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

man holding phone with cracked and broken screen

The most common problems are smashed screens, dead batteries and faulty USB ports

(Image credit: Godong/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

published 6 April 2023

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.

How to beat broadband and mobile phone price rises

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.

Harriet Marsden is a writer for The Week, mostly covering UK and global news and politics. Before joining the site, she was a freelance journalist for seven years, specialising in social affairs, gender equality and culture. She worked for The Guardian, The Times and The Independent, and regularly contributed articles to The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, The New Statesman, Tortoise Media and Metro, as well as appearing on BBC Radio London, Times Radio and “Woman’s Hour”. She has a master’s in international journalism from City University, London, and was awarded the "journalist-at-large" fellowship by the Local Trust charity in 2021.