Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Ultra has once again scored a middling 5/10 from iFixit, suggesting that while the company knows how to build a repairable phone, it still won’t quite follow through.
In its teardown, iFixit describes a device that shows flashes of progress but remains weighed down by the same old problems that keep repairs harder and more expensive than they need to be.
“Parts of this phone suggest Samsung understands what repair-friendly hardware looks like,” iFixit concludes. “The company just keeps stopping short of fully committing to it.”
The biggest offender, again, is the display. As with previous Galaxy flagships, the screen is tightly integrated and heavily glued into the chassis, meaning even routine repairs can quickly turn into delicate, failure-prone operations. iFixit’s broader scoring criteria also take aim at factors beyond the hardware itself, including parts availability, documentation, and repair logistics – all of which continue to drag Samsung’s score down.
There are some improvements. iFixit notes that the internal layout is more considered, and certain components are easier to access than in older models, which shows Samsung isn’t ignoring right-to-repair pressure altogether.
However, the overall experience still reflects a company hedging its bets, offering just enough progress to point at without fully letting go of the glue-heavy, tightly sealed design philosophy that makes independent repairs painful.
A 5/10 score might have looked like progress a couple of years ago, but repeating it a generation later suggests Samsung has plateaued. For a device positioned at the very top of the Android market, that’s a hard sell, especially when repairability is increasingly being used as a competitive differentiator.
And competitors are starting to lean into that. The teardown lands just weeks after Apple’s budget-friendly MacBook Neo was dubbed its most repairable laptop yet, a rare moment where Cupertino made a point of improving access rather than locking things down further.
Samsung, by contrast, seems stuck in a loop: demonstrating it knows how to design more repairable hardware, then backing off before fully committing. The result is a mobile device that’s still not good enough to prevent a cracked screen from becoming an expensive ordeal. ®