IMO phones are the area I care about repair the least. By the time the phone is 5~ years old, I’m going to want the new one anyway. Where repairs would be much more useful is general household appliances where the model 20 years ago was just as good if not better than the one today. I’m never going to want to upgrade my blender, but when the plastic parts snap, I want it to be easy to get a replacement.
With a phone from 5 years ago sure it’s feeling its age, but that number keeps going up as the functional differences between each phone generation shrinks.
Replacing the battery on year 3 makes a huge difference in how long you would want to keep a phone around for.
I just replace a OnePlus6T from 2018 with a brand new Pixel 8 and I regret it.
The 6T had the latest LineageOS and the P8 has GrapheneOS. Both have the latest Android but there's nothing on the Pixel that's better than the OnePlus.
6 years and no noticeable differences in terms of battery, performance, screen, ergonomy, etc.
I should have stuck with the old one but I was convinced things were still progressing. My bad.
It not being a flagship gives them 2 forgiveness points for the lack of performance. But it not being a flagship also gives them 4 demerit points because they're charging as much as a flagship.
Unless the level of "flagship" is higher than it used to be, in which case it's okay that it's not a flagship, but then "not a flagship" stops being an excuse for mediocre performance.
They can't eat the "not a flagship" cake and have it too. Both interpretations are bad for them.
Have you checked recent flagship prices? Google isn't charging anywhere near that for the pixel 8. You're thinking about 2017 OnePlus prices but that ship has long sailed.
I'm not sure what you're arguing here. It sounds like you're saying that flagship tier is a higher tier than it used to be.
But in that case, Pixel 8 is one tier below flagship, so it should be on the same tier as a 2018 flagship. Especially since the price is so close. But if it met the same standard, then a model 6 years newer would be much faster, so it's failing pretty badly.
Unless you're saying I shouldn't expect performance improvements for phones that are only high tier? I don't see why that would be the case.
Or maybe you're saying that flagship tier is the same, but it got far more expensive for no benefit? That option makes Google look the worst of all, and definitely isn't a "to be fair" defense.
I have a Pixel 4a and everything opens instantly, or at least the delay is imperceptible.
I'm sensitive to latency (and have a 360hz monitor for games), but phones have been fast enough for a long time - for at least everything I personally use a phone for.
I have a Windows Phone and it’s a decade old. Very outside the norm to still use it, but phones can last a long time from a hardware perspective if they’re allowed too.
My 830’s saving grace has been the ease of changing batteries. If the battery was internal I’d have tossed it years ago.
Does it still get software updates? Not just the apps, but also the operating system. If not, you definitely should not use it anymore.
Not only because of security issues in software, but also because of possibly revoked certificates. And newer, safer, web protocols. Also strange if your bank still supports it.
Hardware might be fine when it comes to being speedy enough, but may also have issues.A digital device still working is just not good enough anymore.
It doesn’t get updates, but I’m not overly concerned. It’s running WP10 and security would be a bigger concern if any apps supported it to begin with.
I don’t bank on my phone beyond checking my balance with SMS. If I need to actually move money around I’d rather do it on my computer.
The phone is used for calling, texting, mp3s, the weather, the calendar/reminders, and very occasional maps. I do have my gmail setup via imap with is probably the biggest risk I actually take.
I’ve written half a dozen of my own programs for specific things I need, but otherwise there’s nothing installed.
I know there’s some risk but I’m well aware of it and accept it.
Replacing the battery on a phone would make sense if it was easy to do. But I can't get reasonable phones with a back that comes off intentionally to replace a modular battery. Which means I'm paying someone to unglue the back, replace the battery, and reglue the back. Their time costs money, so I'm thinking ~ $50 for the battery and ~ $50 for their time, plus my time to get there and back and wait, and I'm halfway to a $200 phone that's going to be way better than my 3 year old $200 phone.
I don't like how disposable everything is, but labor costs to repair are huge. I just got rid of a van because of a failed head gasket, because it's too much work to get to the not that expensive part.
I find the time it takes to swap to a new phone is significantly longer than the time it takes to get a new battery. Making a battery swap a net time save.
I really want to figure out compiling GrapheneOS for post-EOL pixels. Yeah yeah firmware insecurity, but by failing to make it available (call it CarbonOS?) the older pixels don't get the OTHER big graphene features that alternatives lack!
And if the maker offers a free service to replace the battery with the purchase, I'm okay with it. Would it be nice to remove the battery to keep "them" from listening? Probably, but "they" are still listening through the TV, the laptops, and that chip in the back of my mouth so, meh
You'd be in the minority I think. Judging by the number of phone screen repair shops and what not I see, phone repair is one of the things that people really want. And that's just screen repairs, and not the numerous other things people generally talk about getting fixed.
On the flip side, you are the first person I know of talking about about repairing your blender, and I've never seen a blender repair shop. Larger home appliances, sure, but blenders?
I'm not saying you are wrong to prioritize these things. Just pointing out that you are an outlier.
Small appliance repair is/used to be a thing, remember TV repair shops? Vacuum repair shops I still see around occasionally.
Problem is people buy a $25 hamilton beach blender that doesn't make any financial sense to repair but makes huge amounts of sense as an initial purchase. If you buy a $500 vitamix, you can keep it running forever with new parts, but that's the same price as 20 of the cheap blender. And blender technology isn't really advancing at a huge rate compared to, say, cell phones.
> And blender technology isn't really advancing at a huge rate
That's part of it, but also the vitamix and hamilton beach really have quite different capabilities. For most peoples usage, it doesn't matter much, but the vitamix (at least the core one) show their commercial kitchen background.
