Built to repair.
Designed to reuse.
Welcome to 2036. Smartphones haven't disappeared, and manufacturers still compete over design, cameras, performance, software and features. What has changed is what happens underneath.
Manufacturers now follow shared standards for key replaceable components. Batteries, charging ports, screens and other commonly replaced parts are easier to remove and, where practical, can be used across different devices. Modular smartphones had already shown that individual components could be replaced without throwing away the entire phone (Barros and Dimla 2021, 1613). By 2036, this idea has become an industry standard rather than the exception.
Spare parts and repair information are readily available, while longer software support helps people keep their phones working for longer (Barros and Dimla 2023, 925). When a phone is no longer wanted, it doesn't simply become waste. Working devices can be refurbished and usable components recovered to repair other phones.
Back in 2023, researchers were already imagining circular repair systems that kept devices and their parts in use for longer instead of sending them straight to recycling or landfill (Stead et al. 2023, 5). By 2036, this has now become part of everyday life. Recycling still matters, but repair, refurbishment and reuse come first.
In 2036, buying a new phone is still a choice. Having to buy one because a single part failed isn't.
Mission Statement.
Repair Over Replace
A broken part shouldn't mean a dead phone.
Every device deserves the chance to be fixed before it's written off. Repair becomes the default, not the fallback.
Compete on Ideas, Not Waste
Manufacturers still compete - just not on obsolescence.
Brands compete fiercely on design, features and software - while agreeing on shared standards for the parts that shouldn't need reinventing every year.
Circular by Design
Nothing gets thrown away until every option runs out.
Repair first, refurbish second, recover components first. Recycling is the last resort, not the first instinct.
Built to Break.
Design Obsolescence and the Lack of Right to Repair.
Common business models that utilise limited repair and design obsolescence to generate demand contribute to electronic waste and unnecessary product disposal. Lack of comprehensive right-to-repair consumer powers incentivised the repeated, temporary consumption and disposal of electronic products (Zongwe 2023, 100). These practices were most consequential in smart device markets, where the premature disposal of products increases consumer costs and environmental pollution.
In order to minimise product lifespan and increase consumption, businesses and technology manufacturers designed for limited repair, incentivising consumers to replace expensive technologies, rather than repair and extend their product’s lifespan (Malinauskaite 2021, 724).
2–3 years: The typical lifespan of a modern smartphone before it needs to be replaced or disposed of.
Products became increasingly challenging to repair, often lacking third-party repair options, designed as impossible to repair without destruction, or relying on manufacturer software that denied owners the ability to extend a product's lifespan (Ozturkcan 2023, 219). These intentionally flawed designs contributed to an ever-expanding collection of disposed electronic waste, while increasing the required extraction of rare and finite materials to replace them. The growing use of intricate components like computer chips has also made repairability harder to incorporate into the design. Apple AirPods and smartphones were often cited examples of this, as their lifespan of just 18-36 months with no way to repair them, meant they were discarded as hazardous waste once they failed (Taffel, 2022; Ozturkcan 2023, 219).
When right-to-repair legislative movements confronted tech industries about these design consequences, companies and manufacturers claimed that right-to-repair created security vulnerabilities:
- Uncontrolled access to technical information
- Risk of dangerous, unauthorised repairs
- Intellectual property exposure
Despite this justification, the lack of product repairability primarily encouraged premature replacement and environmental waste, while prohibiting consumers from increasing their device’s lifespan.
E-Waste Consequences.
Planned obsolescence caused increasingly frequent replacement and disposal of electronic devices, significantly contributing to the growing e-waste problem. Electronic products contain the following toxic components that can pose severe environmental and health risks:
- Lead
- Cadmium
- Mercury
- Flame retardants and other toxic compounds.
80% of e-waste from developed-country industries is illegally exported to lower-income countries - including China, India and Pakistan - where about and disposal costs are cheaper.
Parvez’s (2021) review of 70 studies, most of which were conducted in China, found people living near e-waste pollution had significantly elevated toxic chemical exposure. (Parvez et al 2021, 905, 915). Children and pregnant women were found to be especially vulnerable in the following ways:
- Reduced birth weight
- Lower cognitive scores
- Immune dysfunction
(Parvez et al 2021, 906, 909).
