SO. MUCH. THIS.
Consumers however are at the heart of an unhealthy culture of frequent device upgrades
Yes, blame it on the consumer and not on the companies that spend an incredible amount of money to first hire marketeers that think all day long of the best way to push ‘new’ products, and then run costly campaigns to spread the word.
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I think what people are missing here is that although a new phone comes out every year, not every consumer is on the same upgrade schedule.
If I keep my phone for five years then that’s four phones in not getting.
While I agree with you and work on the same timetable I think their point still very much stands.
Look at cars, for example. A model is defined by it’s generation with each model year generally only having small upgrades, if any. With much of our lives if we were to wait that long we’d not miss one generation but instead feel five or more generations behind the curve.
There’s so little of a need for a new phone every year that Apple now sells the iPhone 13, 14, and SE on top of whatever generation is current because they know that the newest tech is just not worth it anymore. Samsung does exactly the same thing and no amount of high-horse whining from Android users will change the fact that those companies are just as bad about it.
We love to throw functional shit in the bin. We love to have overpowered stuff on the off-chance we might need it one day every couple years and we’re too pathetic to either just deal with it or to simply borrow/rent a better thing for that one instance(90% of truck and SUV drivers can absolutely go fuck themselves).
I think along this line of reasoning when it comes to evaluating myself. It’s how I keep myself in check and “sharpen” myself as a person. I like to remind myself of how often I fall short of it though. I also like to remind myself of the things that I have going for me that others might not have had.
When I play the more charitable viewpoint of other people’s life experiences out in my head, it’s usually pretty easy to see them getting where they are. There’s a lot of suffering in this world, and large, effectively international companies are finding ways to exacerbate that in order to keep their businesses growing. It’s nice to sit down after a long day and veg out to short little videos, where each gives you a little chuckle or smile. It’s not that hard to get caught in the trap.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I agree completely that the path we’re going down is concerning and scary, and individuals can absolutely put the work in to make their lives better and elevate above the mainstream, but for any given person, that can be very difficult for any multitude of reasons, and we can’t forget compassion for them.
I don’t think there were ever that many of us who read Adbusters every month, but it’s likely even fewer now.
I think that reality TV and social media influencers have had as much to do with people embracing conspicuous consumption as a culture as much as advertisers have.
I’m not saying consumers are not to blame, but i have objections against the phrasing; as if it’s primarily blaming consumers. I myself am not quite a minimalist, but do have strong tendencies in that direction. So, i never cared about fashion, or buying the newest gadgets. And i know there are people who are the complete opposite. However, i do feel that companies fuel the greed of consumers big time.
While consumers need to educate themselves/be educated by their caretakers and schools, i feel the heart of the matter is the marketing culture and the tendency of companies of hiding shady practices, like profiting from child slaves who have to mine precious metals, or women slaving away in factories for long hours, while risking their lives and bodies due to unsafe machinery, buildings and being bullied by their
employeesemployers, for a shamefully low salary. Edit to replace the word employees
While these sorts of practices are legal, consumers need to be educated.
I have another idea - get rid of capitalism.
Great idea, what are we replacing it with?
Yeah, let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater just yet. Capitalism is an incredible engine, but it needs guard rails.
The whole infinite growth mentality caused by companies being public on the stock market is the real poison I think. So lets just axe the whole thing. No more stock market, every company is private again.
Which means no more stock speculators, or stock buybacks, or market manipulation schemes. Just companies selling their products to consumers based on their own metrics.
Well, for starters, this obliterates most people’s retirement plans, so that’s a bit of a hurdle.
That aside, what would happen is private equity firms and investment banks simply buying up most public companies, so I don’t really see the grand improvement here.
I hate so much this talking point:
the system has captured the retirements, so we can’t abolish it.
Like if we need this load of bull to support retirement, we should rethink everything from the ground up.
To be honest, you cannot achieve capitalism with guard rails.
Rich individuals will accumulate money then bribe or donate to politicians to earn more money thus more bribes then more influence and so on.
Take USA as an example, big corporations have monopoly on almost everything and you as a citizen cannot do anything about it. Sure you can vote but either way, donations to politicians always win.
EU is better but not much. After GDPR, every website would interrupt you to say how they will sell your data and tell you to leave if don’t like it.
I agree, I don’t think any one system is the answer, they all have their strengths and weaknesses… a combination of them would be a better idea.
With humanity.