The real problem is that there isn't anything much between the $25 one and the $350 one. From a technical point of view, there isn't any reason someone couldn't produce a $90 one that was robust and repairable but less powerful etc. than the vitamix. I dont' think i've ever seen one - if you do find a $90 one it's essentially the $25 one in a fancier looking shell.
The market, as they say, has spoken. In most cases you are better off going for commercial suppliers if you want longer life, repairability, etc., but often the only things on offer there are way overkill for e.g. a home kitchen.
Small appliance repair is alive and well in parts of the world where it is easy to access parts supply close to the source (i.e. you are paying roughly small batch wholesale prices).
> I dont' think i've ever seen one - if you do find a $90 one it's essentially the $25 one in a fancier looking shell.
I think this is a huge problem. If you don't know a good brand (or can't trust the brand), why risk the $350 one when you can buy 14x $25 ones for the same cost and maybe get lucky?
Take the humble toaster for example. Are there some nice, well built, repairable ones that can (possibly) make the toast of angels? Sure, I've heard good things about Dualit[1]. But I bought a generic Black and Decker toaster for $15 over 20 years ago and it continues to work just fine. I would have had to replace that toaster roughly every 3.5 years in order to get over the cost of the cheapest Dualit toaster. It's not fancy and not consistent, but it is functional, and I can more or less guarantee that walmart will be selling it or a similar item for decades. Buying a more expensive "repairable" toaster from a small brand is just a risk that doesn't make a lot of sense, even before you factor in that repair shop labor is going to be in the $40-50/hr range.
Phone screens are pretty easy to repair though. You just drop it off at the Apple Store and they do it for you. Yes it’s expensive, but the screen is the biggest and probably the hardest to manufacture part on the phone so it’s going to be expensive.
Yeah it would be nice if Apple provided in depth repair guides and sold individual chips for cheaper repairs, but realistically I don’t think it’s going to change all that much vs other product categories.
> Yes it’s expensive, but the screen is the biggest and probably the hardest to manufacture part on the phone so it’s going to be expensive.
If it weren't glued in place and if they wouldn't tie Face ID components to the goddamn screen, it would be far less expensive. I managed to break my iPhone 12 Mini's screen in a freak incident - the protection glass is intact, but it shattered below it, right over the left Face ID illuminator.
A new display + glass would clock in at 60-100€ plus maybe half an hour of time to do the replacement - but that would break FaceID as the components are paired for whatever reason. Apple's quote is 279€. What a fucking joke!
That makes sense but why is this shit glued to the screen? Every other phone has the camera, proximity sensor and whatever installed in the main body or at least makes it trivial to take off from the old screen and replace in a new one.
Also... why is there any need for the FaceID sensor to be paired? It's two LEDs illuminating the face from different angles in infrared so the camera can create a depth map. None of that needs a secure connection.
I can assure you that stolen iPhones absolutely aren't worthless. They are sent to various places where extremely technically sophisticated groups are still able to make at least 200$, sometimes much more, from a stolen iPhone, which isn't much less than what it used to be worth. In fact, phone thieves in many places only ever made about 50-100$ from a stolen high end phone.
Phone theft is a billion dollar industry, and as Apple tries to lock down parts, thieves adapted by forming far more efficient logistics and by centralizing value extraction from stolen phones. Apple's tactics haven't so far made a big impact to a phone thief's incentives, and I don't see it happening in the near future either.
I agree with the zealots but there could be better ways - for one, make the replacement screens "unpaired" by default, maybe using a WORM to store keys, so people (or repair shops) could still repair their phones with legit replacement screens while "second hand" aka parted-out displays would still be impeded.
It does. But not beyond iOS 15. Most recent update: 15.8.2 a couple of months ago. Personally I'm really impressed that Apple is still supporting an 8-year-old phone and it's probably the main thing that has been tempting me to jump ship from Android for a while. (Though it seems like Android might be better on this in future.)
Maybe a five year old phone isn’t good enough for you, but it might be for someone else. But if the screen can’t be repaired or the battery replaced, it will end up as ewaste somewhere in a poor country polluting the world’s air and soil/water.
Which is why everyone should care about the right-to-repair.
A phone that can be repaired, is worth something. For ewaste you get €0 (some recycler may get a few bucks from rare materials). For a phone that can have a second life, you might get some €100.
This is one reason why people love iPhones: their value, second hand, remains rather high.
I used to be like this, but I don't sell my old phones, I hand them down - and I'd love to be able to get parts for the iPhones 6,8 and XR when they go off the wagon.
The primary reason I replaced my Pixel 4a was it going EoL for security updates. The battery did get replaced once, and it brought it back to life. I don't want a halo device, I want something that is secure, functional, repairable and cheap enough that if this portable slab of glass explodes I am not that sad. The primary reason I replaced my device with a Pixel 8 is for the 7 years of security updates.
Going from the 4a to the 8? Barely noticed a change in functionality.
I went from a galaxy s5 to s22. About 10 years in diff. The functionality for me is nearly identical. Speed the s22 is much snappier I guess. But not something I care much about. I only replaced it because the touch screen started acting up and security updates were non-existent. I was able to keep the thing going for so long precisely because I could swap out that battery easily. To replace the newer ones involves a heat gun and a suction cup. And as jerryrigeverything says 'glass is glass'.
I just replaced an iPhone X last year with a 15 that was still on the original battery. From my records, looks like I got it in early 2018, so pretty much 5 years. Admittedly for about the last year, that usable battery was largely completely depleted by the end of the day and it couldn't last through a heavy usage day without a top up. Realistically, replacing at year 4 probably would have been the smart move, I was mostly waiting to see if the 15 was going to be USB C before deciding.
