What Happens When a Cell Phone Breaks

By Osmel Almaguer

HAVANA TIMES – A friend of ours, one of those still living in Cuba, recently wrote to us, nearly in tears, because his phone fell to the ground and the screen shattered. He says the repair costs almost as much as buying a new one.

He also says he’ll be out of touch for a while and has no idea when he might be able to fix his phone.

Another Cuban friend, also stuck on the Island, hasn’t spoken to us in months—for the same reason.

A year ago, I managed to save up five hundred reais (87 USD) and sent them to my mother so she could buy a secondhand phone for 16,000 pesos (45 USD), because hers—already old when I gifted it to her after using it myself for over a year—had finally given out.

Currently, my mother’s phone is barely functioning because of the battery. Phones nowadays don’t come with replaceable batteries. Once the battery deteriorates, you throw the phone away and buy another.

Those behind planned obsolescence don’t take into account that there’s a place called Cuba where 8 million people need to stay in touch with the other part of the Island that lives abroad.

Around the world, it’s not a tragedy when someone breaks their phone, or loses it, or it gets stolen. You buy another one and download all your saved data from your Google account.

Here in Brazil, for the average worker, it’s not like you can just reach into your pockets and pull out the cash for a mid or high-end phone, but there are options.

With between 700 and 900 reais, you can buy a decent, functional, new phone. And if you don’t have the money, you can pay for it in installments, with interest rates of 5% or less. Also, if you want a used phone, you can get one for 300 reais on platforms like OLX or Marketplace.

My wife, who has been using a phone we bought used for 300 reais when we arrived in Curitiba two and a half years ago, will need to replace it soon because the battery no longer works.
We can pay for it outright using our savings or buy it on credit, but the most important thing is that we don’t have to throw up our hands in despair because a phone broke.

In Brazil—a third-world country with an emerging economy and overwhelming inequality—a cell phone is as essential as it is affordable.

Read more from Osmel Almaguer’s diary here.