HTC One Is Worst Smartphone To Repair, Study Finds

The HTC One has earned the dubious honor of becoming iFixit’s first ever smartphone to receive a repairability score of 1 out of 10.

HTC delayed its 2013 flagship phone by more than a month due to parts shortages and yield issues, now the company gets to deal with design issues.

The repairability score was given because the HTC One’s seamless, screwless design, makes it nearly impossible to remove the smartphones display without damaging the rear case. However, the display must be removed to gain access to the phones internals.

iFixit discovered that the zero-gap design could only be pried open with a heat gun and a suction cup. After opening the main design the team spent half an hour separating the rear aluminum case from the other functional components of the phone.

The team at iFixit tears down a lot of devices and rarely damages them. In this case it was a plastic panel surrounding the smartphones aluminum case that fell apart.

Once inside the smartphone the team finally had access to the devices component. The HTC One actually houses some really nice offerings including the Snapdragon 600 CPU that has been paired with Elpida DDR2 RAM and 32GB Samsung NAND flash memory. The HTC One also packs in a Wi-Fi 802.11ac adapter and Bluetooth 4.0 alongside a rather larger 2300 mAh battery.

Most smartphone customers would never attempt to take apart their own HTC One to fix issues they have perceived, however the poor repairability score means HTC could be forced to outright replace broken phones.

HTC isn’t alone in its low score, Apple devices have previously scored low marks through the iFixit process because of glue use in their design and other issues with smartphone and tablet builds.

One constant does seem to remain, when a smartphone receives a low repairability score it is often because the phone was built for durability while packing in a lot of features users want.

Will a 1 out of 10 repairability score for the HTC One scare you away from the smartphone?

[Images via iFixit and Daily Tech]