Chapter 2: CH002
Phones naturally have a lifespan of 10 to 15 years. This duration is what made them famous, to begin with. If you were careful enough, it would have even been a family heirloom, passed down for generations.
But then this duration was not favorable for circulation and the gains were not enough to encourage producers. The advancement in technology was another thing, bringing the effective lifespan down to 3 to 5 years if you were careful enough.
Evil capitalism shortened this gap to a year or so.
Nowadays, it'd be a miracle if a model received updates after a year and a half. With the speed at which new models and versions are hitting the market, it'd be enough if nobody laughs when you take out your 3-year-old phone.
And all this is assuming the phone does not develop any technical issues along the way.
Producers go out of their way to ensure that the cheaper a model is, the more susceptible it is to hardware and software problems.
Just the user experience of two similar models differs depending on where it was bought and at what price. The performance might be worse if the governments don't have measures in place for quality control.
This is how they make money, and it… makes me angry, but understandable.
Lu Fan was sure that he could do the same if he were in the same position.
Technology was so far, why would I give someone paying hundreds of yuan and someone paying thousands of yuan the same treatment? There must be a difference or who would willingly spend more than necessary just to get the same product as everyone else?
As for having a uniform price tag, forget it. Lu Fan did not think he could do it. If you can make more, why make less?
Anyway, modern smartphones have very 'common' problems. Charging ports, dials, screen, battery, memory problems. All these parts have readily available spare parts and even official tear-down guides and tutorials on how to fix them.
Lu Fan easily found the parts that were prepared and got down to it.
He might have barely passed in calculus, but his hands-on skills were superb. It only took him an hour to fix everything that was visibly broken. As for the rest, he could only wait and see if the thing powered up.
"Let's hope this thing works, I can sell it for 200 yuan."
With a delicate but firm press, the screen came to life and the boot-up process was as straightforward as any copycat Android phone out there can be.
"This boot-up time needs some work."
It would be embarrassing if he went to sell it and had to wait for a whole minute. Awkward.
"Still using Android 6."
There was nothing wrong with it, it's just that there were barely any people still interested in this version. The official release has already reached Android 13, with the next shipments coming with Android 14. Hell, there were rumors of Android 15 already.
He could forcefully raise the version to 8, but any higher than that would kill the hardware.
"Let's just make sure the current version works fine first."
Full factory reset, clear all the distribution bloatware, block some background activities, remove some unnecessary stuff from the system UI and it is done. Doing anymore would officially remove this miserable phone from the smartphone category.
"That should do it."
[Hikki A230
Type: Personal Computer (Mobile Phone)
Status: Broken, Repairable
Upgrade Value: 0/1000
Optimization Points: 10
Optimization Parts: Screen, Body, Battery, Memory, Processor, Camera, I/O Module.
]
"…"
Lu Fan did not know what to say.
Surprise, there was none of that. The moment the panel appeared in front of him, he somehow had an innate understanding of what it was all about.
If he did not know better, he would have thought that he had this… thing from the day he was born.
Putting his hand on the phone on the soldering station he started trying out this new golden finger.
"Repair."
A white light flashed through the phone as a brand-new phone appeared on top of the station. He could even smell the cheap plastic they used to make the body.
"This thing is really magical. Just imagine how much money I can make just repairing things."
There were too many things that were broken in this country. If all he had to do was touch something and he could repair it at no cost at all…
The number of fakes in the country is staggering. Most of these products are not even that far from the original. Others only have minor technical issues due to poor production quality.
The number of dead stock in the market is worth millions of yuan. If he could somehow get his hands on those stocks…
"Hahaha… I will get my clothes wet if I keep drooling like this."
It was still cold, but Lu Fan's heart felt warm. All his worries disappeared instantly.
It could not be helped.
It would be a mystery if there was still someone of his generation who did not fathom the significance of a golden finger. This cheat meant for the protagonist was now in his grasp and his future looked brighter no matter how he looked at it.
He was ok with slapping faces if he had to. It might be disgusting to read about it so often, but now, he was ready to start practice sessions and master this sacred art.
Wild thoughts aside, his cheat was very simple to understand. It allowed him to upgrade things infinitely as long as he had enough Upgrade Value.
Upgrade was elevating the essence of something to a whole other level. Kind of like how experience points work in a video game. He could upgrade cold medicine to a cure for all respiratory diseases if he had enough points. It was magical.
Optimization was just concentrating the upgrade on a single part, focusing on a specific aspect. This allowed him to upgrade things that did not have upgrade value, or even optimize a part without necessarily elevating its level.
As for how to earn optimization points, he just had to produce more things and fix more things. The points gained from making things were more than the ones he could get from fixing things, but mosquito meat is still meat.
Lu Fan could not stop laughing like a fool.
"Optimize Processor."
A white light flashed and his optimization points bottomed out in a while. He was too excited to allocate them individually.
If anything, he just had to fix more things to get points.
Lu Fan excitedly looked through the phone, trying to see if there were any changes.
"Wow, I feel like this waste is smoother than the high-end phones in offline stores. Stress test."
He immediately downloaded an app and put all the system resources through the wringer. The memory was still shit, but the processor was all good.
Everything was running smoothly and if he did not know what was going on, he would have thought that the phone was idle.
As for memory and how it relates to speed, that was what caches were for. The new processor was that broken.
"I… I suddenly can't bear to sell this thing."
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone