Rico Cerva's guest appearances

Rico Cerva

The Restart Project Podcast

Ada Lovelace

Adam Minter

Kris De Decker

Mark Phillips

Leyla Acaroglu

Tim Cooper

Ben Wood

Alice Bell

Lewis Dartnell

Ross Anderson

Elinor Ostrom

John Barrett

Ravi Agarwal

Jenni Gwiazdowski

Alvin Hardy

OwlTail

Talking about the issue of smartphone repairability is one that has been unavoidable over the years. This month we decided to finally look at this problem in depth. Ugo and Janet are joined by Rico Cerva, one of the most skilled and well-known iPhone repairers we know. He tells us about how iPhone repair keeps getting more complicated and how the barriers against fixing them have changed for the worse. First, we take a look at some big electronics news in the UK. Regulator Ofcom announced that from December 2021 telecommunications companies will not be able to sell locked handsets in Britain. Next, the BBC reported that both the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party agreed that a repairability rating scheme should be introduced to products in the UK. This comes after France decided to introduce a similar scheme that will begin in 2021. Finally, we share some good news about the Right to Repair proposition that was on the ballot in Massachusetts. Despite a large-scale effort to scaremonger by the automotive industry, the law passed with 75% of the vote last Tuesday.  The seriousness of smartphone serialisation With the recent release of the iPhone 12, so came the new issues in repairing this device. YouTuber and advocate for Right to Repair Hugh Jeffreys discovered an issue that meant the camera on the newest Apple phone could not be replaced by third parties if broken. This problem, Cerva says, is down to serialisation. He says “You need the Apple machine to pair the new display to the phone. Even if you take two original screens and you swap them over, if they’re not the correct serial number, you’re going to have some weird glitches or issues.” Apple has introduced serialisation by pairing component parts to phones. The result is that independent repairers are not able to repair devices with spare parts – even genuine parts that have been removed from the same Apple product. This way, only repairers who are part of Apple’s Independent Repair Provider programme will be able to repair devices. This applies to even common fixes like screen and camera replacements. As such, repair will get more expensive and independent repairers will not be able to work.  Cerva points out that even though he has found physical workarounds for most of Apple’s pre-iPhone 12 repair barriers, the trend is towards total lockdown of these devices. These workarounds have to be performed on such a microscopic scale and with such delicate skill that most independent highstreet repair shops – and definitely at home repairers – are being pushed out of the picture. How is this affecting independent repairers? This problem is also not unique to Apple. YouTuber Riki Kim revealed that Samsung has also started to introduce serialisation to its devices via the fingerprint sensor and a recent software update. Together, Samsung and Apple devices represent two-thirds of the European market share, so these developments have huge consequences. Even Cerva, who can complete these complicated workarounds, wonders how sustainable it will be to run an independent repair business in the coming months and years. Repairers like Cerva work to provide a fair price and the best quality for their customers. But this means soon they may not be able to compete with the industry’s continuous barriers against their work.  What can be done? Cerva believes consumer awareness can help combat this worrying trend.  We point out that much policy work surrounding the Right to Repair focuses on hardware and the availability of spare parts. On software locks and serialisation, policy must catch up. Furthermore, if this trend continues, there is a worry that the issue of serialisation could spread to other electronic devices too.  What brings some light to the conversation is Cerva’s belief in the repair network and the independent repair community. He tells us how businesses with different specialities are coming together to solve problems and help each other provide services to keep going.    Links:  Rico Cerva: Logic board repair specialist/Instagram Restart Podcast Ep. 36: Fixing the impossible with Rico Cerva Reuters: Britain to stop mobile operators selling ‘locked’ handsets BBC: Electric goods ‘should have repairability rating’ The Verge: Massachusetts passes ‘right to repair’ law to open up car data Hugh Jeffreys: iPhone Anti Repair Design – Teardown and Repair Assessment Riki Kim: Samsung A51 Serializing Parts to Disable Fingerprint Sensor  [Photos courtesy of Rico Cerva] The post Restart Radio: The dangers of serialisation in smartphones with Rico Cerva appeared first on The Restart Project.