That’s a vague platitude.
Capitalism works becuase we live in a transactional reality. Food could not grow on trees of the tree didn’t take capital (I.e. resources such as nutrients from the soil, light and heat from the sun) to grow that apple. If farmers did not account for the resources the tree needs the tree would simply die.
The issue with capitalism today is that we over apply it and forget to help people who truly need help, and thanks lobbying by sociopathic business owners, we have created a system where we much engage with learned sociopathy to survive and function. We look down at the homeless sick and needy and invent backstories to justify their suffering. They must be drug abuses, violent, lazy, etc cetra.
Capitalism has nothing to do with resources. I think insurance is a great example of that.
We sell nebulous ideas all the time.
If anything our economy is based off of services now.
I would argue ability to provide a service is in it’s self an abstract form of capital.
Time, energy and willpower can also be viewed as a capital. There’s a reason business owners will pay people to be doing work they could easily do themselves. And I think it’s important that we as a society recognise that any time or energy spent transactionally should be properly compensated.
Of course we shouldn’t fall for the trap of trying to maximise and optimise every last ounce of capital in our lives, its important to learn to let go of our posessive human nature. But we should appreciate when we are giving and taking things to and from other people.
That is not an answer. You’d have credibility if you said, “I’m actually not sure.”
I’ll stick with Capitalism, then…
Why am I suddenly seeing so much discussion about capitalism these days? This is way above the usual background level of how often this topic gets brought up in various circumstances.
It’s a convenient abstract entity that can be used as a general boogeyman and blamed for all things.
For sure, some things are indeed a direct consequence of capitalism, but lots of other problems come from the simple existence of things having costs, scarcity existing, and humans not being completely selfless. No amount of economic re-arrangement is going to get you away from those things, but it’s nice to imagine so.
I don’t really like this trend of absolving consumers of literally all agency in how they spend their money. Outside of practices that intentionally try to make older products obsolete like purposeful throttling - which should absolutely be shamed and made illegal - no one is holding a gun to your head and telling you to buy the new phone or else. If someone decides that a product is a worthy use of their money and decides to purchase it, then so be it. People aren’t children and can decide how they’d like to spend their money, and I really don’t see what’s wrong with a company trying to convince you to do so. People can make their own choices, and that includes financially poor ones. They can also choose to prioritize different things than you or I might.
Ultimately, if you don’t want to buy a new phone, don’t. They’re really quite good nowadays and tend to last a while. There will of course continue to be shiny new things, and if having the newest thing is truly important to you, you can decide to spend your money on it. Or, you can also not. But to say that consumers have essentially no choice and are simply the poor victims of marketing with no real agency at all is reductive to the point of being almost patronizing.
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Absolutely, and for products and markets that are essentially necessary to life, there’s a much stronger case to be made for strong regulation since the potential for exploitation is much higher (the nightmare that is the entire healthcare industry exemplifies this perfectly, since market forces don’t work well when you’re unconscious or will otherwise die).
But for luxury items, which high-end smartphones undoubtedly are? Yeah, consumers can take a little bit of accountability.
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Whelp, your point can still be made without the first sentence. The fediverse has this reputation of being unfriendly which push newcomers away, so we’ll have to do something about it ourselves. Something as simple as not being snarky unless it’s absolutely necessary would help the fediverse community a lot. Cool template btw, I’m going to save for later.
Imagine how shocked I was to discover that our friend pimento64 also casually revealed themselves to be a homophobe.
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I don’t.
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The fundamental truth is that companies would not make a bunch of new phones if there were not people that wanted to buy them, for one reason or another.
And it’s not as if the smartphone market isn’t littered with failed products and ideas. Marketing can do a lot, but it’s not able to generate demand for a product that consumers simply do not want. You might remember the pushes for 3D displays, WiMAX, modular phones, styluses, the recent push for foldable devices, etc etc. These failed because consumers simply did not want them. Motorola, HTC, LG, etc failed because consumer did not want their products and they were generally inferior.
Again, you do not need to buy a new phone every year. There are people who do voluntarily want to do that though, and so companies will provide products to meet that desire. I simply do not understand this compulsion to insert yourself into a blatantly voluntary transaction, with the customer wanting a new phone, the company providing one, and you stating “Actually, you’re being exploited.”
This meme comes to mind.
“One reason or another”
Given that one big reason is “Planned obsolescence”, you’re still pointing the finger entirely in the wrong direction.
