r/righttorepair

There was a time when your phone actually felt like yours.

Not just because you paid for it — but because you could truly control it. Unlock the bootloader, flash custom ROMs, tune the radio, replace the kernel, port different operating systems, and keep the device alive long after the manufacturer moved on.

I lived this era. From modding analogue phones in the late 90s at Granville TAFE, to cooking ROMs on XDA Developers during the HTC HD2 and Windows Mobile days — those communities turned curious tinkerers into real engineers.

We weren’t doing it to break things.

We were doing it because we loved the devices and wanted them to be better.

Fast forward to today.

A customer recently brought me a modern gaming phone wanting “global firmware”. Fifteen years ago that would’ve been straightforward. Today it involves cloud permissions, region locks, anti-rollback, attestation, encrypted partitions, and carefully preserving calibration data just so the hardware still works.

We’ve gone from owners to licensed users.

Modern phones are more powerful and more “secure” than ever — but they’ve also become increasingly hostile to true ownership:

Locked bootloaders

Parts pairing

Cloud-tethered activation

Software that treats you like a threat for wanting to repair or modify your own device

Right to Repair can’t just be about physical screws and spare parts. It needs to include software freedom too — the ability to unlock, reinstall, repair, and extend the life of the hardware we legally own.

This isn’t just nostalgia. It affects e-waste, sustainability, digital rights, education, and our technological independence.

This is why I do what I do. I don’t see devices as sealed disposable boxes. I see systems — and good repair means understanding the whole system, not just swapping parts.

📱 Full story on the blog:

https://norgantechnology.com.au/we-used-to-own-our-phones/

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Did you mod phones back in the XDA days? Do you feel like you still own your current phone, or just license it?

The Problem: Why we throw away fixable things

I recently had a Rs. 200 (Indian currency) pair of earphones. The sound was good, until the fine wire in the right speaker's diaphragm coil broke. I knew exactly what was needed: a soldering job. But I didn't have a soldering iron, flux, or magnifying glass.

I went to a repair shop. They refused. Why? Because the labor cost for a skilled technician is higher than the value of the earphone. The market forces me to throw it away and buy new.

This applies to everything: Remote control cars, drones, chargers, laptop adapters. A Rs. 10 capacitor fails, and we throw away a Rs. 500 device because professional repair costs too much relative to the item's value. We have the "Technicians" (mobile repair guys) and the "Materials" (spare parts exist online), but the economics don't work.

The Solution: The "Education Arbitrage" - Schools as Repair Hubs

We can solve this by moving the repair process into schools. Here is the model:

1. The Workforce: Students (Secondary Education Students aged 12 to 18). They have time, they need to learn science, value education, dexterity, and they are curious.
2. The Infrastructure: The school hires one skilled Technician (ITI grad/local expert) and sets up a lab with basic tools (soldering irons, multimeters).
3. The Supply: The school collects broken items (e-waste) from neighbors or buys them cheaply (e.g., buying a broken remote car for Rs. 150).
4. The "Customer": The student.
   • The student pays a small fee (e.g., Rs. 200) to the school.
   • In exchange, they get the broken item, the spare parts, and guidance from the technician to fix it themselves.
   • Once fixed, the student keeps the item (now worth Rs. 500).

• Why this Economics works: In a normal shop, the technician's salary must be covered by the repair fee. That makes it too expensive. In this model, the school pays the technician's salary as part of their educational budget/marketing budget. The technician is there to teach, not just fix. This removes the labor cost barrier.
• Solving the Cost Issue: The workforce cost is effectively zero because the students are "paying" with their time to learn.
• The "IKEA Effect": A student who fixes a broken remote car values it more than a new one because they built it. They will buy it back from the school for Rs. 200 just to keep it as a trophy of their skill.

Inculcation of Value Education & Scientific Temperament among students:

This model isn't just about saving money; it’s about character building.

1. Respect for Resources (Value Education): When a student spends 30 minutes diagnosing a fault, stripping a wire, and soldering a connection, they learn the hard work involved in creating a product. They stop seeing objects as disposable "magic boxes" and start seeing them as the result of human effort and finite resources. It teaches them to care for their belongings, not because of the price tag, but because they understand the effort required to build (and rebuild) them.
2. Igniting Curiosity (Scientific Temperament): Most kids think a phone or a remote control car works by magic. But when they open it up and see the motors, gears, and circuits, the "magic" disappears, and engineering takes its place. By repairing the things they use daily, they realize that technology is understandable, logical, and something they can manipulate. This shifts their mindset from being passive consumers to active innovators, euntreprenuers and future engineers.

