DISPLAY DESTRUCTION D'OH! Teardown cracks Surface Pro 3 screen Microsoft has pitched its Surface Pro 3 as a "tablet that can replace your laptop." That is unless, it seems, you want to repair or upgrade your laptop. Teardown specialists iFixit have posted their initial dissection of the latest Redmond tablet, and they've concluded that the surface on the Surface is poor for service. The …
Not just MS of course, but the whole business model where you basically throw it all away in a few years once you find that repairing it is way too expensive even for parts like batteries that have finite known life.
Makes me wish that the EU or someone would introduce a legal requirement for a 5 year warranty so that suppliers had to up the game in terms of MTBF and/or make repairs a cost-effective options once more.
I'm personally willing to give up a few mm of thickness to gain that cost saving and landfill reduction.
From the article:
All Surface products come with a one-year limited hardware warranty and customers have the option of additional warranty protection with Microsoft Complete, which gives customers two years of limited hardware warranty coverage that includes accidental damage protection.
Doesn't EU law require a 2 year guarantee for this type of thing? If memory serves Apple got in trouble for selling this as Apple Care so why should Microsoft be allowed to get away with it?
In the UK the legal length of the warranty can be up 6 years. As best as I can remember it scales with price, the more you pay for an item the longer you can expect the warranty to be. So you could expect a full 6 years on a car for example but a considerably shorter warranty on the twenty quid dumbphone you bought from Tesco. It also gets a bit complicated because after 6 months the burden of proof switches to the consumer to prove that they didn't cause damage to the product and that it is a manufacturing fault / component failure.
The UK opted out of the enforced 2 year manufacturer warranty as we have the Sale of Goods act which as stated above can protect an item for up to six years. This is honoured through the retailer though so pick who you purchase from wisely.
For devices such as premium phones and tablets I think that you should be good for at least 3 years.
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Right in principle but, more accurately, it's not a warranty and the six years is a different issue.
Warranty's really an arrangement between the maker and the retailer under which the former undertakes for one year following sale the retailer's duty to repair/replace. Trading Standards in UK have a rough benchmark that consumer durables should be serviceable for about 6 years -- and that, in cases of product failure (roughly speaking) not caused by the consumer, the retailer should repair at no cost or replace -- or refund (a proportion relating to age).
Big UK retailers seem to deliberately fail to train their shop staff (including managers) in the realities of the law and most will brush off anything outside the manufacturer's warranty. Solution is to call head office threatening Small Claims action -- in my experience they will always blink first.
When I've been to court, the judge took a commonsense approach similar to the above and awarded damages and costs.
legal requirement for a 5 year warranty
Oh man, that would piss off the Corporate Whore Masters screwing us over simply for the profit margin.
Seriously, corporations are now utterly out of control, they need to be **** slapped untill they remember, 'The Customer Is Always Right!' and given prison for tax avoidance (the CEO), and forced to give a quarter of their profits untill there are no more starving kids anywhere on the planet!
They are ruining this civilisation - and it started off so well...
/rant
The UK opted out of the enforced 2 year manufacturer warranty as we have the Sale of Goods act
John Lewis (UK) offer a two year warranty, on all things PC at least, without charging extra for the device. They also have the best customer service support (they'll actually phone you back when they say they will), I've come across.
"John Lewis (UK) offer a two year warranty, on all things PC at least, without charging extra for the device. They also have the best customer service support (they'll actually phone you back when they say they will), I've come across."
Quite agree. And they have given us 3 years on our Apple stuff. I would buy from them (even special order) rather than either Apple (OK direct) or some sh*t place such as PC Warehouse.
If you want to buy tablets and smartphones for tens of thousands of dollars I'm sure they'd be happy to give you a 5-7 year warranty.
The cost of the warranty is built into the price of the car, and the cost of a longer warranty would be likewise built into the price of tablets and smartphones. Most people will buy the cheaper product and take the risk. Those who want a longer warranty/insurance can get it from places like SquareTrade.
The car warranty thing is a bit of a sham though. A 7-year warranty doesn't cover a fair bit (clutch is one significant one that I've seen) and depends on you sticking to a fairly hefty maintenance schedule (at your cost) at authorised dealers only.
Would you be willing to do that for your electronic device? When you consider the things most likely to fail would be battery or screen which car manufacturers exclude as "consumables".
At least you can take a car to an independant garage and have it serviced for a reasonable fee, rather than being restricted to taking it back to the dealer, once the warranty expires. I doubt they'll be very many unauthorised service agents capable of repairing your Surface outside of the warranty period.
"The car warranty thing is a bit of a sham though. A 7-year warranty doesn't cover a fair bit (clutch is one significant one that I've seen) and depends on you sticking to a fairly hefty maintenance schedule (at your cost) at authorised dealers only."
As the owner of a car with a 7 year warranty (which is due to expire soon)
Wear and tear is NOT included in the warranty, however servicing can be done at any reputable garage not just authorised dealers.
Having said that the only warranty work I've had to get done is to get the stereo replaced.
