Why Easter weekend is ‘riskiest time’ for phones and laptops

Easter is the riskiest time of the year for personal tech like mobile phones and laptops as data shows demand for device repairs rises by 24% at the start of April.

The findings, collected by Getac, show that tablets are the most likely tech items to break over the Easter holiday, followed by laptops and mobile phones.

The data, drawn from a decade of national Google searches, as well as Which? and The Restart Project, also showed a 6% drop at Christmas.

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Most common repairs

The highest demand was for fixing smashed screens, followed by dead batteries, chargers and faulty USB ports.

Some might blame holidays, with millions of Britons planning trips over the Bank Holiday weekend, “but it seems this isn’t the case”, said Manufacturing and Logistics IT magazine.

Over the summer, “when Brits jet off with their devices in their hand luggage”, there was only a 7% increase in repair demand. Half-term is “the potential culprit” behind the Easter increase, it said.

Plus mobile phones only accounted for 10% of repairs; it was mostly tablets (32%) and laptops (29%) that broke.

That has significant implications for the 44% of Britons that now work remotely during the week, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Devices are getting more expensive, and so are repairs. The average laptop fix costs anywhere between £60 and £160, with an average mobile phone screen replacement now costing about £170, according to Which?.

Norwich the riskiest

Interestingly, data showed that Norwich has the highest demand per capita for repairs, based on common searches such as “broken iPhone” and “fix laptop”.

Norwich topped the list of 62 UK cities analysed, followed by Lincoln, Wrexham, Inverness and Bath.

The safest areas for personal tech, according to the data, were Wakefield, Newport, Bradford, Lancaster and Londonderry.