The Benefits (The "Win-Win-Win"):

• For the Student (Value Education): They aren't just reading theory; they are building dexterity. When a kid fixes a remote car with their own hands, they don't treat it like garbage. They respect it. It builds scientific temperament and confidence ("I built this").
• For the School (Massive PR): Instead of a boring Science Fair with paper volcanoes, imagine an exhibition where parents bring broken drones and watch their kids diagnose them with a multimeter. It proves the school teaches real skills. It justifies the school fees.
• For the Ecosystem (Trust): If I buy a refurbished phone from a stranger, I worry it's broken. But if my family or neighbor's kid fixes a toy and gifts/sells it to me, I trust it because I know who built it. The social bond replaces the warranty. The school gets a massive PR and reputation boost as well. Instead of just "99% Marks," the school shows parents and their neighbours that the school's children are bringing dead appliances back to life. Real-world engineering.
• For Technicians: A steady job in a school environment rather than fighting for customers in a crowded market.
• For Environment: We stop filling landfills with fixable plastic.

Feasibility & The "Spare Parts" Gap There are thousands of YouTube channels showing how to fix these things, yet the average person can't do it because they lack the one tool or the one spare part. Schools have the infrastructure to bridge that gap. There is a business opportunity here for startups as well to supply "School Repair Kits"—standardized bundles of gears, capacitors, 3D print files and wires that schools can stock.

Some people may raise concerns about safety and structure. To clarify, this doesn’t need to be part of the formal curriculum.

Many schools already offer leisure-time activity classes like music, sports, robotics, or Arduino clubs. The “School Repair Lab” can function similarly — as an optional, supervised club environment.

Soldering and technical work would be done under close supervision of the technician, with low-voltage devices only. Participation would require parental consent, just like sports activities.

This wouldn’t need a rigid curriculum with preselected items. It could be pragmatic and resource-based — students bring broken electronics from home or the neighborhood, and the lab works with what’s available.

Given the sheer scale of electronic waste around us, supply won’t be the constraint. If anything, the challenge may become managing time and prioritizing projects.

The goal isn’t just repair — it’s exposure, confidence, and hands-on engineering in an informal, curiosity-driven setting.

This model turns "Trash" into "Treasure" by adding Education to the mix. It solves the e-waste problem not with charity, but by creating value for students, parents, and schools.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this economic model. Could this work in your city? Is there a reason (liability, logistics) why schools haven't done this yet?

Just cracked my screen on iPhone 17 Pro max and I have an Apple warranty to cover the repair through ubreakifix. I filed my claim and am going tomorrow to get it repaired but am very worried that it may not be like the original screen. Are they usually reliable? Will they use aftermarket or Apple products?

Just went through this today and wanted to document it for anyone else in the same situation.

Background

Signed a 36-month ADT contract in January 2023 through an authorized dealer (Safe Haven Security Services). Monthly rate $63.99. Contract ended January 2026 and I've been month-to-month since, meaning zero early termination fees.

What happened when I tried to cancel

• Called ADT to cancel and requested the dealer and installer codes for my Qolsys IQ Panel 4, which I legally own per Section 5 of my contract
• Rep couldn't help, said they'd call back
• I had successfully used the dealer code (2222) earlier that same morning
• Within hours of my cancellation call, the dealer code stopped working
• Called back — rep confirmed a note was on my account but couldn't tell me who changed it or provide the new code
• No online cancellation option exists, no written method, can only cancel by phone during business hours

What I did

Filed complaints with the FTC, the Alabama Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division, and the BBB simultaneously. Left 1-star reviews on Google, Yelp, and Trustpilot. Replied to ADT's social media publicly. Emailed their Executive Response team at alwaysthere@adt.com with two specific asks: the dealer code and immediate Alarm.com account release.

Result so far

Got a response within hours from ADT's Executive Response & Resolution team. Waiting on follow up within 24-48 hours.

What I'm replacing ADT with

Full local setup — Home Assistant, Frigate NVR, Zigbee sensors, Alarmo. No subscription, no cloud, no one has remote access to my equipment.

Update: They claim they didn't change it, but they reset the code and provided it to me. I can now access the dealer settings to enable third party connections and connect to home assistant. Now I don't need to purchase non-proprietary sensors and whatnot