Talking about the issue of smartphone repairability is one that has been unavoidable over the years. This month we decided to finally look at this problem in depth. Ugo and Janet are joined by Rico Cerva, one of the most skilled and well-known iPhone repairers we know. He tells us about how iPhone repair keeps getting more complicated and how the barriers against fixing them have changed for the worse. First, we take a look at some big electronics news in the UK. Regulator Ofcom announced that from December 2021 telecommunications companies will not be able to sell locked handsets in Britain. Next, the BBC reported that both the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party agreed that a repairability rating scheme should be introduced to products in the UK. This comes after France decided to introduce a similar scheme that will begin in 2021. Finally, we share some good news about the Right to Repair proposition that was on the ballot in Massachusetts. Despite a large-scale effort to scaremonger by the automotive industry, the law passed with 75% of the vote last Tuesday.  <h2>The seriousness of smartphone serialisation</h2> With the recent release of the iPhone 12, so came the new issues in repairing this device. YouTuber and advocate for Right to Repair Hugh Jeffreys discovered an issue that meant the camera on the newest Apple phone could not be replaced by third parties if broken. This problem, Cerva says, is down to serialisation. He says <blockquote>“You need the Apple machine to pair the new display to the phone. Even if you take two original screens and you swap them over, if they’re not the correct serial number, you’re going to have some weird glitches or issues.”</blockquote> Apple has introduced serialisation by pairing component parts to phones. The result is that independent repairers are not able to repair devices with spare parts – even genuine parts that have been removed from the same Apple product. This way, only repairers who are part of Apple’s Independent Repair Provider programme will be able to repair devices. This applies to even common fixes like screen and camera replacements. As such, repair will get more expensive and independent repairers will not be able to work.  Cerva points out that even though he has found physical workarounds for most of Apple’s pre-iPhone 12 repair barriers, the trend is towards total lockdown of these devices. These workarounds have to be performed on such a microscopic scale and with such delicate skill that most independent highstreet repair shops – and definitely at home repairers – are being pushed out of the picture. <h2>How is this affecting independent repairers?</h2> This problem is also not unique to Apple. YouTuber Riki Kim revealed that Samsung has also started to introduce serialisation to its devices via the fingerprint sensor and a recent software update. Together, Samsung and Apple devices represent two-thirds of the European market share, so these developments have huge consequences. Even Cerva, who can complete these complicated workarounds, wonders how sustainable it will be to run an independent repair business in the coming months and years. Repairers like Cerva work to provide a fair price and the best quality for their customers. But this means soon they may not be able to compete with the industry’s continuous barriers against their work.  <h2>What can be done?</h2> Cerva believes consumer awareness can help combat this worrying trend.  We point out that much policy work surrounding the Right to Repair focuses on hardware and the availability of spare parts. On software locks and serialisation, policy must catch up. Furthermore, if this trend continues, there is a worry that the issue of serialisation could spread to other electronic devices too.  What brings some light to the conversation is Cerva’s belief in the repair network and the independent repair community. He tells us how businesses with different specialities are coming together to solve problems and help each other provide services to keep going.  Links: <ul> <li>Rico Cerva: <a href="https://www.logicboardrepair.london/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Logic board repair specialist</a>/<a href="https://www.instagram.com/federicocerva/?hl=en" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Instagram</a></li> <li><a href="https://therestartproject.org/podcast/fixing-impossible-rico-cerva/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Restart Podcast Ep. 36: Fixing the impossible with Rico Cerva</a></li> <li>Reuters: <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-mobile-handsets/britain-to-stop-mobile-operators-selling-locked-handsets-idUKKBN27C0UZ" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Britain to stop mobile operators selling ‘locked’ handsets</a></li> <li>BBC: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-54612879" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Electric goods ‘should have repairability rating’</a></li> <li>The Verge: <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/4/21549129/massachusetts-right-to-repair-question-1-wireless-car-data-passes" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Massachusetts passes ‘right to repair’ law to open up car data</a></li> <li>Hugh Jeffreys: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY7DtKMBxBw" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">iPhone Anti Repair Design – Teardown and Repair Assessment</a></li> <li>Riki Kim: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWC-K0GHYBg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Samsung A51 Serializing Parts to Disable Fingerprint Sensor</a></li> </ul> [Photos courtesy of Rico Cerva] The post <a href="https://therestartproject.org/podcast/smartphone-serialisation/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Restart Radio: The dangers of serialisation in smartphones with Rico Cerva</a> appeared first on <a href="https://therestartproject.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Restart Project</a>.

Restart Radio: The dangers of serialisation in smartphones with Rico Cerva

We interview independent professional repairer Rico Cerva, to celebrate the crucial contribution that repair businesses make to extend the life of all the gadgets we use. We talk about the personal stories behind people’s devices, the barriers to repair caused by manufacturers and the future of repair as a profession. On Saturday 20 October we celebrated Repair Day worldwide, with over 150 events that gathered people to fix together. Repair Day is about making repair more visible, and it includes the work of community groups but also that of independent repair professionals, like Rico. We are in Rico’s family home in Basildon, where he has set up his fixing lab. A typical work day for Rico is ‘like opening Christmas presents every morning’. He gets his orders through the post from individuals and repair shops worldwide, and he fixes them all on the same day (sometimes over 10 phones). Most of the faults he repairs have to do with dead phones, no longer switching on. Some present extraordinary challenges, like his successful data recovery from an iPhone X – which had been destroyed by a baboon or a chimpanzee!     View this post on Instagram A post shared by Rico Cerva (@federicocerva)   This year’s edition of Repair Day focused on our Right to Repair what we own. In line with this movement, Rico tells us about the barriers he faces when repairing devices. One example is the lack of publicly available schematics for Apple devices: if published they would ease the diagnosis of faults. Another example is the home button in iPhone 7 and beyond, which can’t be replaced by users but rather only by Apple! Although he is only 23, Rico already claims ‘to fix the impossible’. Rico tells us how he became interested in repair when his dad smashed his PlayStation with the car. Rico managed to get it back to life, and from then he wouldn’t stop tinkering with and fixing other people’s devices. He then moved to the UK from his home in Cyprus and worked in remanufacturing, running quality control on smartphones, and from there he eventually started working as a fixer at iSmash. In his free time, he would do fixes at home, shared through Instagram, concentrating on what repair businesses normally can’t do and ultimately decided to become fully independent with his own repair business. Rico is also passionate about sharing his fixing skills – he regularly runs microsoldering workshops and he also trains other professionals from repair businesses at his home in Basildon. Finally, Rico takes us through a repair in action, fixing the famous touch IC disease on an iPhone 7 (where the device switches on but gets stuck on the Apple logo screen). We open up the phone, we explore its components and we manage to fix the audio chip responsible for the fault. Links:  Open Repair Alliance: International Repair Day grows massively in second year Open Repair Alliance: About Repair Day Instagram: Federico Cerva iFixit: iPhone 7 home buttons aren’t user replaceable Motherboard and Forbes on iPhone 7 audio IC Rico Cerva’s Youtube channel: How To Fix The iPhone 7/7 plus Apple Loop Disease/Speaker and Microphone Greyed!  The post Restart Podcast Ep. 36: Fixing the impossible with Rico Cerva appeared first on The Restart Project.

