Samsung Galaxy S21 downgrades make it easier to repair than the S20

But still not easy

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If you’ve just shelled out for a newSamsung Galaxy S21you might be wondering how easy it is to repair should anything happen to it, and we now have the answer. In short, not very, but it should at least be easier to repair than its predecessor.

That’s according toiFixit, which did a video teardown of theSamsungGalaxy S21, resulting in a final repairability score of just 4 out of 10.

That’s not great, and we’ll get into why it scored so low in a minute, but two areas that make it more easily repairable than theSamsung Galaxy S20are the plastic back, which is easier to remove than a glass one (as well as being more durable), and the flat display, which is also more easily removed than the curved one on the Samsung Galaxy S20.

So two of the key cost-cutting downgrades Samsung used for the Samsung Galaxy S21 are actually beneficial in at least this one way. Additionally, the video notes that the display cable is fully detachable here, which it wasn’t on the Samsung Galaxy S20. That helps with repairability too.

Now for what’s not so good. First of all, the display still isn’t particularly easy to remove. In fact iFixit ended up killing the display during the teardown.

Secondly, the battery is glued down, which makes it a lot more difficult to remove than if there was just a pull tab as there is on some phones.

It seems then that Samsung certainly has some work to in terms of the repairability of its phones, which is all the more reason you should put your Samsung Galaxy S21 in a case.

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ViaGSMArena

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.

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