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.
Gotta be honest. Yes blame us. It takes two to tango.
At one point in my life there was this anti consumer movement culturally that got absolutely destroyed and buried. Maybe we’re all just sheep without any free will controlled by Steve jobs of the world. But I feel like we refused to keep certain fires lit and now we’re all freezing. That’s our fault.
Most of it was super obvious too. When ads started invading, some people were pissed. But there was always way more people saying ‘who cares’. But things like ads fuel this consumerism to get people buying and idolizing the tech channels or kardashian lifestyle with all the bling and flash of new. Now we have a generation who probably think anti consumption lifestyle is just flat out crazy talk. Like how do we not have any counter culture anymore to the lavish consumerism culture. Almost every culture has an opposition but that one seems like it’s non existant in a world consumed by ads products
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).
How many people are actually getting a new phone every year? I don’t think I’m poor but maybe I am? Everyone I know keeps their phones for at least a few years and then replaces them when they are no longer functional.
Still. Every 3 years feels like too often, but that’s around the time things stop working - likely due to planned obsolescence and updates designed to make older phones work worse.
Should we really blame the consumer for replacing something the manufacturer designed to break after a short time? What’s something else you pay $1500+ for that is useless 3 years later?
I know a few folks who do, but most of them have a hand-me-down cycle they follow. I get a new phone every 2-3 years and hand the old phone down to a friend or family member with something older.
Same here, but I have teens. Parents get new phones every 2-4 years, teens get “new-ish” phones with new batteries. Apple supports their phones about 6 years, so we have them the full supported life and get a little money back on trade-in. Hardware is pretty obsolete by then, so I wouldn’t want to keep them longer
New batteries have been reasonably priced and easy to get done. We spend a little more for better cases so the phones usually last, however replacing a screen means replacing the phone
Don’t bother with cases and just get AppleCare+.
A glass screen protector is £20-30, replacing the display under AC is £25.
A decent case like a Mous one is £50. Replacing the device under AC is £79.
Plus the phone looks nicer, temps are better, and it’s less cases being manufactured.
You are way overpaying for screen protectors and cases…
I don’t think you understand. I am not paying for them.
I have AC+.
Either you buy high quality screen protectors for your £1000 device or you don’t bother. The same for cases. Mous for instance are extremely durable, but not as good value as AC.
I’m 12 months in and not had a claim but best believe before the two year mark my phone WILL have an incident and for £79 I get a replacement with a new battery and all.
Or I could buy a case that holds no value, my phone can still break and then it’ll cost me more money. Than just having insurance which is guaranteed to make me whole again.
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When it’s my kids, no. I have some family members that will pay me a little bit for devices I pass off, and while I’m not particularly financially set, I do well enough for myself, that I can sometimes eat the cost if I know, it’s gonna benefit someone who couldn’t buy themselves a new phone as often as I can pass it off.
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 employeesYeah I think it’s very strongly both. I manage to resist consumption quite frequently and prefer to fix stuff up when I can. But also I’m not immune to propaganda.
The systems at play require us to mindlessly consume. When a significant portion of people took to repairing our stuff they blocked us from doing it. They promoted these ideas and did their best so that both culture and counterculture were ones of consumption. Hell they promoted the idea of bundling phone purchasing into your phone contract so it became an every 2 year upgrade. I wound up being the weird one for not since I buy my phone outright when the old one doesn’t work anymore. Fuck, I’ve had to argue with internet providers’ sales people that I own my own equipment and only want what I want, and sometimes they ignore my demands and throw such things in anyways. And they start in on it when you’re a kid.
But we keep doing it. The fact is these nice things are nice. Upgrading feels good. And when it’s easier to upgrade than to not it can take dedication to consume less. They set this culture up, but we perpetuate it. New is nice. Better is nice. We like these things. It’s a hell of a lot easier to show off a new phone than to brag about refurbishing yours. Just consume and dispose.
Welcome to Singaporean news, where everything is the fault of the consumer.
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 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.
While these sorts of practices are legal, consumers need to be educated.
I need security updates not education.
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.
Consumers have very little choice when it comes to things like cars, electricity company, cable company, etc. In that case it is appropriate to put blame on the companies who have a captive customer base. But with other products like phones, there is nothing compelling consumers to buy the latest except FOMO and greed.
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.
Ultimately, if you don’t want to buy a new phone, don’t.
Could you have made a more vacuous comment? Obviously people shouldn’t buy every new toy that comes out, that doesn’t change the fact that 90% of the blame—and 90% is a hard floor—belongs to the people who waste the Earth’s resources pinching it off in the first place and then waste even more in protectionism and generally making sure there are as few viable alternatives as possible.
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.
What, like there’s some kind of ethical standard of consumerism that people are failing to live up to? Take the corporate dick out of your throat and take your L with dignity instead of grasping at straws to be Right and “win” an online argument. Why even try? You really think you’re gonna be the guy who changes people’s hearts and minds and has them say “yes, it’s actually the changing whims of the market that drive corporations to produce waste, they definitely don’t forcibly create their own market through manipulation and abuse”? Are you really trying to be the Rosa Parks of convincing people that there is ever even one case where a corporation isn’t automatically to blame for the existence of their own fucking product? You think consumers should just “not buy”, yet you don’t say that companies should just ignore the market and release new products less frequently? “Oh well that’s not realistic because they’re just not gonna do that” you’re going to say, willfully uncomprehending that you’re reinforcing my point and pretending you just got a gotcha. Get real.
