It’s cheaper for the biosphere than replaceable batteries were, because you just switch out the battery and don’t need the plastic case for the replaceable part.
Really? If that is true, I wonder how much is due to the fact that the phones are more expensive so people take care of them more or delay their next purchase. It's not because the actual quality would be better.
If you pull statistics you also have to filter out the sub 150 dollar Andoid phones which may well have shorter average usage life.
> Really? If that is true, I wonder how much is due to the fact that the phones are more expensive so people take care of them more or delay their next purchase.
Even if it were the case, it does not matter. What does matter is the amount of matter that ends up in landfills. As a matter of fact, we should be pushing for better built, longer lasting devices even if it means spending a bit more in the short term.
> It's not because the actual quality would be better.
Second-hand iPhones are all over the place here in a way that Samsung Galaxies are not, even though they are more popular. You can argue that it is not a proof of high quality, but it is at least a proof that build quality is high enough that 4 years old devices are on average in a good enough state to retain a high resale value.
> If you pull statistics you also have to filter out the sub 150 dollar Andoid phones which may well have shorter average usage life.
Which precisely is the problem. “But they were cheap” is a terrible excuse as we keep burning more non-renewable resources and shovel up heaps of electronic waste in landfills. Besides, we need to look at cost per year, not cost per device as a cheap device you have to change often is more costly over the long term. I am not saying only Apple devices can have high build quality, but it seems nobody is pushing OEMs towards that direction in Android-land.
Software support is an important one, and Apple has managed to slow down the RAM baseline inflation that Android seems to experience every other year. Even people who regularly upgrade usually trade in their old phones because they still have enough value to bother, so a lot more phones get used all the way to the end of their support.
> If that is true, I wonder how much is due to the fact that the phones are more expensive so people take care of them more or delay their next purchase.
Delay because it's more expensive? How about delay because it's good enough? My iPhone XS is just fine thank you. There's no point in upgrading it yet.
How is that all that damaging? I’m sure those batteries are recycled in basically all cases and yes, I’d expect battery replacement does indeed forestall replacement for many phones.
The most common processes for recycling lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries are not environmentally friendly. They consume a lot of water and energy and produce toxic byproducts the require further processing and energy to be rendered safe.