You can’t scroll Facebook for five minutes without seeing people complain that “They don’t build stuff like they used to anymore” or “All this Chinese junk just falls apart in 5 minutes.”
Consumers want reliable, long lasting products that they don’t have to replace all the time. They just have no way of reasonably obtaining them.
If consumers were actually as hungry for constant upgrades as you claim, phone manufacturers wouldn’t put so much effort into making their products impossible to repair.
Consumers want reliable, long lasting products that they don’t have to replace all the time.
This is the thing that I’m genuinely not entirely convinced of. More than anything, I think a lot people want shiny new stuff as cheaply as they can get it, and that most consumers will generally opt for that over a more expensive but more durable alternative, even if that’s not what they’ll actually tell themselves. “Chinese junk” succeeded because masses of people preferred a cheaper product over a more expensive domestic one. Plenty of people raged against removing headphone jacks, for instance, but ultimately, those phones still sold very well. If there was really a huge demand for phones with headphone jacks, why would Samsung etc. not plop one in there and capture that demand? I would speculate it’s because it doesn’t actually exist to a super significant degree. Plenty of Android phones had removable batteries for long while, but as they started to go away, you didn’t see a huge group of people flock to the phones that kept them. Ultimately, consumers generally showed that they would opt for better waterproofing and slimmer design with a more annoying battery replacement procedure than a bulkier phone with easily removable batteries (though I am intrigued to see if the EU will actually be able to successfully mandate them).
So, while I do agree that consumers do want reliable and long-lasting products, they also want maximally cheap products, and products that feel new and sleek and luxurious. These are contradictory aims, and it seems to me that consumers’ revealed preferences are towards novelty and price, not durability, though I’d also say that I think this is shifting somewhat. Each new generation of phones is offering fewer genuine innovations and improvements, and at least in my experience, consumers are noticing more and more that even mid-range phones are perfectly adequate and that any phone can last several years. As I understand, this has been reflected in declining sales over the last several years.
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It’s comically bold to talk about dignified discourse while casually throwing out homophobic phrases like “take the dick out of your throat”.
At any rate, your true colors are showing brightly enough that I, empowered consumer that I am, will see myself out of this conversation. Enjoy your iPhone 15 Pro Max that you just had to buy. Truly, it must be hard.
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I always say this. You’re one person. Facebook was once a trillion dollar company that hired teams of engineers, phds, and marketers to device the most abusive ways to keep your attention. There are literal studies showing how insta promotes depression in young girls and yet they’re still allowed to operate.
Social media’s marketing schemes are the new generations tobacco industry.
Though i agree with you, i never feel like ‘i’m only one person’. For instance, if someone turns off the lights and recycles their trash, they often say; how does it help, i’m only one person after all. But there are so many people thinking the exact same thing and together we can help change the world.
So, yes, companies should be changed and i think this is also about politics and economics, which are usually conservative and greedy. But i never feel like the things i do are in vain; i’m standing with perhaps millions of invisible people who care about the environment and try to do their best and who all might be thinking; i’m only one person. Many people do want to change and try their best, but it’s time that all these conglomerates are being forced to change for real, instead of getting subsidized, and just greenwash their products.
Why not both? For example: one of the advantages if Iphones is the long software support. Why then are people buying a new one every year? I‘m still rocking an IPhone XR and while the batterie is down to 80%, I haven‘t encountered an app that brings it to it‘s knees.
Ok but first manufacturers must “rethink” planned obsolescence and right to repair
This.
we don’t “this” here.
But apparently you do diss.
Planned obsolescense is a myth. It’s just cost-benefit that makes old tech crappy. Tech keeps getting better, and supporting the old device is a pain for no extra money. And phone architecture is stupid so they need every single part supplier to provide updates if they want to update the OS, unlike PCs where the hardware is better-abstracted.
You’re either a troll or an uninformed idiot who has never done operating system development. A properly modularised OS can allow for minimal upkeep for older hardware. A leading example is Apple’s .kext system allowing for near 10 years of OS support both on macOS and iOS. Not that I think Apple is a great company but they do have some really good software development practices.
Also regardless of the technical explanination above, accepting a constant flow of e-waste for the sake of a new shiny year is just unethical regardless of the supposed reason.
Sir, you can prove someone wrong without insults. You need to chill a bit.
Shh corporation bad giv updoot.
