Here's a high-end smartphone you can upgrade and repair yourself

 

 

Ever wish you had a smartphone that you can repair quickly the old-fashioned way—as in take it apart and fix it—if one or more of its parts stopped working?

 

A European company has completed work on such a device - dubbed the Fairphone 2, after about a year and a half of designing.

 

"One of our key objectives for the Fairphone 2 was to extend the longevity of the product, with the most sustainable smartphone being the one that you already have and that you can keep using," Fairphone chief technology officer Olivier Hebert said in a blog post.

 

One of the changes included a replaceable outer shell that acts as a protective case, replacing the back cover or battery door.

 

The cover's design lets a add features such as a rubber rim that wraps around the edge of the glass, thus protecting the display from damage.

 

"By making the case an integral part of the phone, we could make the phone safer from accidents and drops without requiring an additional protective case. This was possible while maintaining an overall consistent industrial design that wouldn’t cause the phone to feel like a ruggedized device," Hebert said.

 

Hebert also said the phone is designed to survive a all of 1.85 meters or six feet.

 

But while the team worked ot keep water and dust entry to a minimum with seals and gaskets, the phone is not completely sealed as it could hamper repairability.

 

He said Fairphone's goal was to re-invent the phone’s architecture and make it "fast and easy for anyone to do basic maintenance on his or her phone."

 

"Our solution was to engineer the Fairphone 2 around an innovative modular architecture that would enable subsystems to be easily repaired and replaced," he said.

 

Just seven basic parts

 

The phone has seven basic modules or building blocks:

 

 

"It is important to note that all of the electromechanical components are easily replaceable – none are soldered, apart from the microphones (which need to be). The buttons, which are part of the transceiver, sit on flexible printed circuits (FPCs) that are spring-connected to the main board. The units themselves are also built in a modular way to enable refurbishment," Hebert said.

 

He added the most commonly broken elements can be replaced by the owners themselves, "without requiring any technical skills."

 

All you need is a screwdriver

 

Hebert said the display, receiver, rear camera and speaker units can be replaced or repaired easily if one of their components failed.

 

Each unit is connected to the chassis with color-coded screws, and the broken unit can be unscrewed and removed.

 

Upgrade- and expansion-friendly

 

Hebert said the smartphone was built on a Snapdragon 801 platform, but with potentials for upgrades.

 

He said some functions are left out for now because they are either not yet widely adopted (such as NFC) or there are multiple non-compatible standards (such as wireless charging).

 

But he said the phone has an expansion port for potential future alternative back covers with integrated additional functionality like NFC.

 

"The port is designed to connect to additional circuitry in the specially designed outer case through a set of spring-loaded connector (pogo) pins. The port provides power sourcing and charging and also data connectivity through standard USB signaling," he said.

 

Citing an example, he said some components like the camera can be replaced by an IR camera.

 

"We can also use future components to replace the original ones, in order to keep providing repair units long after the design of the original one. The possibilities are quite broad," he said.

 

Environmental impact

 

Hebert also said they are keeping the product as environment-friendly as possible by limiting composite materials and favoring homogenous materials.

 

"We’ve also tried to use as many recycled materials as possible. We designed the parts to reduce secondary operations and additional processing, and we’ve reduced the use of coatings to a bare minimum. We are working with some key suppliers to further improve on these, and we’ll explore this in further blog posts," he said.

 

Due out before yearend

 

A separate report on The Next Web said the Fairphone 2 sports Android 5.1, a full-HD 5-inch display, 4G LTE, 2GB of RAM, 0.7mm Gorilla Glass 3, an 8-megapixel rear camera, a Snapdragon 801 processor, dual SIM slots, a MicroSD slot and an expansion port on the back.

 

"If you break the screen, it’s as simple as flicking two clips to remove and replace it — a straightforward fix to a problem that almost everyone’s spend hundreds of dollars on repairing," it said.

 

The report said Fairphone 2 will be available in Europe in late 2015, for €525 (approximately PhP27,000). — Joel Locsin/TJD, GMA News