In 2023, a Consumer Reports survey found that 84% of Americans support right-to-repair legislation — yet the devices in their pockets are becoming harder to fix than ever before.
Marcus Ellery, 34, found that out the hard way last spring.
He cracked the screen on his Samsung Galaxy S22. Nothing catastrophic. A clean break across the lower corner, the kind that makes the phone usable but uncomfortable. He looked up a local repair shop in his city, bought a compatible replacement screen online for $47, and walked in feeling like a person who had figured something out.
The technician installed it perfectly. Then the phone booted up and displayed a warning: Unverified part detected. Some features may not function correctly.
The fingerprint sensor stopped working. The brightness auto-adjustment went dead. The camera app threw errors. Marcus’s $47 repair had technically succeeded and practically failed. He ended up buying a new phone two months later.
When was the last time you actually repaired something instead of replacing it? If you are struggling to remember, Marcus’s story might explain why.
The Law Said Yes. The Phone Said No.
Right-to-repair legislation has been gaining real traction. As of early 2025, 27 U.S. states have passed or are actively advancing right-to-repair bills, according to the Repair Association’s legislative tracker. The EU’s landmark Ecodesign Regulation took effect in 2021 and has been steadily expanding product categories. On paper, you have more legal right to repair your devices now than at any point in the consumer electronics era.
Here is what nobody tells you: the law governs access to parts and manuals. It does not govern what the software inside your device decides to think about those parts.
Manufacturers have shifted their primary defense from legal obstruction to technical obstruction. The strategy has a name in repair circles: parts pairing. It works like this. Your device stores cryptographic identifiers for every original component. When a repair is made using a part that does not carry the manufacturer’s registered serial number, the firmware flags it. Features get disabled. Warnings appear. In some cases, the device simply refuses to function fully.
Apple calls its version of this system “parts authentication.” Samsung uses similar serialization. John Deere does it with agricultural equipment. A 2022 investigation by iFixit documented that replacing the battery on certain iPhone 13 models with a non-Apple battery, even a genuine Apple battery pulled from another iPhone 13, caused Face ID to stop functioning. The part was identical. The authentication code was not.
Did You Know: iFixit’s 2022 teardown report confirmed that iPhone 13 Face ID failure after battery replacement was triggered purely by software authentication, not any hardware incompatibility.
The Portland Shop Owner Who Changed How I Think About This
Sarah Okonkwo has run a repair shop in Portland, Oregon for eleven years. She told me something that I keep coming back to.
“I used to explain to customers that their phone was working fine after the repair,” she said. “Now I have to explain why it is not, even when I did everything correctly. I have become a translator for corporate policy.”
Her shop’s revenue from smartphone screen repairs dropped 34% between 2021 and 2024. Not because fewer screens cracked. Because more customers received error messages after repairs and decided the shop had done something wrong. Some left negative reviews. Most just stopped coming back.
I have been in that exact conversation. It is not comfortable. You do something right and still get told you are the problem.
Sarah’s story is the clearest version of something playing out in thousands of independent shops across the country. The repair industry is being hollowed out not by legal bans but by engineered friction. A technician can have the skills, the tools, the correct part, and the customer’s full consent, and still deliver a diminished product because the manufacturer wrote the authentication rules.
Warning: Even if a repair shop uses an OEM-grade replacement part, parts pairing software can still disable core features. Always ask your repair technician specifically whether they have access to manufacturer diagnostic tools before booking.
This Is a Policy Decision Wearing an Engineering Costume
Do you know whether your device uses parts pairing right now? Most people do not. Most people do not even know to ask.
The manufacturers frame parts pairing as a security and quality control measure. There is a narrow version of that argument that holds up: some authentication genuinely protects against counterfeit safety-critical components. But the system as currently implemented goes well beyond that. It restricts repairs using authentic parts. It restricts repairs made by trained professionals. It restricts repairs you paid for, on devices you own, using materials that are physically identical to the originals.
That is not an engineering constraint. That is a policy decision engineered to look like one.
A 2023 study from the Harvard Business Review estimated that parts pairing and related software restrictions cost U.S. consumers approximately $20 billion annually in unnecessary device replacements, repair avoidance, and out-of-warranty service fees paid directly to manufacturers.
The right-to-repair movement won a legislative battle and is now losing a technical one. The legal right to repair means considerably less when the firmware denies the repair happened.
Pro Tip: Before purchasing any new smartphone, tablet, or laptop, check its iFixit repairability score at ifixit.com. A score of 6 or above generally indicates the device is serviceable without triggering major software authentication barriers.
Quick Wins: What You Can Do Right Now
You cannot rewrite firmware. You cannot force manufacturers to open their authentication systems today. But you can make choices that reduce your exposure to this problem, and you can do it without waiting for the next piece of legislation to pass.
Check your warranty language before you need it. Many manufacturer warranties contain language that voids coverage if any third-party repair is performed, even if that repair was legally your right to make. Knowing what yours says before something breaks puts you in a better position to decide whether to attempt a repair or hold off.
Keep your devices longer, deliberately. The average American replaces their smartphone every 2.5 years, according to a 2024 Deloitte consumer technology survey. Extending that to four years, even for one device cycle, removes one full replacement from the manufacturer’s calculation and one full phone from a landfill.
Support independent repair shops with your business even for small things. Screen protectors. Charging cable replacements. Cleaning. Every dollar that flows into independent repair infrastructure keeps that infrastructure alive for the moments when you need it for something larger.
It is messier than the advice columns suggest. You are navigating a system that was specifically designed to make repair feel harder than replacement. That feeling is not a flaw in your thinking. It is the intended result.
Your Next 3 Steps
Step 1: Before your next electronics purchase, go to ifixit.com, search the exact product name, and only buy if the repairability score is 6 or above. Spend two minutes on this. It will tell you more about that device’s real lifespan than any spec sheet the manufacturer publishes.
Step 2: Pull up your current device’s warranty documentation today and search for the words “third-party,” “unauthorized,” and “void.” Write down exactly what it says. If you ever need a repair, you will want to know whether you are risking warranty coverage before you book an appointment, not after you are standing at a counter being told coverage was already lost.
Step 3: Find one independent repair shop in your area this week and put their contact information in your phone. Use the Repair Association’s shop locator at repair.org. When your next device breaks, your first call goes there, not to the manufacturer’s service line. That one choice keeps money in your local repair ecosystem and out of the system that is lobbying against your right to use it.
You deserve to know this. The repairs are possible. The obstacles are chosen.
