by Eric Palmatier

Created on: February 12, 2009

These days, most consumer wireless products have an expected lifetime of less than five years. Many people switch phones around the end of their contract term. However, as wireless phones have saturated most markets, phones have become cheaper to make, less expensive to buy, and seemingly less-valued by everyday users.

As wireless phones moved from the technical, business, and services fields into common every day use, one might find rougher users, people with a more "disposable product" mentality, or distracted multitaskers unable to hold on to their phone while doing everything else.

In addition to the average wireless user becoming more accident-prone, phone quality has had to shift to meet market demand. The early days of mass marketing for the wireless industry relied heavily on free phones with contract to lure new subscribers. Those early phones were bulky, simple, and built with a longer lifespan in mind. Since the late 1990s, phone manufacturers have been able to move to smaller designs as technology improved, but also felt a lot of pressure to provide less expensive phones that still brought a profit for the phone manufacturer while maintaining a certain price point with wireless service carriers to sell for next to nothing in exchange for two years or more of residual income.

In the last ten years, wear and tear has increased while phone durability has, on average, decreased. Because a good number of the millions with wireless seemingly cannot live without their phone, phone manufacturers have largely moved away from warranty repairs and gone to warranty replacements. One doesn't typically take their cell phone to the local electronics shop and have it fixed - now, you simply take the phone to the carrier or manufacturer for similar replacement.

The art of phone repair is a rare, and usually financially inefficient, way to fix a problem with your wireless phone. However, due to contract terms and subsidies, there is a growning market for self-repair suppliers who have completely descimated their phone and cannot afford the price of replacement. Additionally, there is a growing market for modification - the process of modifying your phone physically to suit your personal tastes and style - that has spawned businesses which cater to wireless phone parts.

One can easily find parts online for their favorite or least favorite wireless device. The Internet fosters a large nuymber of companies that cater to people who need to repair their broken phone, or those

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