Sorry about that but it really boils me when people defend poor software development practices when making the point of supporting hardware for a long time is difficult.
I actually did do operating system development, at least back in school. But comparing Apple to everybody else is insane when Apple controls the full vertical stack of end to end hardware. You may as well compare them to the driver support on Nintendo or Toyota.
And also there’s the problem that the Android OS is based on Linux which handles the “wierd new hardware” problem by recompiling the kernel, which doesn’t work so well with closed-source binary drivers. And that’s before even getting into the ARM architecture.
I’m playing around with OS development only as a hobby currently. I don’t know much about black box insides of macOS however I have used third party drivers as well as looked into how the kext system is structured and it really seems like a master class of software engineering. Having the drivers structured hierarchically under categories/subsystems and with multiple kernel API revisions supported means the kexts work over a wider lifespan.
Also comparing Apple to the rest of industry is not completely unreasonable for one reason. Modern register level documentation is hidden under shitty NDA’s and aren’t even complete half the time, with the usually poorly written SDK being used as documentation instead. Even better is when parts of the SDK are fucking binaries with no hopes of figuring out where the bug lies. The top dog of course is no SDK whatsoever and instead opting to release a fixed, factory compiled linux kernel release for Android only. I believe this is what Qualcomm mostly do and why those Android releases have a fixed lifespan of 3-5 years. When this is how over half the Android phone SoC market operates, I wonder how half of them make it to market working as well as they do.
Linux on the other hand is just a mess (In more ways than one. I have low opinions of it). That is not a good example of modular driver support. The unwillingness of the Linux community from both userspace applications / libraries and kernelspace to maintain a versioned API system with rigorous testing for compliance and to instead create a moving target is nothing short of a fucking joke. It’s no wonder Android can’t easily maintain cross-generation support. Then there is the lack of support for running different versions of libraries side by side as necessary.
I run a Linux server for home use as it’s still king in this regard and have sometime attempted to use Linux as a desktop. However I eventually come to the same conclusion that it’s just too unstable and “patched together”. My daily driver is still a mac, no matter how much I want to move away due to Apple’s worsening business practices.
Sorry for getting heated. It just really boils me when people defend poor software development practices because it the “industry standard”. I disdain manufactured e-waste stemming from rubbish software development practices.
I’m not sure why you’re getting downvoted because your argument is right. Apple has a rather small number of hardware devices to support. That makes long term support a lot easier.
Edit: I mostly disagree with your previous argument though. Planned obsolescence is alive and thriving. I’ve seen so many PCB layouts where heat sensitive parts were placed right next to heat emitting ones that I cannot believe this is by accident.
it’s not just phones or devices that need updates, though. None of my refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers have ever lasted more than 10 years; I think the average is about 5 years before they stop working, get all rusty or a very expensive piece breaks so they are not worth repairing. Meanwhile all of my granma’s old kitchen appliances are still working perfectly after 60+ years of service.
Sure, it might be just that over-optimizing their production so they are more performant while being cheaper to make is also making them less durable, but I don’t see a lot of motivation from companies to go out of their way to build durable things either. And it’s not that I think Corporate = Bad; as you say it’s a cost/benefit thing, it’s just that the “benefit” companies try to maximize is their shareholders’, not our planet’s. It’s on Politics to create a legal framework where some of the cost to our planet is shared with companies (so they have incentives to make things durable/repairable again) and on us consumer to choose wisely what to buy, when and from whom.
I agree. I’m tired of always blaming the end users for everything
maybe it’s my personality or i’m old but i keep my things (including tech) until they become unusable. i’ve never thought about upgrading my phone every couple of years. i kept my last phone for 6 years (it became a brick), my current phone is from 2018.
I intentionally buy things that I know I can use until they are unusable. I do not often buy anything from apple.
Me too. My phone is 10 years old, my microwave is 40 yrs old, my car is 24, my home theater amp is 25.
I take pride in taking care of my stuff and making it last as long as possible. It’s something I got from my grandmother who wouldn’t let anything go to waste. (She was a refugee from ww2, so she knew a thing or two about making things last and making due.) Obviously not everything can last that long, but if you get good quality things chances are it’ll be around a lot longer than if you just buy cheap or flashy stuff.
In the era when everyone seem to be taking out expensive contracts for new phones every year I have had just 4 smart phones in the past 20 ish years. They all reach the stage where they are just too slow for modern apps but I think we might finally be in the stage where compute power progress has slowed that the current phone might get an open source Lineage et el on it for a decent period of time with multiple battery swaps.
