Inside Shenzen's Grey-Market iPhone Mall 53
jfruh writes Despite being largely manufactured in China, iPhones are still too expensive for most Chinese to afford — new ones, anyway. That's why thousands come to a bustling marketplace in Shenzen that specializes in older grey-market iPhones. Many of them are damaged phones that have been refurbished by enterprising merchants. From the story: "Reselling iPhones can be a lucrative business. The Shenzen mall, called Open World Communication City, is based in the Huaqiangbei district, which attracts buyers from around the world who come here to shop for cheap devices and components. But some of the business is shady. Earlier this year, a person who claimed to have worked at the mall posted pictures online showing how dealers can refurbish an iPhone 5 to make it look like an 5s."
There's also the "Goophone i6" made in China :) (Score:2)
Repair (Score:5, Interesting)
It was like this in the Tepito market in Mexico City in the 80s... as well as all the refurbished and stolen goods, if you had a broken walkman or whatever, there'd be some guy who could fix it for you. I miss the culture of repair.
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Re:Repair (Score:5, Interesting)
The price of smartphones seem to have revived that culture to an extent here in the UK; phone repair shops started springing up like crazy by 2009 and now even my local cobbler has staff trained to do simple phone jobs. Most of the standalone places do PC and console repair, and customisations too. Admittedly, my handset came back from the cobbler scratched on the inside of the glass and with bits of leather and boot polish stuck in the corners, but you can't argue with a £15 fix over a £150 Apple Store replacement.
And yet, I have to ask around a bunch to find a guy that does professional-grade tool-sharpening. Go figure.
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You don't even need a heat gun if you're happy with replacing the whole screen assembly; it's a bit involved on a 4 or 4S but on everything else the screen is basically the first component you remove when you start taking screws out.
I do see a lot of broken screens in the UK too, mind. Mostly sellotaped up or something ridiculous.
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Here in Australia I see many stalls in shopping centers that can do phone repairs (as long as those phone repairs consist of replacing the screen on an iDevice or occasionally popular Android devices like the Galaxy S). But their primary business is selling overpriced cases/covers/screen protectors/etc/etc/etc for iDevices and sometimes Android phones.
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It is starting to appear in the US as well. I'm seeing "fix your iPhone" places pop up in the small corner stores that the old pager shops, title loans, and other dodgy places tend to inhabit.
Of course, one thing that gets discussed is how many stolen smartphones get taken apart and wind up at places like that. Of course, the motherboard of the phone isn't usable because of activation and IMEI blacklists, but screens, batteries, speakers, and other small parts are always in demand, especially for newer ph
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in the US about 3 years ago it was easy to find a guy on craigslist with a mobile iPhone repair service - they drive to you and repair it in the back of their van while you wait. Clearly a low budget single person operation, but I had no reason to believe he was using stolen parts or anything else dodgy. Repaired a broken screen and got several more years of good use out of the phone. I assume such services still exist, plus many small shops offering repairs.
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I miss the culture of repair.
Alive and well in China!
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I'm going to have to ask for a citation on this one.
According to the "special 301 report" only other countries pirate, while life in the US is full of non-pirating law-abiding citizens...
http://www.ustr.gov/sites/defa... [ustr.gov]
Even Canada is on the list, i guess because our copyright laws are not to the US' liking?
"Canada remains on the Watch List in 2014. "
Re:Repair (Score:5, Insightful)
I miss the culture of repair.
You miss overpaying for goods?
A repair culture exists any time it's significantly cheaper to fix something than to replace it outright. A couple hundred years ago there was a repair culture about everything including socks, because a new pair of socks was a luxury and continually patching old ones was way more economical. We stopped repairing our socks when they became cheap enough to throw away. Do you really want to go back to a time when you had to keep repairing your socks because you couldn't afford new ones?
I don't miss that. Not at all. I much prefer having the choice to either tinker with my gadgets when I have the time, or just buy new ones when I don't.
Re:Repair (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a balance. Some products are cheap but also fairly easy to repair, which is clearly better than simply discarding them for landfill or even recycling. Non-replaceable batteries are the worst since that's an extremely easy fix that most manufacturers are happy to support. Glued together cases instead of screws or even clips to save a few pennies. It's needless and wouldn't make products significantly more expensive, if at all.
