You Can Now Fix Your Smartphone at Home. But You Probably Shouldn’t Just Yet. (2024)

Why you might want to repair a phone yourself

You Can Now Fix Your Smartphone at Home. But You Probably Shouldn’t Just Yet. (1)

Two years ago, Apple made its Self Service Repair Kit available, with the promise that “the Apple tools available to customers on the Self Service Repair Store are the same as used by Apple’s repair network.” But the company also noted that the kit was designed for “customers who are experienced with the complexities of repairing electronic devices.” Shortly afterward, Samsung partnered with self-repair community iFixit to offer its own self-repair tools and support.

Why would you want to fix your phone at home? If you break your phone and don’t have insurance through your carrier or phone maker, the repairs can be costly. Under AppleCare+, which costs between $79 and $199 for two years of protection depending on which iPhone you buy, a screen repair is $29. Samsung Care+ pricing is comparable to Apple’s; screen repairs cost $29 with insurance. Without insurance, fixing a cracked iPhone screen at an Apple Store can cost anywhere between $129 (for an iPhone 6) and $379 (for an iPhone 15 Pro Max). You can instead get your phone fixed at a third-party repair shop, but that too can cost you at least a couple hundred dollars—up to $450, depending on the phone model, according to the repair costs we were quoted. And independent shops might use Apple-sanctioned parts or aftermarket components, the latter of which could cause problems (more on that later).

If you repair your Samsung phone at home, you could save up to $100 versus having it repaired professionally; the savings are less significant for an iPhone because parts are more expensive. You’re also sacrificing hours of your time. We decided to test both kits to see just how easy it is to repair your own phone, how much money it actually saves you, and what companies could do to make such repairs even easier.

We tested the self-repair process by replacing the displays on two phones: an Apple iPhone 12 and a Samsung Galaxy S21. Both phone screens had dead pixels, rendering them unusable, but you would follow the same screen-replacement process with a cracked display.

You order an iPhone repair kit through Apple’s self-service repair site. iFixit also provides instructions, though you need to order official parts from Apple. Samsung partnered with iFixit to offer the necessary tools and manuals for certain Galaxy device repairs, but for more recent models, such as the S23 line, Z Flip5, Z Fold5, A15, and newer, Samsung works with Encompass to supply parts and repair guides.

Apple’s $49 rental kit is compatible with the iPhone 12, 13, 14, and 15, as well as the 3rd-gen iPhone SE. Apple’s kit doesn’t include a new display, which can cost more than $300 depending on which iPhone you own. The kit comes in two 40-pound carrying cases, which contain a display adhesive press plate, a heated display-removal fixture, a display press, a 6.1-inch repair tray, an adhesive cutter, anti-static tweezers, several torque drivers, and bits to go with them. It’s an intimidating pile of gear. You also need to order the new display kit, which cost us $234 after we returned the damaged display for a $33 credit. If you keep the rental repair kit for longer than seven days, Apple places a $1,100 hold on your credit or debit card, which it then releases within seven business days after you return the rental.

Samsung’s display repair kit costs up to $230, depending on which one you buy (ours was $168), and is compatible with the Galaxy Z Fold5, Galaxy Z Flip5, Galaxy S23, Galaxy S22, and Galaxy S21, as well as the Galaxy S20 lineup. Compared with Apple’s kit, Samsung’s kit is a whole lot simpler: Ours came with an S21 chassis, display, and battery, in addition to an iOpener gel pack, a set of six opening picks, a spudger, an opening tool, a suction handle, angled and blunt tweezers, a bit driver, and accompanying bits. However, you must buy the kit outright, so you end up with tools for future repairs whether you need them or not.

The pros and cons of fixing your own iPhone screen

You Can Now Fix Your Smartphone at Home. But You Probably Shouldn’t Just Yet. (2)

Fixing a phone seems pretty straightforward on paper, but repairing our iPhone 12 and Galaxy S21 took me roughly two hours each from start to finish, and not without a few pain points.

The Galaxy S21 has a 4 out of 10 in iFixit’s repairability ratings, which measure how easy it is to take a device apart yourself. The iPhone 12 has a rating of 6 out of 10—slightly better, but still not great. My experiences aligned pretty closely with those scores.

Apple’s display-repair process entails a daunting 62 steps in total: 33 steps to disassemble, 28 to reassemble, and a diagnostic test at the end. (If I’ve already lost you, I understand.)

The first step was powering the phone off. Next, I removed the two long screws at the bottom of the phone, located on either side of the Lightning port, and then placed the iPhone into a heated display pocket. I inserted the pocket into a massive heated display-removal apparatus, which heats up the screen to loosen the adhesive underneath, allowing you to separate it from the iPhone. Once the display was properly loosened, I took it out of the display-removal apparatus and display pocket and placed the iPhone into the repair tray to finish removing the display. I had to be extremely careful when separating the display from the rest of the phone, removing it slowly to avoid pulling out the attached cables. (This may be obvious, but: This isn’t a process I’d recommend speedrunning through.)