Me too. my phone is from 2017 and I’m fine with it. It’s part of your personality, to preserve things. Associating personality traits to being “old” or to any stigmatized aspect in our society is a dirty trick to manipulate people (in this case, used to force people into consumerism). Just be yourself, and don’t feel bad about it.
Legalize Right To Repair Ban Planned Obsolescence
Boom, solved the problem. But once again it’s easier to shame Joe Q. Public than hold the real criminals accountable.
Won’t solve the problem of people spending 1000+ dollars a year on the latest and newest because they need it as a status symbol to fill the vacuous hole where a personality would be.
and I’d wager more people are buying new phones every year for that reason, than due to forced obsolescence.
living from the ego is a choice. everyone is free to examine their values and beliefs, and choose a life that supports their well being. not doing this is pricy.
Some people will do that regardless, but I would keep all of my phones for longer if the batteries were easily changeable and they didn’t eventually grind to a halt. I loved my Pixel 3a and would still be using it today if I could.
I mean if they can afford that, good on them I guess? But it really would help for the rest of us who ya know, don’t base their personality on whatever they’re lugging around in their pockets.
Isnt gonna solve the problem entirely but will make a huge difference. Cant say anything about the iphone craze in US but at least here most change their mobile only when issues pop up and repairs get too expensive or impossible.
It’s not even everywhere in the US, where I live there are people still using flip phones out of necessity.
And I’ve only really ever changed smart phones twice myself, new phones are just too dang expensive.
Ban glue in non-waterproof electronics. I remember when I didn’t need to risk destroying a device with a heat-gun to open it up and repair it like 10 years ago, but y’know, everything needed to be thinner.
Thats one thing that boggles me… I’ve never heard a single person go “Y’know, this phone is nice…but I wish it was thinner and more fragile”.
I’m convinced they just want to make phones thinner, and push screens further to the edge (or in the case of Galaxy, around the edge and down the side) just to make them more likely to break when dropped.
You’re on Lemmy. That means you’re probably not a “form over function” shopper, y’know?
True
In waterproof ones too. It isn’t hard to make use of stainless steel screws and a simple O-Ring (see computer waterblocks).
Reminder that industrial handheld computers, despite being way more water and everything else resistant than an iPhone will ever be, and whose environmental resistance is absolutely critical to their function and not just a marketing bullet point, are also repairable and upgradable. They work for decades with periodic maintainance which is actually why heavy industry seems so “behind the times” on upgrading their equipment, they simply don’t have to because their existing gear is so resilient.
If what you seek is a repairable phone, check out the Fairphone 5. Got mine for a week now (transparent édition), incredible little machine. Not as waterproof as an IPhone, but way more repairable. And supported until at least 2028 (maybe 2031).
I have a fairphone 4 and I love it.
Smartphones have been “good enough” for a while now. Enough power and battery to do all the things needed for enough time before running out of battery.
IMHO there are 2 reasons we still regularly upgrade.
- “Obsolescence” wether it would be perceived new hardware features or just new software not being available
- Use/breakage (I include batteries dying in that) with no reasonable way to replace parts
I’ve had a few phones over the years some of them I “legitimately” just broke (one had a cracked mb after a bike accident) I broke my second to last phone trying to replace the battery (thought I would be able to, broke the screen). The fact that everything is glued down and made to not be replaceable irked me so much that my current phone is a Fairphone. Replacing the battery takes 1 minute and requires no tools. Replacing the screen takes like 5 min and 8 screws. I plan on using this phone for at least 5 years more if possible. But I understand not everybody can shell out 600 dollars for an “OK” phone.
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It’s impossible if the vendors stop shipping os updates. I can’t use an out of date phone for my works 2fa push. Kept my phone for 5 years and it was still going, but the planned obsolescence got me.
Have work issue you a hardware FIDO token (such as a yubikey) or give you separate cell phone just for work. They legally can’t make you upgrade but if your phone can’t get enough security updates to install an Authenticator it is probably time to upgrade to be honest.
the thing is most of the phones are fully capable of running the modern version of the operating system they shipped with but the vendors stop supporting the products to make you buy more shit
Writing this on an iPX which got its last update this week, 6 years old now but I’m just waiting for my banking apps to require iOS17. People will blame development costs for excluding older phones but there is no reason iPhones should not get iOS updates for 10+ years to save App developers the work.
