Booking a Mobile Cellphone Repair Appointment. Where to Repair?
Smartphones are a modern luxury of convenience – it’s pretty sweet to have the power of the internet in a tiny little computer in your pocket! So when we set out to start our business way back in 2010, we had a simple vision: offer a convenient and reliable mobile phone repair service for your convenient and reliable mobile phone! To this day, GoMobile Repair is still known for our mobile at-your-location wizardry despite the fact that we have a walk-in storefront location. So how does one take advantage of this luxurious service? To understand our mobile delivery phone repair offerings, you first must understand how phones are built and how we can fix them.
What’s inside your phone?
All cell phones are generally made up of a number of basic components. Put them all together and you have the 21st century’s greatest technological revolution in the palm of your hand. We’re all familiar with the touchscreen glass digitizer that allows you to swipe and select things with your fingertips (and which also unfortunately breaks when you drop your precious phone!); you have a vivid display below the glass typically made from some form of LCD or LED technology; there are speakers and microphones that allow us to speak through or to our device and hear an answer back; physical buttons and fingerprint sensors allow us to have a tactile interaction with our wee devices. The list goes on.
In the past, it wasn’t uncommon that if you opened your electronics you would be looking at a bunch of confusing series of wires and circuit boards all soldered together in an irreparable mess. Thankfully, most phones nowadays are designed somewhat modularly so that you can remove just the ear speaker, replace only the charging port, extract just the front screen, and so on. There are also a few parts in your cell phone that have a few bits of tech built into one part. For example, it is standard practice to have your charging port built into an assembly of parts that also houses the microphone, speaker connections, headphone jack (remember those?), home button controls and sometimes even antennae for WIFI, 3G and LTE. So if you break your microphone and your ability to charge your phone at the same time, you might get lucky with a two-for-one repair!
Modular designs in your smart technology is exactly what has allowed us to service your electronics on the road. Break your screen? No problem! With some careful disassembly and organizational skills paired with the right experience and parts, our technicians can provide many of the services we do at our shop right at the comfort of your own home, office or favourite café. So which devices are best suited for our mobile service?
Road-Friendly Repairs
iPhones have always been beautifully designed…but did you know the inside of your iPhone has just as much thought put into it as well? Generally speaking, iPhones are easier to open up and work on than your average Android. Although we are seeing some shift in this regard, we can still offer most iPhone repairs on the road.
Small, Modular Parts.
As discussed earlier, the easy-to-replace (at least, for us) small parts like batteries, speakers, and charging ports are generally fairly easy to replace on a lot of phones. Not every device is built the same way but, as a general rule-of-thumb, we can replace anything but the screen on most devices at your location.
Android Screen+Frame Repairs.
Most modern Android phones have a touchscreen/display combo that is glued onto a metal or plastic frame which houses the rest of the small parts of your phone. Removing and regluing a new screen to the frame is a lot of work but if we can get your screen replacement with the frame pre-attached, it saves us a lot of time. Ask us about this option for your Android phone if you want the service in your home.
Unfortunately, not every situation lends itself to the convenience of our mobile service. Here are the main reasons why we CANNOT do our work on the road:
Store-Friendly Repairs
Water Damage
When liquid gets inside your device, there are a lot of unknown factors. If you’re lucky, maybe there is just a battery replacement required. If you’re unlucky, it could be three or four repairs deep before your cell is up and running again. In any case, these repairs take time and you don’t want to be stuck with our hourly shop rate trying to solve this riddle at your home.
Adhesive & Androids
Due to the aforementioned water damage, newer smartphones have a water-resistance rating. The first line of defense against liquid getting inside your device is a sticky adhesive that is often used to keep your device watertight. Unfortunately, this also means its extra tricky to get your device open and also takes extra time to glue it all back together. For whatever reason, this adhesive is always much stronger on Androids than on iPhones.
Micro-Soldering
When the replacement of the modular parts like batteries, screens and charging ports don’t fix your phone, all hope isn’t lost. In this predicament, we have to look at the brain of the cell phone – the logic board. The logic board is a wafer-thin piece of technology that has hundreds of little components built into it. Although not easily repaired, we can sometimes perform the intricate motherboard repair with very expensive, delicate and often heavy tools at our storefront location. In the worst-case scenario, we may even have to send your device away to a specialist if we can’t do it in-house.
Lesser-Known Devices
We offer a lot of repairs for a lot of different devices…but just because we offer a wide range of repairs doesn’t mean we’ve done hundreds of repairs for each phone. Do you have an iPhone? Easy! We’ve fixed countless. Have a $2000 ASUS ROG Phone 2? Weeeell, you might want to bring that one into our shop.
There you have it! Now you can book your cell phone repair with GoMobile with confidence. Call us at 604-700-6049 to book your mobile appointment today or just waltz right into our shop at 245 W Broadway, Vancouver for a quick turnaround. We can’t wait to help you!