Next, I unscrewed the small trilobe screws to remove the coverings and disconnected four flex cables from the display. These were the tiniest screws I’d ever seen, and I strongly recommend magnetizing your Torx screwdriver to minimize the chance of losing them and to help screw them back in. Then I removed the old adhesive, which added a lot of extra time to my repair. The provided tools helped, and an alcohol wipe could speed up the process, but it took me an additional 20 minutes to carefully scrape the adhesive off the iPhone.

At this point, I was ready to install the new display. (And I was a little sweaty; it felt a bit like I was defusing a bomb.) To start the reassembly process, I applied the multilayered display adhesive and removed the bottom liner. Next, I put the display press plate on top of the iPhone 12 and placed both of them in Apple’s display press. Then I pulled down on the display press’s lever, which started a 30-second countdown. When the timer went off, I released the knob, lifted the lever, and removed the display press plate.

Then I removed the top liner of the display adhesive and placed the new display on the repair tray’s suction cups. I carefully reattached the new display’s flex cables and screwed the coverings back in place. Next, I released the last display adhesive liner and snapped on the new display. I placed the iPhone back on the display press, this time without the display press plate, and once again pressed the display press lever for 30 more seconds. Finally, I reinserted the two long screws at the bottom of the iPhone on either side of the Lightning port.

Fixing a Samsung Galaxy phone: Fewer tools, more steps

You Can Now Fix Your Smartphone at Home. But You Probably Shouldn’t Just Yet. (3)

Samsung’s Galaxy S21 display-repair process is even more intimidating than Apple’s iPhone process, with a total of 86 steps: 50 to remove the screen and 36 steps to reassemble.

After powering the phone down, I removed the backplate, a task that was more complicated than it sounds. It required heating an iOpener gel pack via a hair dryer or microwave and placing it across one of the four corners of the phone.

Next, I used the provided plastic picks to pry a portion of the backplate off. The stronger the adhesive, the harder this step is, and I made several attempts to adequately heat the gel pack to loosen the S21’s adhesive before I successfully removed it. Even so, removing the S21’s adhesive still took less than half the time it took to do the same on the iPhone 12. Small blessings.

Then I removed nearly every component, minus the battery. iFixit’s repair kit for the S21 doesn’t consist of only a display—it’s a new front assembly, which is more or less a new phone, including a screen and battery. This means that you have to remove every other part—the wireless-charging pad, motherboard, daughterboard, ear speaker, cameras (both rear and front-facing), 5G antennas, and backplate—and transfer them to the replacement assembly.

That sounds unpleasant, and the experience was a little intimidating initially, but it mostly involved a lot of unscrewing and detaching cables and then screwing and reattaching everything. Finally, I applied the new adhesive, snapped the backplate back on, and powered on the phone. The phone didn’t look like it had been repaired with new parts, and Samsung doesn’t require you to go through an authentication process after you replace components.

Removing the backplate was the one big pain point in the Samsung repair process, but the rest of it was simpler than Apple’s and involved fewer tools.

It’s a little too complicated

I managed to pull off the repairs myself without phoning a friend—or the Genius Bar—and both phones actually worked properly afterward. The detailed instructions, which made the repairs feel almost like assembling IKEA furniture, were easy enough to follow, even if they took forever.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that most people should attempt to repair their own phones. There’s very little room for error using precision tools and heat, and if you make one wrong move, you could further damage your phone or even turn it into a paperweight. Depending on the damage and which phone you’re thinking about repairing, the cost of fixing it yourself may be the same as if you were to take it to a professional, to say nothing of the time required. Unless you really want to tinker with your phone, in most cases we think you should save your time and bring your damaged device to a professional.

“Most repairs today are more difficult than they should be,” iFixit’s Kyle Wiens told Wirecutter via email. “Replacing a battery shouldn’t require dealing with super-thin glued-down glass.”

We think tech companies should make devices even more repairable so that fixing your phone or laptop at home is easier. Recent data shows that most people replace their phone every two and a half years, and although some of those upgrades are due to advancements in camera technology and software, others are due to broken parts. At-home repairs can keep your phone working longer, thereby reducing the environmental impact of manufacturing new devices and preventing e-waste from ending up in landfills. Not upgrading your device every two years also saves you a lot of money.

Some companies, such as laptop maker Framework, allow you to repair or replace every single component of the device you buy. Wirecutter senior staff writer Kimber Streams tested the Framework Laptop 13, our pick for the most repairable laptop, and found it easy to swap out everything from the speakers to the screen using just a screwdriver.

Few manufacturers have attempted to make an entirely repairable phone, and those who have tried haven’t succeeded. The right-to-repair movement has pushed tech companies to offer DIY-repair kits, which is a huge step forward. Now all we need are phones that are easier to repair.

This article was edited by Arthur Gies and Caitlin McGarry.