Recently my Nokia E5 phone had been malfunctioning in a common way for the model that involves the headphone jack [1] and since it was out of warranty I decided to take it apart. What I found inside filled me with a newfound respect for Nokia's engineers. The phone's mainboard attached to the case with just 4 Torx screws and the replaceable modules like the headphone jack module and the LED flesh simply set in small compartments inside the back cover assembly. The modules connected to the mainboard through exposed flat contacts that would be held against similar contacts on the board when the phone was assembled. There were no tiny ribbon cables except for the one connecting the display. Ultimately, I was able to repair the phone by rubbing the PCB contacts that corresponded to the headphone module with an eraser to clean them.

I had previously disassembled an HP Palm Pre 2 and it wasn't pretty at all by comparison -- too much double-sided tape inside. With Symbian near dead chances are that my next phone will have a touchscreen, which makes me wonder if many touchscreen phones offer that kind of repairability.

[1] The so-called "Select Enhancement" problem. See https://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=d&output=search....

I think you are somewhat mixing cause and effect. Hardware is more and more made to be small and look good. Replacing a bracket by some glue helps make the package smaller (tip for Apple: make tolerances even smaller, so that batteries fit so tight that you don't even need glue)

Also, labour costs are so high (or, alternatively, electronics are so cheap) that there is little pressure to improve repairability and lots of pressure to decrease construction costs (even for stuff made in low wage countries)

I think hard-to-repairness mostly comes as a consequence of these.

At the other end of the spectrum, Lego and Meccano are cool, but few people would buy stuff made from it.

I just tried to replace a hard drive in a mac mini, now it's in the shop getting the fan I broke replaced heh.

For most people its not repairable. Some of us enjoy the challenge.