Fairphone repair

I’ve posted about having a Fairphone before and I also have a set of headphones from them. They are honestly not that great for how much they cost. The noise cancelling cannot handle any wind or much movement, you cannot change the default mode that they start in, and most importantly a piece of the headband snapped in two on me a couple of weeks ago. Now, I was straining it with a bad habit of pulling one ear off widely to hear sometimes, but I had expected them to be able to take that force. There is a newer revision of these headphones available now and perhaps those solve some of the problems, but I am somewhat annoyed by the fact that, like with each generation of their phones, the parts for the old and new models are not compatible. Each iteration is a total replacement, not an upgrade path.

That said, they still sell replacement parts for older models and I am very glad that I can replace one piece and not have to throw an entire set of headphones and all the electronics in the bin just because some plastic snapped.

My phone screen had not been in perfect shape either; scratched and cracked from being dropped too many times and with some dead zones, but mostly still usable. I wasn’t bothered to get a replacement for it on its own but with the headphones needing repair anyway I decided to pick up a new display for the phone at the same time and keep the old one as a spare. The only special tool I needed to do the swaps was a Philips #00 screwdriver and it’s all fairly straightforward. Like I said I don’t think that these are the best electronics out there, especially for the cost, but I appreciate being able to keep them going for a long time rather than having to send them to landfill.