The impacts of designed obsolescence and e-waste weren't limited to pollution - rapid production and disposal of these products accelerated the extraction of finite resources. (Corrocher and Paganuzzi 2025, 2). Demand for rare metals like lithium soared, contributing to drought in major lithium-producing regions like Chile through the water use required for extraction. (Malinauskaite and Erden, 2021, 727-729).
Software Obsolescence and Incentivised Replacement.
Software obsolescence was an increasingly utilised form of planned obsolescence, where manufacturers used deteriorating performance to incentivise replacement. Unlike physical wear, software obsolescence can render a fully function device difficult to use through increasingly demanding updates and requirements (Corrocher and Paganuzzi 2025, 3).
Smartphones are especially exposed to this, given consumer dependence on manufacturers for ongoing software support and compatibility (Corrocher and Paganuzzi 2025, 4). In 2017, Apple was found to be intentionally throttling performance following iOS updates to compensate for aging phones, misleading consumer perception of older devices to incentivise premature replacement (Corrocher and Paganuzzi 2025, 4).
In markets for durable goods, manufacturers face declining demand over time as consumers reuse working products rather than repurchasing. To offset this, some deliberately shorten the product lifespan through:
- Software incompatibilities on older devices
- Performance throttling
- Limiting repairability
By intentionally introducing these limitations, manufacturers manipulated consumer perception of a product's remaining lifespan - encouraging premature replacement despite the device remaining fully functional. This dynamic placed an exploitable reliance on manufacturers to maintain proper product support. Manufacturers have exploited this dynamic to limit consumer independence, increase waste flow, and control replacement cycles.
The Human Cost.
The problems with smartphones are not only about waste and planned obsolescence, but also the labour systems behind them. Vercellone and Di Stasio describe “free digital labour,” where users produce data through everyday online activity without being paid (2023, 334). The digital economy also still depends on physical production and materials used in smartphone batteries and screens (Vercellone and Di Stasio 2023, 337). Huws argues that standardisation is a precondition for outsourcing and can make workers more interchangeable, contributing to increasingly precarious working conditions (2016, 13). The constant replacement of smartphones is therefore not just an environmental problem, but part of a global labour system built around continually producing new devices.
Repairable
Products
Replacement
Components
Updatable
Software
Standardised
Cabling
The Shift.
For decades, the smartphone industry ran on a simple economic logic: sell more devices by making the last one obsolete, whether by design, by software, or by simply making repair harder and more expensive than replacement. But that logic started to crack. Across legislation, product design and independent advocacy, a genuine shift towards repairability was underway – not as a distant hope, but as regulation already on the books and already on shelves.
Legislation catching up.
The most significant shift came from the European Union. The Right to Repair Directive (2024/1799), adopted mid 2024, required manufacturers to repair covered products – including smartphones – as a reasonable price and time, even after original warranty periods have expired. Every EU member state had it written into national law by mid 2026, and critically, the obligation applied retroactively: a phone bought years earlier still qualified once the direct took effect. The directive also required member states to actively promote repair through measures like vouchers, repair funds, and support for community repair initiatives, and established an EU-wide platform to help consumers find local repairers.
This built on France's repairability index, in force since January 2021, which required smartphones, laptops, TVs, washing machines and lawnmowers to display a repairability score from 0 to 10 at the point of sale, based on criteria like documentation, ease of disassembly, and spare parts pricing. It was a small piece of paper on a shelf label, but it pushed manufacturers to act: Samsung published disassembly manuals for the French market and Apple modified iPhone repair procedures specifically to lift its score. It also inspired similar proposals elsewhere in Europe and stood as a direct forerunner to the EU-wide repair obligations that followed.
The US tells a similar, though more fragmented story. As of early 2026, five states had passed dedicated electronics right to repair laws. Around a quarter of the US population lives somewhere with legal repair protections by that point, up from zero just a few years earlier. Oregon’s law went even further, banning “parts pairing,” the practice of using serialised software to lock replacement parts to a specific device, so a repaired phone throws up warnings or loses functionality. None of it was federal law, but the direction was consistent: more states, more protections, every year.
Standardisation was already happening.
Beyond legislation, the EU’s Common Charger Directive delivered one of the clearest wins for interoperability. Since December 2024, virtually every phone, tablet, camera and portable device sold in the EU has been required to use USB-C for wired charging, ending the era of proprietary charging cables that made switching brands an unnecessary source of e-waste. Laptops followed in 2026. It was a small piece of standardisation, but it proved that manufacturers who compete fiercely on virtually everything could be made to agree on a shared physical standard when required to.
