To fix, or not to fix: When it comes to cell phones, that’s often the question

MOSES LAKE — It can happen in a flash. The cell phone slips and crashes on a concrete floor. Or it’s safely stowed in a purse – except the purse gets slammed in the car door, and that crunching sound isn’t good.

Or it was lying on the seat, fell out of the car and got run over. Or maybe – well, the phone ended up in the horse trough – don’t ask how.

There’s a lot on that phone, all those contacts. And how many people even memorize phone numbers anymore when they can just look up the name? That calendar’s got a couple months worth of appointments, and good luck reconstructing it. And the pictures – the first day of school, last summer at the beach, those really cute pictures from Christmas.

That phone is an essential part of life these days.

“It’s basically a little computer. You can look up the weather, call a friend across the country, do anything, really,” said Saul Hinojosa, manager of CPR Cell Phone Repair in Moses Lake.

So the portable device that’s part of everyday life is broken. What to do now?

“The data would be the most important thing,” Hinojosa said.

For most people, the pictures, the calendar, the contacts – the data – are the crucial components. Fixing the phone itself, however, may be an economic decision.

“It really depends. If you absolutely need this specific cell phone, yes, bring it in,” Hinojosa said.

The most common problem that brings a cell phone in for repair is the vulnerable glass screen.

“It’s very, very common to break your screen,” he said.

All kinds of things happen to screens. They get slammed in car doors a lot, for instance.

“The phone falls (out of the car) perfectly as you slam the door. Getting run over is quite common, as well. People leave it on the top of a car, or they don’t realize it came out of their pocket,” he said.

“We generally recommend, at the minimum, a case and screen protector, for example,” he added. “Mine, I always have a case and screen protector. You don’t want to be traveling, or camping or something, and have your phone break.”

Another common enemy of a cell phone is water.

“Although with water damage, if it is repairable, we generally always recommend replacing it,” Hinojosa said. “Water damage can be hit or miss.”

A water-damaged phone may keep working just fine for a year, or it may die tomorrow.

“At that point it’s a board-level repair,” he said. “Most of the time, we can definitely work on it. But the customer ends up paying more than the device would ever be worth, with those kinds of repairs.”

Getting the pictures, contacts or calendar from a water-damaged phone isn’t guaranteed, he said. A cell phone that went in a drink may need the services of people who specialize in retrieving data.

Hinojosa said depending on the phone and on the problem, it might be more cost-effective to buy a new one rather than fix a broken one, for even a relatively small repair, like a broken screen. He used a nearby cell phone, about four years old, as an illustration. Replacing a broken screen would cost about $150, he said, while a new phone with similar capabilities could be purchased for less than that.

In the case of multiple problems, it might be more cost-effective just to replace the phone, he said.

Cell phone repair makes up a lot of CPR’s business, he said, but he also repairs tablets, laptops, desktops and game consoles.

“We repair all that. And from time to time, odd stuff,” he said. “That can be anything, really.”

He has fixed the controls for wheelchairs and worked on power banks with broken cables, among other things.

Hinojosa has worked at CPR for about 18 months, but he’s been interested in computers most of his life.

“Playing around with devices, I’ve been doing since I was 10 or 11. That’s when I got my first computer. Ever since then, I’ve been interested. I grew up gaming, as well, playing video games. So that’s something that also attracts me to it.”

The potential of the devices makes them really interesting.

“You can do anything on them. It’s a tool that has infinite uses,” he said.

He learned how to repair computers working on his own phone and computer, and fixing phones and computers for his family and friends.

“If the device works, we can diagnose it using a computer. If it doesn’t, we just have to use our knowledge, the tools that we have,” he said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.