The clutch on mine still works fine but then I don't ride the clutch. Clutch plates (like brake pads) by their nature are going to wear out faster if misused and it won't be difficult for the garage to check for excessive wear.
Instead of using glue to hold the components in place, how about you have it so that parts of the case hold the components in place? You wouldn't need screws!!! Not only would everything line up but it'll also make it a damn sight easier to repair. Microsoft, Apple, and whoever is listening, if you're going to keep on adding components and services to your applications that suck up vital computing resources such as CPU, RAM, Battery and HDD, why not then let the users of your services/software and by extension hardware upgrade the components if and when necessary?
"if you're going to keep on adding components and services to your applications that suck up vital computing resources such as CPU, RAM, Battery and HDD, why not then let the users of your services/software and by extension hardware upgrade the components if and when necessary?"
Outside of the odd Hard drive or RAM upgrade, few bother to upgrade in that manner. To most everyone else, "upgrade" means "new computer".
> To most everyone else, "upgrade" means "new computer".
But that is no longer the case, which is why the industry is in such a mess - no-one needs to buy stuff. People don't need the CPU upgrades they used to, but memory is one thing which can usually help due to bloat.
I still have a core2 imac which is fine for almost everything. I've got a core(1) laptop which is fine for web and video. These days, the upgrade is mostly in pixel density and battery life, unless you're gaming. In case anyone hadn't noticed, portability is more important than power for many people these days.
I imagine SP3 is right on the limit of what you can get into a casing that small - it's surely more of a technical feat than the iPad in pure "get a whole PC in a tablet"?
Maybe it reduces manufacturing cost, maybe the glue increases overall ruggedness (such as it is) - and does it also have beneficial thermal properties?
Why do iFixIt even bother reporting this? We *know* that these aren't repairable. They're not intended to be, and the manufacturers (whether Microsoft, Google, Samsung or Apple) don't claim that they are.
The point about ruggedness in the article totally misses the point - the fact that the screen cracked whilst prising it out of its strong aluminium (?) case doesn't show that the Surface isn't rugged, it shows that it's designed for strength when fully constructed, not when pulled apart.
All that said, I don't think iFixIt is pointless - I actually used their guide once myself to change the dock connector on an old iPhone that got wet - but I wouldn't wish that phone to be made any easier to take apart because chances are that if it were it would have broken much sooner, or much more seriously.
"I actually used their guide once myself to change the dock connector on an old iPhone that got wet"
You mean you repaired an iPhone instead of upgrading to the latest model? Yourself? Shocking. That goes against the belief system of every fanboi ever.
Allright, allright, I'm going. Sheeze, no sense of humour these guys....
I think you're deeply confused about how repairable most technology is, Dave. In particular, iPhone 4 and up are actually pretty easy to repair, it's only the older ones that are a pain in the ass. They have high repairability scores. Thousands of people a day use iFixit guides to repair their stuff, whether the manufacturer supports it or not.
So no, no one actually KNEW that it wasn't repairable until the attempt was made; quite often they are.
Would it be possible to design a tablet like this to have the battery slide in and out? You could reduce the additional space by having the battery latch to the other end of the tablet and using a reversible 5-pin connector (+ and - on each end and a 1-wire interface) to remove the need for guides or something of the like.
The SSD could just slide in with a small panel at the far end to seal the device with two screw posts.
Allowing these two things would greatly extend the life of the Surface lap-tabs and give them a huge advantage to tablets and a couple laptops.
"Allowing these two things would greatly extend the life of the Surface lap-tabs and give them a huge advantage to tablets and a couple laptops."
And it would also single-handedly kill the upgrade cycle of the manufacturer. The only reason some DO offer that, is because their marketing people deemed it better for sales in THEIR market, rather than if they didn't. Apple, Microsoft et al chose their model because it works best for their market.
Ever wonder why most if not all manufacturers offer user firmware-upgradable equipment, while only few actually offer a firmware upgrade after the sale? It's not because the first firmware release is perfect - it's because the attraction of being able to upgrade, is worth to sales than the (in)ability to fix any of their screwups once it's out the door.
Balls it would. Even desktops are rarely upgraded - only by the technical minority let alone laptops which are still fairly easy.
Even if your iPad were easy to maintain, few people would pay £100 for a new part on a 5 year old iPad...
"As with all of our Surface products, Surface Pro 3 is engineered with high-quality components to be as thin, light and powerful as possible and is designed to be serviced by professionals."
Read: Chucked in the bin behind the counter and handing the customer a new box from the shelf if it's physically damaged. (Cheaper for the company than actually training hundreds of staff to perform tedious and time consuming repairs. In worker hours alone a replacement would be cheaper)
I'd normally agree. However on this occasion the bit which really suffered for being so thin was the screen. This has a good technical reason for being thin; to reduce parallax problems between where your eye and the electronics think the tip of the pen is.
I think the bigger problem is the glue. Surely there must be some way of holding these things together without glue?