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.
“Oh shit that was embarrassing, better pretend to be smugly aloof and then ‘abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past’.”
Literally every time. Do you people get a phrasebook or something?
And that make their phones expensive enough to repair that buying a new one is a logical fiscal decision.
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.
blame it on the consumer
Yeah. Blame it on the consumers indeed. Are you a adult or not? Put the tendies down and put your big boy pants on and realize that you need to take responsibility for at least some of your actions.
Same goes for all those dopes that pre-order every game that gets released and then we all wonder why the industry releases so many unfinished games that need patches and updates. That’s because consumers are rewarding these game developers for releasing shitty software.
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
I agree. I’m tired of always blaming the end users for everything
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.
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.
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.
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
If only new batteries were easily swappable…
They will be in the EU
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.
Yes, I have one of those as well, but a smartphone is something I carry anyway.
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.
The fairphone and terracube are starting to take off. Being able to replace hardware was a staple in early cell phone design and hopefully will come back.
I wonder why nobody has made some sort of headphone Jack module already
Yeah… the old terracube has one and I loved it. Now I have a USB c to audio adapter and it sucks.
“I’ll just pop right out of this here USB slot so easily and inconvenience you at random times, and you’ll thank me for the tiny space you saved” -Dong
I would consider these if they weren’t still using Android. Anything with Google involved is unacceptable to me.
Fairphone allows you to unlock the bootloader and install an OS of your choice.
See https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/9979154556817-Google-free-Android
Fairphone is also pretty expensive to standards in my country as well. Although, a great concept.
I only upgrade when my phone literally dies or can’t support criticial software and security updates anymore. I upgraded from an iphone 6s to a 12 Pro Max 2 years ago and will probably hold on to this phone until it’s no longer supported.
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.
gosh, I love my Fairphone.
Fairphone 4 with weekly android 13 updates here! ( lineageos )
Oh dang that’s neato!
Me too!
Gee willikers it sure is swell huh!
First and foremost, don’t feel pressured to get a new hand tablet with a ten-lense DSLR stapled to the front every single year.
I know Straits only used a picture of an iPhone to get more clicks, but Apple is the least of the offenders when it comes to this. iOS 17 runs on phones released six years ago (including the last iPod touch!), and security updates go a couple years further back than that. I wish Android phones could guarantee that kind of lifespan.
Battery replacement sucks on every smartphone except for obscure modular phones that suddenly lose support or the company goes out of business. But the newest iPhone actually makes it easier to replace the battery (read: still sucks a bit). So, while you have to jump through hoops, you can replace the battery on every smartphone (usually through official channels, but also by other means if needed).
What needs to happen is the masses need to be taught that it’s okay to keep your phone for a few years. Phones need to regarded like cars. Drive it until you can’t, THEN get a new car. And when you do, consider a newer used car. Once that becomes commonplace, then companies will be forced to tone down their release schedules.
This isn’t talked about enough. Apple at least for now support more older models than most if not all androids. The key is not to buy into the marketing. Phones today are good enough and mature enough to not need to be at the bleeding edge every other year. Just get a new case, new wallpaper and swap the battery before deciding a new phone.
Honestly if you care about camera improvements, get a second hand semi decent mirrorless or point and shoot camera. Way more fun. And easy replaceable battery and storage.
Agree with all of this, however there isn’t any need to tone down release schedules. There being a new product doesn’t force you to buy it, however it does mean that when you do come to buy it there is a fresh model available. For example imagine if they adopt a 3 year release cycle and you break your phone on year 2.9, now you’re forced to buy a model with a 3 year out of date feature that will itself be obsolete faster, especially since a new model is round the corner. This isn’t the best system. Better the phone companies keep making the latest tech available, so when you do need to buy you can get the phone with the longest life ahead of it.
that’s why Apple forces replacement parts to be paired with the original device, making impossible for repair shops to scrap and reuse parts of broken iPhones to repair others.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/82493/we-are-retroactively-dropping-the-iphones-repairability-score-en
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.
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.
Yeah, but that’s an insanely recent development
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?
I dunno, my phone’s always start to have issues if I keep them too long. Boot loops, frequent crashing, random resets, functionality failing to work as it did when new, lack of security updates, etc. The hardware is built to fail
Yeah :( I love my 2017-2018 phone to death (it’s a Pixel 2 XL, and in the ~€400 phone market they are still trying to beat its camera quality 6 years later - and since it’s a Pixel it’s still more fluid than several phones I try in store, like €400-500 Samsungs, that display evident stutters that mine does not), but it has started with the random crashes and “dying” (boot loops followed by not turning on anymore) for a few minutes / hours before coming back to its senses occasionally
Yeah, I’d still be using my galaxy note 4 if it didnt start having so many issues. Used that phone for what seemed like 6 years. Well built, but the replaceable batteries that were reliable were harder to come by. It had boot loop issues, it had some sort of memory corruption defect that was common with note 4s.
