The teardown found that the parts most likely to need replacement, particularly the display and battery, remain unnecessarily difficult to access. This is frustrating given that Samsung has demonstrated the engineering capability to design for repairability in other products.

The score matches the pattern seen in previous Galaxy Ultra models, where Samsung has made incremental improvements in some areas while leaving the fundamental repairability barriers in place. The company continues to use adhesive-heavy construction methods that make self-repair or third-party repair more difficult and expensive than it needs to be.

The result stands in contrast to manufacturers like Fairphone and increasingly Apple, which have moved toward more repair-friendly designs in response to right-to-repair legislation spreading across Europe and several US states.