roughly 174 people) had tried to repair their smart devices once broken (I’m guessing once out of warranty). I would have thought more like 60 per cent broken, 80 per cent had tried rudimentary repair. Who hasn’t tried a quick fix when it comes to technology, particularly if tying it together with string means it’s workable enough that you don’t have to buy another?
I’m sure we all have the friend who continues to use their iPhone, despite the half missing screen and the fact that you can see micro boards and parts of the camera never meant to see the light of day (except as filtered through a lens).
I know someone who doesn’t want to send their smartphone off to be repaired due to horror stories about Internet-found companies who cannibalise your device’s insides and replace them with inferior tech.
I think the number of attempted emergency repairs would exponentially increase when the question was about borrowed devices; there’s nothing you won’t try if you’ve accidentally ruined someone else’s prize possession. I tried Super Glue on my brother’s Game Boy, years ago, with the only result being that I glued my fingers to the device and clouded the screen with glue residue. Needless to say, my brother strongly expressed his wish that I hadn’t been so hasty to take matters into my own (sticky) hands, in terms of staggered payments over several years for a replacement Game Boy.
I can’t say I’ve ever tried chewing gum (and I’m not sure I believe the respondents who say they have; what happens when all the flavour runs out?) and at the What Mobile offices, the general consensus seemed to be that there’s not much you can do for smashed screens.
Water damage, however – now that’s a different story. Putting a phone dropped in the washing up tub in a bowl of rice worked for one What Mobile staffer (on one phone; apparently his BlackBerry gave up the ghost). Another said dismantling a device and shaking it vigorously worked, or using a hair dryer (to be re-named a ‘thing dryer’).
The survey from Protect Your Bubble said of those who attempted repairs, 41 per cent were motivated by the cost of getting it done properly, and 24 per cent were prepared to just deal with it.
Men were more likely to break their devices by sitting on them, women more likely to damage them by using them in the bath – hopefully not while charging.
When it comes down to it, DIY device repair seems to be a bit of a Catch 22 situation; if you don’t try and you’re out of warranty, you could end up paying through the nose for professional repairs or run the (possibly imaginary) risk of having your iPhone 5 come back with the insides of the soon-to-be-obsolete iPhone original (or ‘Classic’, a possible Apple re-branding effort). If you do try it, you could end up glued to a Galaxy S3 for the rest of your life (and that phone is so last year).
I guess it could be viewed as a why not? situation – if your repairs don’t work, you would have had to have paid for a professional anyway; and there’s always the possibility that they have solvent.