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I've noticed that even Apple's walking that back a bit; the iPhones are getting more repairable so they can actually fix phones in-house instead of sending them off to specialists and handing out warranty refurbs like candy, which has to have been an incredibly expensive process.
The whole point's moot though, the most expensive consumer products are the least repairable ones, and vice versa. The argument advanced doesn't make any sense.
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I don't like having to re-buy goods due to planned obsolesce. Take TVs, for example. I have a Sears TV in storage from the '80s. The manual has circuit schematics, where to get replacements for the channel buttons, how to replace switches, what pots are used where. It was made so someone with basic soldering skills could at least maintain it. A new LED TV just gets chucked and you buy a new one, even though the problem could be a membrane contact that costs a penny.
The economy is getting shittier in ge
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Re:Repair (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, your Sears TV is suffering from "Survivor Bias" - it lasted that long for you Who knows how many thousands are sitting in landfills because they're broken? So no, you can't say "things were made better in the past because my XXX works today". Geez, I could say they made computers back then better because I have a 486 that still works today (with original hard drive).
And let's not forget cost - that 486 PC cost nearly $6000 new with a 14" monitor. You can get a new PC these days for $300. Sure I can repair that 486, but that's because it cost a lot when I got it. These days that $300 PC isn't as repairable because if it costs more than $50 to fix and it's older than 2 years, it may be time to just buy a new one. (The old one's residual value would be $20 when it was working, practically speaking).
And your LED TV? Given you can get 40" TVs for practically $200, and to replace that penny contact will involve probably an hour of time with the guy charging $75/hr, well, people would just buy new. Because what if it fails again a couple of months down the road? You going to spend another $75 repairing it (total cost $150). And again?
For a lot of stuff, it just isn't worth it - diagnosing the problem and fixing it costs way too much money. Unless you do it yourself for fun (i.e., your time is free) in which case it's a great way to get good equipment for practically free.
In other words, for a good chunk of things, repair is a hobby. it's cheaper when your time is worthless.
For cars, replacing it 2-3 years usually corresponds with a lease arrangement. And cars are quite repairable - that failed relay can usually be repaired for a few hundred bucks in labor. Or a few hours if you do it yourself.
And there have always been people who nurse their aging cars - to the point where we even call them "beaters". If you're willing to put up with a lot, the modern computer-controlled car can fail in many ways and still keep going while the old mechanicals with carbs and distributors would just be dead. You should get a OBD scanner on those to see the fault code, and you'll find practically everything has failed (if the check engine light is off, it means it's burned out having been on for the past 10 years).
The other reason is economy - those 2-3 year lease/fleet returns are cheap, so you can get a fairly decent car when someone else has eaten the depreciation.
Then there's the group of real fanatics who spend $10,000 to fix their car worth $2000 tops (and less as scrap).
Not survivor (Score:2)
First off, your Sears TV is suffering from "Survivor Bias" - it lasted that long for you Who knows how many thousands are sitting in landfills because they're broken? So no, you can't say "things were made better in the past because my XXX works today".
Read again, he's not saying that his Sears TV is better *because it still works*. It's not survivor bias.
He's saying:
- back then, a TV was expected to be repaired and came with all the necessary information to do a repair.
- nowadays, things are made much more difficult for any one wanting to repair: good luck finding the schematics of any modern LED TV.
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It depends on the technology. Cars, iPhones, and computers tend to change often.
Maybe a better item would be an example of something that really doesn't change much. For example, generators. Take a 3000 watt generator that is used for RV-ing. One can buy a no-name Chinese variant. However, if something breaks, parts are extremely hard to find since the generators have different generations as they change fairly often. A carb that fit well on this month's batch of models would be useless 6-12 months fr
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On the other hand, there are plenty of LCD monitors thrown away even though a $25 CFL and 10 minutes could have it up and running if you could get the right CFL.
And don't forget that the time to go get a new whatever isn't free either. Some problems can be fixed in less time than it takes to buy a new one if it's reasonably made to be repaired.
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The problem is devices that WOULD be significantly cheaper to repair if parts were more easily (and reasonably) available and if the things weren't designed to be harder to repair.
Often the repair hostile design isn't in any way cheaper to manufacture.
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As someone in manufacturing, you're wrong. Repairable things cost far more to manufacture. I have to have accurate drawings and records of manufacturing processes for parts, I have to have specs for all the little bits and pieces, and I have to have manufacturers who hold that standard.