It's a numbers game. The manufacturers know that the easiest way to compare things is with simple numbers, and that most consumers like to have the "-est" device: thinnest, lightest, largest, fastest, loudest, whateverest. The fact that you'll have to smother it in a case means that they can try to sell you a case. And from their point of view making them unrepairable is a bonus as you'll have to buy a new one sooner rather than later.
It's the size thing that really bugs me. To take the extreme example, this year's HTC One Mini 2 is taller and thicker than last year's HTC One! Apparently I'm not one of the target demographic because it's putting me right off replacing my phone.
Fragile? A screen that cracks when it's being pried apart isn't necessarily fragile - it's being taken way outside it's design specifications.
If you wanted to replace the screen because it had cracked, then it wouldn't really matter that you'd probably break the screen by removing it from the case - it's already broken! (Though if you want to replace the battery, and you have to remove the screen to do that, you might have a point!)
In real life, you probably won't be able to replace the screen, because there won't be spare screens available to replace it with! That's already the case for many such devices, unless they have iDevice or Galaxy style market penetration.
Removing the screen is the first step to every Surface repair, so yeah. Surface and Surface 2 do have replacement screens available, so Surface 3 is almost certain to get them too.
I'd argue that the screen is "fragile" since it's thin enough that Microsoft probably won't be able to repair it, and will have to replace the screen each time. Sturdier glass would lower repair costs for them as well as everyone else.
There looks to be room for a full size one? So why micro? With the same aspect ratio as a DSLR, the ability to run Lightroom and Photoshop and a pressure sensitive pen this device has a lot to appeal to a photographer - so why doesn't it take the same size SD card as many cameras use?
(Yes I know you could use a micro-sd card in an adaptor in the camera - but who really wants to replace all their memory cards?)
I think you are taking the wrong approach to this. Microsoft has learned one thing in the early 2000s and that is that as soon they bring out a product that's usable, nobody will buy the following product. That's why so many people still use XP.
The success of Microsoft lies within their 1990s strategy of bringing out semi-usable products and making you hope that the next version will be any better. You sell your current product, but talk about the future.
CF is dead, and its successor XQD was stillborn. SD is up to 280MB/s compared to CF/XQD's 168MB/s maximum, and hardly any new cards have been released for years. Lexar's 3333x would be amazing but it's been vaporware for 6 months, without even pricing released, while SD continues to advance.
Regarding the SD size problem, SD to MicroSD adapters exist just like MicroSD to SD. Just buy one. Outside of the DSLR world, MicroSD is where the entire memory card industry is going, so it's no surprise. (I'm just insanely appreciative that a slot was included; even Google dropped them.)
From my personal experience, if a device like this is intensively used, the battery capacity will be significantly be decreased after 2 years- unless it fails catastrophically before then. Another weak point can be the charging/usb connectors. This M$ built-in "programmed obsolescence" is an outright scam.
The solution? Maybe the UE should make it mandatory for manufacturers to extend warranties to six years by paying an extra 10% of original purchase price before the standard 2 year warranty period expires. Since no Li-ion battery is going to last 6 years, this bad habit of gluing everything together will suddenly cease.
Another thing I would like to see is a mandatory "repairabilty index" sticker on all consumer electronics; which must pass a minimum limit or otherwise be banned from sale in the UE.
"Another thing I would like to see is a mandatory "repairabilty index" sticker on all consumer electronics; which must pass a minimum limit or otherwise be banned from sale in the UE."
Repair-ability is a bit subjective though isn't it? for most consumers the rating for ANY device will be 0.. maybe 1 for devices with removable batteries (Though I hardly class that as a repair)
I doubt that 99.9% of the consumers of any device nowadays would even consider taking their device apart.
People commenting on here tend to forget that not everyone has the desire or knowledge to fix their devices themselves.. and are quite happy to replace tech when it fails (or in most cases when they perceive that it is knocking on a bit and want something new).
It's not so much that people are quite happy to replace stuff, as that the cost of labour means that an hour of a technicians time will cost a substantial fraction of what it would cost to just buy a replacement - and if one component has worn-out/been damaged, maybe another component will need to be replaced shorty after you pay for the first repair.
Given the pace of change in a lot of consumer electronics, buying new instead of repairing also means new features, better specs as well as the all important "shiny, shiny!!" factor (and a new warranty, to boot!)
I imagine there are probably some football fans reading who wish their TVs had developed a fault in the weeks before the World Cup so that they would have had an excuse to replace it, rather than repair it!
I mean I can understand some of the decisions. Nobody cares if the battery or the electronics works, thanks to "Secure Boot" it's bricked by default anyhow.
What's worrisome is they apparently made it lighter, making it less suitable at its primary use as a paperweight.
I know that they know what they are doing, but your point is valid - the rule with these seems to be if you are meeting resistance, use more heat and distribute the pressure evenly (Especially on larger screens)
Given that the surface 3 is basically a laptop in a tablet form factor and will be kicking out a decent amount of heat I'd put money on the glue that MS use needing to be hotter before it gives up its grip...
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