New Hampshire Lawmaker Kills Repair Bill Because 'Cellphones Are Throwaways'
vice.com
vice.com
He made a clear concise point in 3 minutes why the right to repair is important. Now the good thing is that it doesn't matter how many states the bill has been shot down. As long as one state or one country has it, it will open the Pandora's box.
Real full house hearing video is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHpXJzjin7k Over two hours of arguments from both sides - private advocates and $1K an hour PR shills (easy to spot who is who).
On a related note... come on, phone manufacturers! That's enough with sealed phones and a lack of microSD card slots for added storage.
Also, come on, app programmers! Let users store data in a microSD card, instead of in limited, expensive built-in storage! If you can't find the data when the card is removed, just deal with it! (I'm looking at you WhatsApp, given your insistence on storing photos and videos on internal memory.)
People want IP ratings. What same people don't understand is that most phone makers tell you it is not permanent. And same people also don't understand that IP ratings are not ratings of waterproof-ness (which, by definition, would not need a rating).
They aren't mutually exclusive at all. You can even have a real headphone jack and maintain a high degree of waterproofing.
I think eliminating the ability for people to replace batteries and use SD cards has more to do with saving manufacturing costs and encouraging people to replace their phones more frequently.
I'm not sure that it needs to fully turn off, many of our electronics don't have that ability. As long as it has power it could run in a super-low-energy mode that just keeps a capacitive sensor going.
If you want to tinker, buy a second phone and cut it up.
Continuing to produce new phone after new phone with only slight improvements between each new model with the expectation that people will just buy a new one rather than upgrade parts or repair old ones is just completely and utterly wasteful from an environmental stand point.
How are we not there already? What does your phone do today that it couldn't do five years ago, and is that thing actually so important as to justify five years of ewaste? And what do you think it doesn't do today that a few more years will fix?
The biggest problems right now are fragile hardware (a phone should not shatter when dropped), poor repair-ability (particularly battery replacement, which should be a trivial matter) and shitty wasteful software that has fewer features than it did years before but somehow uses more ram and more CPU time because the industry is obsessed with hiring the cheapest most inexperienced developers.
Do you seriously think manufacturers would ever do that?
That's the point - they shouldn't be. The cost of a cellphone does not cover the cost to the planet of producing that cellphone.
So basically it's a classic externality problem. Instead the law should simply make sure that "how long a device lasts" matches reasonable expectation. There are many ways to do this, such as saying everything is 6 months minimum for the first $50 and then another month per $15-20 up to a maximum of 5 years, and mandating repair/replace will happen within 2 weeks. The specifics could be hashed out, but the goal should be to makes sure that for the price consumers see advertised they are promised it will than work for a knowable reasonable lifespan for zero extra cost. "Extended/enhanced warranties" should only exist for special commercial/professional use cases, like extreme support periods, specific fast SLA, or advanced RMAs. By law though all standard use should be covered.
Then manufacturers can figure out the right mix of strategies to meet those goals. Repairability might be part of that, because they could satisfy their obligations more cheaply. But it's not the only way or the necessarily right way in all cases, like sometimes additional QA or better design upfront (reducing failure rate even if each individual failure or more expensive) would be more important. Or just having large enough margins to eat the cost if they can add enough value in other ways. It's a bad idea to have government mandate the method, what government should do is mandate the goal and the goal should be that products last, at zero additional cost. That way everything can be compared with no digging.
But I would strongly oppose anything further than that, such as changes to the physical hardware itself. "It works for the expected lifetime" should be required, but features within that should be up to creators and customers.
Sure, there are exploits for these things, just as there are exploits for iOS.
I'm not sure how you expect "how long a device lasts" to be defined. Manufacturers do typically design with some lifetime in mind, but it's not clear that has any real world relevance. If I buy a phone and stick it in a drawer it's going to last for a lot longer than its designed lifetime, but if I hook it up to a TV and play Fortnite all day it'll probably last significantly less due to the heat.
As far as software updates, although Apple does 3-5 years for iOS, Google has gone from 2 years to only 3 years, and other Android devices still seem to be in the 1-2 year range. So every Android phone is supported for significantly less than the "4-5 years" you seem to expect.
And the reason the repair bills are getting such interest is because the authorized manufacturer repair shops are so screwed up. They don't do any component-level repair, because the training and equipment is expensive, so the choices are just replace, replace, replace.
tl;dr Mandating a 5-year warranty is just handing out free phones everyone
This is a very good point. I've noticed that when companies are on the hook for warranty, they tend to make more repairable products. Example: Hilti angle grinder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9xhr0MsAZw
Those models are oriented toward "fleet" contracts. The Hilti grinder in the above video is designed so that all of the gears can be replaced by replacing the "head" section.