The market proved it was possible.
Perhaps the strongest evidence that a repairable, modular smartphone wasn't just a fantasy is that one already existed in 2026. Fairphone, a Dutch social enterprise, released a phone that scored a perfect 10 out of 10 for repairability from iFixit with the Fairphone 6. Its battery, screen, cameras and even its USB-C port were individually replaceable with basic tools, spare parts were sold directly by the company, and Fairphone committed to software and security support for years beyond what mainstream manufacturers typically offered. It wasn't a major competitor, but it proved that the model works technically and commercially, not just in theory.
Mainstream manufacturers were moving too. Apple’s Self Service Repair program launched in 2022, had by then let customers order genuine parts, tools and manuals for many iPhone models, and iPhone repairability scores from testers like iFixit climbed as a result, from as low as 4 out of 10 to 7 out of 10. Google has partnered directly with iFixit to sell official parts and repair guides and offers up to seven years of software support on Pixel smartphones - among the longest in the Android market at that time. None of these companies had become Fairphone, but the fact that repairability scores had become something they publicly competed on marked a real shift in incentives.
Back then, none of it amounted to the fully standardised, universally interchangeable smartphone ecosystem the Modular Movement was pushing for, but the groundwork for that future was already in place: binding EU repair law, a working repairability rating system, mandatory hardware standardisation already proven with USB-C, existing proof-of-concept in Fairphone, and mainstream manufacturers competing, however unevenly, on repairability rather than ignoring it. Looking back, it's clear the shift wasn't speculative fiction bolted onto a real problem - it was an extension of trends that were already measurable, legislated, and in some cases, already sitting in people’s pockets.
Built to Last.
What we wanted to change.
We wanted repairing a smartphone to become the normal choice, rather than something so difficult or expensive that buying another phone seemed easier. This meant removing barriers such as hard-to-find replacement parts, software that rejected replacement components and designs that made phones unnecessarily difficult to open and repair (Barros and Dimla 2023, 924, 933; Malinauskaite and Erdem 2021, 731).
Most importantly, the failure of one small component should not mean throwing away an otherwise working phone. Smartphones needed to be designed so individual parts could be easily repaired, replaced or reused. Spare parts and repair information also needed to be readily available, while software support needed to last much longer (Barros and Dimla 2023, 924–925). The aim was simple: keep the phone, and its parts, in use for as long as possible.
Smartphones in 2036.
Today, in 2036, smartphone manufacturers still compete over the things people care about: design, cameras, performance, software and services. What has changed is what happens underneath. Manufacturers now follow shared standards for key replaceable components, making smartphones easier to repair, upgrade and keep for longer.
Batteries, charging ports, screens and other commonly replaced parts can be easily removed and, where practical, used across different devices. Modular smartphones had already shown that individual components could be replaced without throwing away the entire phone (Barros and Dimla 2021, 613). Our system takes that idea further by making repairable and reusable components an industry standard rather than an exception.
And when someone no longer wants their phone, it doesn't simply become waste. Working devices can be refurbished, while usable components can be recovered and used again. Back in 2023, researchers were already imagining circular repair systems where devices and their parts could remain in use for longer, rather than being sent straight to recycling or landfill (Stead et al. 2023, 5)
By 2036, this has become part of everyday life. Repair comes first, followed by refurbishment or the reuse of working parts wherever possible. Recycling still has an important place, but it is now the last option when a phone or component can no longer be repaired or reused. The goal of the Modular Movement has always been to transition to a smartphone industry where keeping devices working for longer is simply the normal way of doing things.
A Repair Economy.
By 2036, the Modular Movement had changed the type of work surrounding smartphones. Standardised components created more opportunities for local repair, refurbishment and upgrading. Right to Repair research had already suggested that repair could create local jobs because it is labour intensive and usually carried out locally (Möslinger et al. 2022, 39). The Modular Movement also pushed governments to support repair training and reskilling, measures already recommended in Right to Repair research (Möslinger et al. 2022, 47–48), while manufacturers were required to make parts more accessible to independent repairers.
However, we didn't want the repair economy to become another gig economy. Flanagan argues that flexibility and speed should not come at the expense of worker protections and career paths (2019, 74). For the Modular Movement, the parts should be interchangeable, not the workers. Standardisation needed to create skilled, secure jobs based around keeping phones working for longer.