HMD has worked with repair specialists iFixit to provide customers with the necessary replacement parts, tools, and guides for what it calls the most common smartphone repairs on its new Nokia G22. The Nokia G22 will be available in the UK on March 8th for £149.99 (€179 / around $180) and will be sold in select global markets such as Europe but not the United States.
The company joins a growing number of smartphone manufacturers in making replacement parts more accessible to end users. In recent years, Samsung and Google have partnered with iFixit to sell replacement parts, while Apple has launched its own Self Service Repair programme. These companies are making spare parts more accessible, but the ease with which you can repair their devices is hit-or-miss.
That is why HMD boasts about how quickly you can replace the G22’s battery or screen.
During a press conference about the phone, Adam Ferguson, HMD’s head of product, successfully replaced the battery in the Nokia G22. Ferguson had to open the phone with a guitar pick-style piece of plastic and detach a delicate-looking cable to remove the battery, but the entire process took about five minutes. According to him, a similar battery swap on a previous-generation HMD phone or many competing handsets would take closer to 90 minutes.
Although it is an improvement over its competitors, HMD still has some work to do if it wants to catch up with Fairphone, which is currently in its fourth generation of long-lasting, repairable phones. While the battery on the Nokia G22 is easier to remove, it still requires tools.
Although HMD hopes that user repairability will extend the life of the Nokia G22 by stocking replacement parts for five years, it will discontinue software support before Samsung and Google. The Nokia G22 will receive Android updates for two years and security updates for three years.
In another unfortunate twist, it will ship with Android. Meanwhile, Google and Samsung provide up to five years of security updates, whereas Fairphone will have supported its 2015 Fairphone 2 for more than seven years when its final software update is released in March 2023.
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