Well there is, if you wish for apps created by others than large corporations with hundreds or thousands of developers. It will get better with time now when progress is slower.
But phones 10 years ago were absolutely trash compared to those we have today.
My dad still uses my iPhone6, still perfectly usable, admittedly that is a 9 year old phone but I’m not seeing anything making that one obsolete in the near future.
As you say modern phones are not progressing that fast any more, it’s time we made Apple and Google support OS updates for longer. Apple certainly charge app developers enough for the burden to be on them and not the 3rd parties.
I don’t think iPhone 6 had 5G cellular or WiFi6. As those become dominant, iPhone 6 will seem hopelessly slow.
No more updates. Probably no more parts, like batteries.
There have been a lot of hardware improvements over time. iPhone 6 might text and talk, but most of use use a phone for a lot more. It’s time
It’s good practice to buy at least one or two new smartphones per year.
Thank you for the tip, Mr Business Man!
Battery degrades every six months, and most batteries sold are either cheap but fake or QC-passed but as expensive as a brand-new phone.
Dude the downvotes, it’s a joke. Should I put /s? lol
Battery degradation is real, but typically lithium batteries in phones should last 18-24 months before their noticeability bad enough to want to warrant a replacement.
But, if you’re constantly leaving it in a hot car, draining it to near 0%, or otherwise stressing it out, it will will significantly worse off, even at 6 months.
Sure, let’s blame consumer for corporate policies
It’s both really. Too many people rock a cracked screen, then upgrade it as soon as they can. Rather than looking after their device or getting it repaired.
But at the same time, corporations limit device longevity due to bad practices. Like limited security updates, planned obsolescence and anti-repair policies.
In short, not enough people care enough, and the companies prey on this. Attacking the “upgrade culture” is valuable, as legislating against these bad practices can only happen if the people exert enough political pressure
Same situation as plastic straws. Let’s blame the public for using straws, when actually it’s industries and corporate policies that refuse to adopt better practices.
If only new batteries were easily swappable…
flip phones have those, but i’ve never had to swap one. the longest i’ve had one before it broke was ~ 7 years and a charge still lasted about half as long as when it was new (2 weeks vs 4).
they actually fit in a pocket and last a lot longer between charges. i don’t ‘need’ the internet on me 24/7, so i’ll keep getting those as long as they’re still made.
Well, that’s good, but most other people either need to or want to.
Yes, I have one of those as well, but a smartphone is something I carry anyway.
At work my manager still rocks an old Motorola g5 plus. He says phones have reached peak performance and there’s no point of upgrading. Hes a humble, down to earth guy also make $210k/ year.
The problem is that there are security updates that those old phones need and aren’t getting. The whole “let’s tie the operating system binaries to the hardware” thing was always dumb, somehow Windows can handle binary-blob drivers that aren’t built into the OS.
Oh I loved that phone! I still have it but I didn’t have the balls to replace the built in battery so I reluctantly decided to upgrade
He replaced the battery by himself. Ordered stuff from ifixit.
Phones have to easily repairable before you can blame consumers for upgrading. Cell phones are pretty essential for modern life and most of us don’t want to be without them for long. The upgrade allows for people to not have to worry about what to do when something out of warranty breaks. It is like fixing your car. In warranty, the manufacturer or dealer takes care of things. Out of warranty, you have to find a repair shop. Finding a repair shop is difficult. Trying to get a second or third quote on a broken car is difficult and costly.
The alternative is to make repair shops have transparent prices and make it easy for them to get oem parts. The other option is to force companies to warranty their phones for longer. Until the government does one of those you can’t blame consumers.
It is possible to find phones that are easy to repair in Europe. I think they are going to hit the American market in a few months.
So now that people have options, it is really on the consumer side.
Yeah, but that’s an insanely recent development
I know about the fairphone. It just now became available for sell in the US No one except maybe IT people know about it. Consumers have to know about the choice to make it. It is also ridiculous to point to one choice that isn’t available yet and blame the consumers.
I meant now that there will be an option. Plus, I’m not blaming, that would make no sense because I thought the phone wasn’t out yet.
Dawg, I only upgrade phones and laptops once every 8 years or so. These things are EXPENSIVE, I can’t afford one more often than that.
My current tablet came out in 2014, that’s when I got it. It’ll be a decade old in just a few months.
