Hasta La Gadget!

…or at least try to do so. The electronics repair specialists at iFixit put together a set of tools that will help you dust off and possibly even repair a variety of gadgets. It comes with spudgers, tweezers, cleaning swabs, and most importantly a 28-bit driver set that works with a variety of screw heads and sizes.

ThinkGeek says you can use the Refurbisher’s Toolkit to open up and clean practically any console. That includes the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4, as well as Nintendo and Sony handheld systems. The kit should also come in handy with some smartphones, laptops and desktop computers.

You can order the Refurbisher’s Toolkit from ThinkGeek for $100 (USD), $20 off its selling price on the iFixit store.

[via Boing Boing]

That headline is hard to believe I know, but it just might be true. Despite all of the things that we can do with duct tape, FiberFix may just come out ahead. FiberFix is a special tape that hardens into a steel-like material that is 100 times stronger than duct tape. Yeah, see what I mean? That is some amazing stuff.

Imagine repairing an item with this stuff. Chances are that it won’t break in the same spot again. It comes in airtight pouches because the resin that makes it so strong is activated with water. For the most part you can just use the stuff right out of the box because there is enough moisture in the air, but if you need to you can soak it in water. Just apply it to your broken item, say, the wood handle of a shovel, and after 5 to 10 minutes the resin hardens and adheres to the item you can use it like nothing ever happened. In some cases it can take up to 24 hours to fully cure and reach maximum strength, so for some jobs you will want to leave it alone overnight.

Prices start at $6(USD) for a 1 inch wide by 40 inch long strip, and you can grab a combo pack with three different sizes of FiberFix for $20. Not bad. This stuff is amazing. You just have to make sure you handle it safely, you don’t want to get this stuff on your hands or skin.

[via Gizmodo via Oh Gizmo!]

The other day I went to the Apple Store to pick up my computer and I felt like a celebrity. The person assigned to help me ran over and asked enthusiastically if I was Lily Newman. I nodded and immediately assumed that he recognized my name from Gizmodo and was about to tell me how quippy and brilliant I am. Because that totally happens to me all the time. Instead he produced my laptop, grinned at me, and said, "This laptop had so much wrong with it. It’s ridiculous!" Soooo, yeah. My computer had been randomly freezing for awhile, but I didn’t know it was on the verge of becoming an incredibly expensive pile of garbage.

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I’m a fan of gadget teardowns if for no other reason than to see exactly what’s on the inside of some of the coolest gadgets out there. Not too long ago I mentioned that iSuppli had performed a teardown of the Samsung Galaxy S4. The caveat there is that the company didn’t actually have a device to work with, so they only guessed what was inside.

On the other hand, iFixit has got their hands on the new HTC One smartphone and did a teardown the old-fashioned way using heat, screwdrivers, spudgers, and copious amounts of gadget lust.

The result of their work is a gutted HTC One smartphone showing us all the glorious insides. The downside is the One isn’t the easiest device to open up. In fact, it took the gadget surgeons over half an hour just to take the back cover off, and while doing it, they damaged the plastic bezel which surrounds the aluminum case.

Once inside, they found the brains of the operation – a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core CPU, running at 1.7 GHz, along with 2GB of DDR2 RAM, 32 GB of Samsung flash memory, Qualcomm power management and 4G modem chips, a Broadcom combo 802.11ac/Bluetooth 4/FM receiver chip, and a variety of other utility chips.

The HTC One’s 1080p 4.7″ LCD may look great, but it’s a pain to replace – as you have to take everything out of the rear case, including the motherboard – before it can be removed.

In the end, iFixit gave the HTC One an abysmal repairability score of just 1 out of 10. If you worry about breaking your smartphone and being able to fix it, you’d be better off buying insurance. Easy repairability just isn’t in the cards with the HTC One.

The world is awash with tablets, but if you’re a nerd who likes to tinker, it’s important that you buy one that isn’t too tricky to take apart, repair and upgrade. Fortunately, iFixit has released a list which ranks tablets according to their repairability. More »