“My Store is a Laboratory”: Knowledge Produced by Smartphone Repairers

Abstract

Focusing on the documents produced by Swiss smartphone repairers working in independent stores, this paper highlights the “knowledge trajectories” undertaken by the information these practitioners uncover by disassembling phones, annotate and sometimes share with peers, competitors or customers. Based on ethnographic vignettes, this visual essay shows and discusses the ways such stores can be seen as a counterpoint to academic or private research & development (R&D) laboratories—because of the situated knowledge they produce against manufacturers, and their goal that is not simply to understand how smartphones work and behave, but to help customers whose phones are broken or corrupted.