Besides swapping the battery out twice over the years, it still works great and does everything I need it to do. Fantastic big AMOLED display, too.
Yea, idk, I’m upgrading my phone after 3 years, and if this buyer comes through I’ll have paid $100 for that 3 years of use.
I think a lot of people treat the idea of upgrading often as the old become ewaste immediately or is just kept in a drawer. But selling my used gear while it still has value keeps my overall burden down and devices much cheaper. I upgraded to the Pro Max this year, and out of pocket after this sale I’m spending $350. If I had had the Pro Max before I’d probably be getting another $100 or so for my used device. I’ll do the same thing in 3 - 5 years depending on if/when I have an incentive to upgrade again.
Laptops and tablets are a different story since they don’t keep their value quite as well as iPhones do, and if I’m honest have a much smaller impact on my daily life.
Most of those older $300-400 Android phones are ewaste for the most part after 3-5 years. Higher-end everything is more valuable and generally lasts longer. $50 work boots vs $400 work boots.
Modern $300-400 phones however I think will last 5 years easily in terms of performance depending on your needs.
I’m still rocking my Galaxy S8! Gonna keep it till the battery is toast.
Replacing the battery is not too hard too
S7, hoping to move up soon, but the paper aint really been there and it’s not like Pokemon Go’s a high priority in my life
Which tablet is it?
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Batteries are the biggest culprit for this even beyond software support. They degrade predictably over time… thus they are disposable. But with no way to replace them on most phones that means the entire device is disposable.
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I think the EU is going to require this soon
The key is make them easily removable.
If it’s ‘removable’ but it requires heating the edges of the phone up to 120F and then prying apart a sheet of hair-thin glass without breaking it, then most people won’t bother.
If it’s 4 Philips head screws then you’ll find a lot more people doing it.
Unfortunately, the economics for device manufacturers are clearly in the adhesive category- cheaper to assemble, and they’d rather a user buy a new device than service the old one so they DGAF how hard it is to service.
The only exception is companies like Fairphone catering to a niche audience of nerds who value repairability. Most people don’t even consider how hard something is to fix when buying it.
Sadly I think legislation is the only way to fix this. You have to legislate either a. that the battery be removable and replaceable without tools or ‘with standard fasteners and not adhesive’ or something like that.
The only way to really fix this is to stop gluing phones together.
i’m still waiting eagerly for fairphone in the US :(
Just don’t buy a fucking new phone every couple years
I keep seeing the complaints, but do enough people actually upgrade yearly? Because anecdotally (including online communities in this) I have seen most people claim that they only upgrade every 3-5 years and I think that’s sensible as an upgrade cycle and will only get longer now if my own feelings match the general populace.
I personally have found myself needing an upgrade every 3 years on average and think I’ll find a way to go longer with phones which don’t lose security updates around the exact time the battery starts swelling on my old phone (my previous reason for upgrading and seems to be happening again)
In the US at least, I think most people get their phones through their carrier and are stuck on a contract paying it off for ~3 years. I think rich people and enthusiasts/fanboys are the only ones who upgrade every year or buy it unlocked at full price from the manufacturer.
I am not in the US and not locked into a contract and neither is anyone I know IRL but nonetheless we do upgrade at the same cadence. As for the people who upgrade their phones yearly, unless they’re keeping the old phones in a locked box I think it is not that bad if those old phones see use as an upgrade for someone else (either given or sold as a second hand device) or even if those phones run duty as a makeshift device.
I personally think it only becomes a problem if it’s literally e-waste or if the majority of people were upgrading yearly (which is again because it’ll lead to the first problem but felt like putting it separately too). If it’s playing some role in the world it’s okay¹ in my book.
^(1: I wonder if people who use their old phones as a secondary device (eg: a music player for running)^) ^(are creating e-waste or not. As in if it would’ve been better if they used only one device for both purposes and either gave/sold the old phone or didn’t buy a new phone in the first place. After all one could make the case that battery degradation would make them need an earlier upgrade)
Most people in the world buys full price from manufacturer. And they are not rich or enthusiasts at all. It’s just in the US the consumerist mindset of paying $1500 over 3 years for a $800 phone is enforced by the carriers. And the ones who go out of that mindset to fanboy, buy $1500 overpriced phones. Most people aren’t buying flagship phones. Mid and low performance phones are perfectly serviceable for the vast majority of people.
