Techies have new fix-it man in Reddix
Published 12:05 am Sunday, March 8, 2015
That tinkering spirit took off in Adrian Reddix from the first time he took a computer apart and put it back together again.
“I started to be in love with technology in third grade,” Reddix said. “That first computer was a Compaq, with Windows 95. I was just fascinated with how it worked and how it ran. Someone threw it away at school.
Reddix, a Biloxi native and solo fix-it man behind Artech Wireless Repair, at 105 Williams St., off Halls Ferry Road, didn’t completely forget his techy roots through Alcorn State University, where he majored in history and met his wife, Rebekah. Jobs in retail and check cashing didn’t cure his urge to tinker. A chronic dearth in electronics repair shops in Vicksburg did.
“I’ve always been a nerd, always interested in how things came to be, whether it be computers or not,” the 28-year-old entrepreneur said. “I asked myself, ‘What does this area need that it doesn’t already have’?” Reddix said. “You could buy another phone, or go all the way to Monroe or Jackson and they might be able to fix it for you. This area needed something like that at an affordable price.”
Inside his modest office space, Reddix repairs the innards of what makes smartphones smart — the sim card and A6 chips in the iPhone, for example. He fashions new charger ports for customers with cellphones and tablets with the help of a soldering iron, heat-seals screens to replace cracked ones and deals with issues when DIY goes wrong.
“If you mix the screws up and over-tighten them, you destroy the board and there’s only a 60 percent chance it can be repaired,” Reddix said.
His advice is as simple, yet smart, as his single work desk and lamp.
“I try to avoid opening the phone up as much as possible and just do the obvious,” Reddix said. “Because if I open your phone, it’s $50. Let’s go with the easiest thing first.”
If performance is sketchy and apps are slowing down, he’ll recommend solutions by rifling through the settings app on any smartphone.
“People don’t have concept how much a gigabyte is,” Reddix said. “They think it’s an endless web. A lot of times, it’s thousands of pictures or a bunch of music. It’s not backed up, either.”
His most common emergency situation from customers is dropping phones in toilets — or something even smellier.
“One lady brought one in and said she was in the woods when her phone fell in a puddle of murky, muddy water,” Reddix said. “It was just oozing out. It didn’t smell like muddy water, I just don’t know. I’ve found insects, red ants, soda, applesauce — anything that can get in a phone.”
Reddix wants to expand into selling accessories and build an inventory of smartphones for sale. At the same time, he wants to save his customers money on the small stuff, like basic maintenance.
“Don’t use cheap chargers,” he said. “I know it sounds elitist, but those brand-name chargers have enough circuits to control the amount of energy going to your phone. Turn your phone off at least once a week to reset the memory and invest in a quality case.”