Another week, another major smartphone manufacturer hopping on the “right to repair” bandwagon.
This week it’s Google, which announced in a company blog post that it’s going to start selling authentic spare parts for Pixel phones later this year for any owners who are enterprising enough to repair their own devices. This will be accomplished via a partnership with iFixIt, the internet’s primary destination for tech repair advice and tools. Google didn’t offer a specific timeframe for when this program will start beyond “later this year.”
Parts will be available for everything from the Pixel 2 to the Pixel 6 Pro, as well as future Pixel phones.
From iFixIt’s website, you’ll be able to buy major Pixel parts that people commonly need for repairs, like new batteries and displays. What’s especially cool is that you’ll have the option of either buying the parts on their own or bundled into “Fix Kits,” which also include the tools you’ll need to perform phone maintenance, in case you don’t already have them. I know that I personally don’t have a “suction handle” lying around, so that would be extremely helpful once I figure out what that is.
This news comes just about a week after Samsung announced it would do the exact same thing for its Galaxy phones, right down to partnering with iFixIt to make it happen. Apple also announced a similar self-repair program late last year for iPhones, Mac computers, and more. Each phone that gets repaired instead of replaced can help with the fact that we collectively dump almost 60 million tons of e-waste into the world in a year, so the more tech companies who get with the program, the better.