We interview independent professional repairer Rico Cerva, to celebrate the crucial contribution that repair businesses make to extend the life of all the gadgets we use. We talk about the personal stories behind people’s devices, the barriers to repair caused by manufacturers and the future of repair as a profession. On Saturday 20 October we celebrated Repair Day worldwide, with over 150 events that gathered people to fix together. Repair Day is about making repair more visible, and it includes the work of community groups but also that of independent repair professionals, like Rico. We are in Rico’s family home in Basildon, where he has set up his fixing lab. A typical work day for Rico is ‘like opening Christmas presents every morning’. He gets his orders through the post from individuals and repair shops worldwide, and he fixes them all on the same day (sometimes over 10 phones). Most of the faults he repairs have to do with dead phones, no longer switching on. Some present extraordinary challenges, like his successful data recovery from an iPhone X – which had been destroyed by a baboon or a chimpanzee! <blockquote> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BmONeCcFVSm/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> View this post on Instagram </a><a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BmONeCcFVSm/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"></a> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BmONeCcFVSm/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">A post shared by Rico Cerva (@federicocerva)</a> </blockquote> This year’s edition of Repair Day focused on our Right to Repair what we own. In line with this movement, Rico tells us about the barriers he faces when repairing devices. One example is the lack of publicly available schematics for Apple devices: if published they would ease the diagnosis of faults. Another example is the home button in iPhone 7 and beyond, which can’t be replaced by users but rather only by Apple! Although he is only 23, Rico already claims ‘to fix the impossible’. Rico tells us how he became interested in repair when his dad smashed his PlayStation with the car. Rico managed to get it back to life, and from then he wouldn’t stop tinkering with and fixing other people’s devices. He then moved to the UK from his home in Cyprus and worked in remanufacturing, running quality control on smartphones, and from there he eventually started working as a fixer at iSmash. In his free time, he would do fixes at home, shared through Instagram, concentrating on what repair businesses normally can’t do and ultimately decided to become fully independent with his own repair business. Rico is also passionate about sharing his fixing skills – he regularly runs microsoldering workshops and he also trains other professionals from repair businesses at his home in Basildon. Finally, Rico takes us through a repair in action, fixing the famous touch IC disease on an iPhone 7 (where the device switches on but gets stuck on the Apple logo screen). We open up the phone, we explore its components and we manage to fix the audio chip responsible for the fault. Links: <ul> <li>Open Repair Alliance: <a href="https://openrepair.org/news/repair-day-strength/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">International Repair Day grows massively in second year</a></li> <li>Open Repair Alliance: <a href="https://openrepair.org/international-repair-day/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">About Repair Day</a></li> <li>Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/federicocerva/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Federico Cerva</a></li> <li>iFixit: <a href="https://ifixit.org/blog/9020/no-fix-iphone-7-home-button/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">iPhone 7 home buttons aren’t user replaceable</a></li> <li><a href="https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8xem8x/iphone-7-grayed-out-speaker-loop-disease-boot-loop-hangs-on-apple-logo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Motherboard</a> and <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2018/06/11/apple-iphone-iphone7-iphone7s-loopdisease-fault-broken/#46c9ec18f46a" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Forbes</a> on iPhone 7 audio IC</li> <li>Rico Cerva’s Youtube channel: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=492&amp;v=42usMGSbWHo" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">How To Fix The iPhone 7/7 plus Apple Loop Disease/Speaker and Microphone Greyed!</a></li> </ul> The post <a href="https://therestartproject.org/podcast/fixing-impossible-rico-cerva/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Restart Podcast Ep. 36: Fixing the impossible with Rico Cerva</a> appeared first on <a href="https://therestartproject.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Restart Project</a>.

Restart Podcast Ep. 36: Fixing the impossible with Rico Cerva