So, effectively, all warranties are 4 years. But you have to go to at least small claims court.
Also, if the defect is within 30-90 days, you don't need to do an RMA regardless of what the seller and manufacturer say. The person who took your money has to take it back.
But I don't agree that this "want" should be a legal requirement. I think it's perfectly acceptable and reasonable that it's possible for someone to cause a level of damage to their property that will destroy said property, leaving it totaled/unsalvageable. In general, where it won't hurt anyone else, that's a matter for individuals. It can be dealt with via insurance, or by buying products that cater to it through higher durability (or conversely just plain being cheaper, spend 1/10 as much and expect to replace them more often).
But that involves tradeoffs and costs which are subjective in value, so I don't think it should be the subject of legislation. The principle I'm stating is fully generalizable, it's not an electronics thing it covers everything. Everything you buy should last under regular use for a reasonable lifetime given the price, no tricks with secret information that the manufacturer knows but that the customer does not. That's foundational to functioning markets. But think about what you're saying, how would it apply to the many beautiful but more fragile decorative things many of us like to buy? Many of those make use of hard but brittle materials like glass. It's reasonable to expect they'll perform as advertises in regular environmental conditions, and not just shatter from regular indoor temperature differentials for example. But if they are dropped and smash parts may not be repairable, and that's fine.
Also, I want to note that as I said in another reply I can fully see and support an exception for any purely soft restrictions like encrypted components. A company shouldn't be able to prevent you from attempting any repair or modification you like on a product you bought from them. I absolutely support a law requiring that at time of purchase you be offered root hardware keys, root software keys, or both (on some devices I'd want both, on some only software). But I'm not in favor of the more generalized arguments for "repairability" that I've seen, and I think it wastes a big opportunity to try to fix a major market failure in America at least. 90 day/1 year standard warranties are utter bullshit.
Nowadays, we've finally hit diminishing returns and a 2 year old iPhone X is still about the same as an iPhone 11 Pro. It's become more like buying laptops. Therefore, we really need a way to repair these things.
Many of my friends have phones that are currently 2-3 years old, and they work just fine.
I assume this has to do with relative income: either $1000 per year is a lot of money for you, or it’s not.
On the other hand your point is that current phones don't have much different between them. I held on to my iPhone 5 for 6-7 years so I think I have even better evidence for you than your resourceful friends.
Did I miss the part where he predicted a price crash in the smartphone industry? If not, what are you talking about?
You're really struggling to understand how a prediction about the future is different than the state of affairs today?
Maybe the legislative solution we should be pursuing is longer mandatory warranties.
That said, in many cases a device fails due to a low value discrete component -- a resistor; a capacitor. This repair legislation would help here.
Those issues will never be going away on some level. The chips themselves are usually the most reliable components, unless they are power management chips.
Eliminating ports seems to be some manufacturers' solution to this. There's no wear if it doesn't exist.
> There is also 'glue & waterproofing wear' as the glue & rubber goes through multiple heat / cooling cycles and unsets, then water damage occurs.
I wonder if in the future, the glass will just be hermetically welded to the case (glass-to-metal seal). No moving parts; no external adhesives; no possibly of getting into the device without cutting through it.
It is seriously insane viewpoint in an overcommercialized consumer frenzy environment destroying worker exploiting mass industrial insanity that the humanity exhibit nowadays.
What's next? Get a new car if someone scratches it? Get a new home if the window breaks? Get a new lawmaker if it says something dumb?
[1] https://www.nhbr.com/nh-house-panel-votes-to-nix-right-to-re...
https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability
You can vote with your dollars.
Alec, the "American Legislative Exchange Council," is a far-right-wing organization that feeds legislation to state legislators. Looks like this guy picked it up.
All you New Hampshire people are welcome to come south to Massachusetts where we've had our right-to-repair laws for years. But, horrors, you may have to pay sales tax if you pay one of our fine repair establishments for this service.
Or you can chuck your old phone in a roadside ditch along with your no-deposit-no-return beer cans.
Its legislation to require manufacturers to make a more expensive, repairable device and provide instructional materials. Who's 'freedom' is that supporting?
>The bill would have forced manufacturers such as Apple to share repair manuals and parts with independent repair stores. House members didn’t kill the bill, but sent it back to committee for a year of interim study, citing security concerns
Doesn't seem like they were forcing the manufacturers to make easier to repair devices to me but I also haven't read the text of the bill.