If I'm not concerned about repairs, I just contract out based on function, bolt the thing together, and run it out the door.
Fridges are a great example. I can buy a cheap dorm fridge for $100, or I can buy same-sized Isot
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So you're claiming it is somehow cheaper to produce 10,000 desk fans with 3 phillips head screws and one security head crew epoyed in than it is to produce the same run of fans with 4 phillips screws?
You claim the parts are interchangable on the assembly line but somehow not on the repair bench?
Or are you claiming somehow that it's cheaper to have employees assemble random piles of parts in bespoke fashion than it is to have them putting the same parts in the same place every time?
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The problem is devices that WOULD be significantly cheaper to repair if parts were more easily (and reasonably) available and if the things weren't designed to be harder to repair.
I keep hearing this complaint - that there are devices out there which are "designed to be harder to repair" - but, at least in my experience, that's incredibly rare. More often devices are designed to be difficult to open due to concerns about warranty claims on modified items, and even THAT is pretty rare. Every electronic gizmo which I currently own can be opened with relative ease. Most of them I would be able to perform SOME repairs on, as long as it doesn't involve having to replace chips or capaci
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I keep seeing things with several regular screws and one a funky type (security torx and such), If they want to make it tamper evident, put a dot of acrylic on the screw,
Then there's clips that will snap together to make a tight fit exactly once. And of course the stupid plastic rivets.
I have no idea what devices you are seeing.
Part of the defamed "e-waste" culture (Score:5, Interesting)
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I order a lot of stuff from Shenzhen via Alibaba.
I've never had a problem, and what I order seems to be of high quality and all the vendors I've dealt with have been reasonable and even accepted returns. Long story short, they're as good as any US vendor I've dealt with.
Re: Shanzhai Part of the defamed "e-waste" culture (Score:2)
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AFIAK, it is more like "tribute", like an Elvis tribute band.
The ironic thing is that tinkerers are the people that started the computer industry. If it were not for MIT's model railroad club and hobbyists from the two Jobs to Linus and Jolitz making basic operating systems, the world would look completely different. (Most likely we would be using Compuserve like forums with TV set top boxes for "internet" access, paying by the kilobyte, more if we actually stepped up to a 2400 bps modem.)
Because of this
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You need to get out more. Tinkerers still tinker. You couldn't stop us with explosive tamper resistant enclosures. Yes I'm old, but I know lots of kids who also wrench their cars. Go to an autocross event or a drag race.
These days you upload a new fuel map to your ECU. But it's not fundamentally different from changing jets on a carb.
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Apple's been using Gorilla Glass in the iPhone since day one; arguably they're the reason why it's commercialised at all, given that it was still a lab project when they started investigating Corning as a supplier. They're such a big customer that Corning's shares fell when the implausible rumours of sapphire-covered iPhones started appearing.
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They are still using, AFIAK, with the latest gen iPhones, as they mentioned "ion strengthened" glass, which is what Corning's product is.
I think the iWatch will be the first product with the sapphire glass research, since it is better with smaller screens. Plus, there is a difference between scratch resistance and shatter resistance. A watch can use a lot more scratch resistance than shatter resistance, so a harder, more brittle glass like sapphire glass would be more useful as opposed to something a bit
I love Asian tech districts (Score:2)
Indicators (Score:1)
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Good old "Robbers"
A company which charges far more then the cost of postage to have a paper bill sent, but flip side send an endless stream of unsolicited bulk mail.
No matter how hard you ask to be removed from their junk mail it keeps coming but to "protect the environment" you have to pay for your bill. Alternatively, you can have your bill sent via email where it can get lost in their electronic spam.
Not just old stuff (Score:2)
My girlfriend was telling me that and iPhone 6 in China can sell in a place like that for 5x the purchase price or more, because it hasn't been launched there yet. I did notice quite a few Chinese speakers at the shops today, as many as the Japanese in some cases.
Story link doesn't work (Score:2)
The link to the actual article in the summary doesn't work. Does anybody have the right link?
Once again, proving just how much work is done by the "editors" around here.
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The link to the actual article in the summary doesn't work. Does anybody have the right link?
Once again, proving just how much work is done by the "editors" around here.
Huh. It started working again. Nevermind.
wow (Score:1)