There are no such restrictions. There simply isn’t a mandate for repair. Consumers have shown limited preference for repairability over other factors.
[1] https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-repa...
There is no law in the United States that blocks or restricts rights to repair.
Vice is seemingly not biased at all. (They push the point that mobiles are not throwaways by choosing the most expensive mobiles as if they were the standard. Most people I know just buy the cheapest Android they can find; those are definitely throwaways)
Canada might be similar, but outside of NA, people know exactly how much they pay for the handset and how much they play for the service (which is 5-10 times cheaper for similar limits), and as a result, most people don’t actually buy a flagship phone.
Frankly, most people in my life, family, friends, etc, are using flagship phones. I know people who keep said devices for 4+ years, but I genuinely don't know anyone using throw-away cheap Android phones. Those people who keep their phones forever, balk at the prices of new iPhones, fully knowing the "nice" ones go for $1000 or more.
I don't think my experience here is atypical. A few years ago, the price of a phone was heavily abstracted by the carriers, but that really is not the case anymore.
In many places in Europe, you can get reasonable monthly plans for ~$10; If you only use data, about half that. If you pay $1000 for 6 years of service, it puts the phone price in a completely different perspective than if you pay that for 18 months (which, last I checked US prices, was the case).
Well there are 100 Million iPhone users in the US (45% of the market). And the Representative that killed the Bill by requesting a year long study I'm sure has no conflicts of interest (Apple stock, Google Stock, hell no interest in the group that will be awarded the government contract to conduct the study)
Most people I know buy expensive phones, and many of them are in need of repair.
If you give a damn about the environment, I think it hardly matters how much it cost.
Nit: iPhone 11 tops out at $849. iPhone 11 Pro goes up to $1349.
The barrier to enter the cell phone market is kinda high.
I can’t use plastic utensils in California but I can use a disposable phone. Mind boggling.
It’s not hard to?
You’re going to have people who think they’re getting a good deal buy from AliExpress or Amazon, replace something like the battery, then have an explosion or fire. Goes on the news and next thing you know Samsung/Apple/Google get dragged through the mud because people see “Galaxy/iPhone/Pixel burns house down!” Now the company that made the phone has to do damage control. Reputation is everything.
If there were some sort of regulations in place to only allow replacement parts that meet safety guidelines, it would make it safer for right to repair. You can’t trust people to not cut corners on saving money to fix their phone.
I doubt that many people re-soldered defective chip on a ram module.
The only way right now to ensure repairability is to legalize how phones should be assembled and basic architecture. The same way eu did with the charging port - although they didn't went after apple for some reason.
On the other hand moving to system on a chip makes sense the way semiconductor have developed.
I think that we should insist that parts are replacable - we split the phone into 10-15 parts. But even if I could rule by decree I am not sure I can make the right call what exactly is the right way.
Which would prohibit further innovation and optimization.
I'd like to see smaller devices available. Many people would like phones with smaller screens that better fit their hands, which leaves even less room behind those screens for modular components and batteries.
I'm currently looking forward to the Purism phone, because it'll serve as a platform for Open Source innovation in small touchscreen interfaces. That doesn't mean I have any illusions that it'll be anywhere near as nice as a less modular phone, and I really have no interest in the modularity aspects.
I like the idea proposed elsewhere in this thread, of pushing for standards on recycling and then letting manufacturers innovate on how precisely to meet those standards.
And PCs don't have their architecture determined by legislation, so that further proves the point.
> Having half a dozen standard phone sizes seems reasonable, along with standard sockets for CPU, GPU, memory etc
There are a lot more possible sizes or form factors, CPU and GPU aren't necessarily separate, and memory is typically either soldered-down chips or built into one of the other chips depending on quantity. Separating any of those into removable boards will necessarily make phones larger, heavier, and otherwise suboptimal.
> You should also have a standard battery connector
Modern devices often don't use a single discrete battery; they distribute battery cells through a device anywhere they fit and wire them together.
ATX wasn't a legally mandated standard.
What individuals can do to repair a device isn't particularly relevant to this discussion. The legislation seeks to force manufacturers to make repair manuals available to independent repair shops. It's fairly common for such establishments to have the tools and expertise to replace soldered components.
> On the other hand moving to system on a chip makes sense the way semiconductor have developed.
That's kind of the problem, right? Consumers demand higher performance, higher performance requires higher integration, and higher integration means less repairability.
Given that things in general used to be more repairable than they are now, and that planned obsolescence is absolutely a thing, I highly doubt it.