Comment by thefifthsetpin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thefifthsetpin | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> just that it be possible on some level.

Sure, and that's a reasonable thing to want. That's still not what the right to repair is about, though. It's about preventing arbitrary restrictions on your rights to repair, not about forbidding practical limitations on your abilities to repair (unless of course those practical limitations were created in order to impose arbitrary restrictions on your rights).

If Apple decide to integrate the battery & screen to shorten the electrical paths to that power-hungry component, then the battery becomes effectively non-replaceable. That might annoy you, but it's not a violation of the right to repair.

On the other hand, if Apple do things to ensure that only Apple repair shops can replace the battery (eg via cryptographic signing, secret APIs, or physical keys that they prefer to call screwdrivers) then they've run afoul of the right to repair movement.

There may be times when it'd be good to mandate replaceable parts (environmental motivations come to mind), but that shouldn't be the default -- those restrictions should be applied to individual industries in narrow ways and only as needed.

The right to repair movement is pushing for something that reasonably could be the default, and we would instead make exceptions for things that shouldn't be generally repairable (eg, perhaps modifications to an odometer should be tightly controlled.)

>That's still not what the right to repair is about, though.

I'm just curious as to how replacing a battery doesn't fall under right to repair. It's probably one of the simplest 'repairs' you can make to a battery powered device.

Pretty much any battery powered thing, aside from a modern cell phone or tablet, my first go to if it won't turn on is either, take the battery out and put it back in, or try a new battery 90% of the time, this works, even for my old phones, right up to my current one, which is the first i've owned without a replaceable battery.

It's been about two years and as seems to be inevitable with phones, my battery's life has deteriorated, previously, when this has happened with phones, i've replaced the battery and gotten another couple years off it. Now...what am I supposed to do?

I can't repair it by replacing the battery. The phone is fine, the screen is.fine, it functions fine. But the battery dies noticably faster and from what I've read, this is directly because of the high speed charger i've been using and my charging habits in regards to these kinda of batteries.

Changing the battery absolutely falls under the category of repair. Changing my battery would restor my phone to a better state than now. Yet by design, I am unable to easily do this.

>I'm just curious as to how replacing a battery doesn't fall under right to repair. It's probably one of the simplest 'repairs' you can make to a battery powered device.

I think the GP is making an important distinction in the technical aspects of the law in order to ensure that this legalislation doesn't create an undue burden on manufacturers and the government that would get this bill killed easily.

What does it mean for the government to regulate that a device must have a user replaceable battery? Does that mean the device must use phillips head? A clip on pack? What about the battery? Does the battery size have to be standardized? Must it use AA batteries? Any of these will make our current devices inoperable. Likewise if we just take the standards today and encode them into law, we could be crippling devices in the future. I don't think it's a pedantic point - when you say "replaceable", it also means by ""whom"? You the user? You can't assume everyone is as technically sound as you - if grandma can't replace her battery then does the manufacturer fall into hot water?

Next, why stop at the battery? Almost every device has some sort of radio that if rendered inoperable would brick the device, just like a battery. Does this bill now mean that the radio of every device now has to be user replaceable? Standardized? Modular? It's easy to see how such a bill is must more hairer than a law that just says "Provide documentation, and don't add legal restrictions on repair".

Batteries are designed to be degraded so it's good start to get repair rights.

>What does it mean for the government to regulate that a device must have a user replaceable battery?

Seems pretty simple...

'Manufacturers must not knowingly make batteries inaccessible and irreplaceable without standardly available tools'

Your whole post is just quibbling and semantics making what is a pretty clear issue to be more complicated than it is.

Again, it's been standard for years and years for batteries to be contained below a cover that can be either pulled off or screwed off.

Trying to act like a phone is somehow more complicated and all these factors matter and some poor device manufacturer might sued because grandma can't take her battery out is....

So much disingenuous corporate lawyer babble bullshit.

>Next, why stop at the battery? Almost every device has some sort of radio that if rendered inoperable would brick the device, just like a battery.

You're absolutely right. I should be able to replace the individual components of my phone, the way I can replace components in my computer, car, bike, stove, most of my appliances, my guitar, nearly everything else I own to be honest. I completely agree with you.

>So much disingenuous corporate lawyer babble bullshit.

Surprise, surprise, that is exactly what you sign up for when you ask the government to get involved. Who do you think is going to write up these laws? What are standardly available tools? Who defines the standard? What defines inaccessible? If you are going to make a law these things have to be defined, or else Apple will just pay $10MM to a lobbyist to make sure that Apple iScrew is a standard. If you make it too strict, some troll will sue will you for everything because grandma couldn't reasonably repair the device.

> I'm just curious as to how replacing a battery doesn't fall under right to repair.

Right to Repair means manufacturers must release the necessary documentation and technical information required for repairing the product, to remove artificial legal and technical restrictions (trade secret, copyright, authorization, DRM), and possibly to provide replaceable parts, and even to allow third-party modification... So that the end user (or a 3rd-party repair technician) would theoretically be able to repair it independently.

But it has nothing to do with the underlying (not artificial) difficulty of the repair, and rightfully so (otherwise it's out of its scope, and you need a different set of regulations to address that) - Right to Repair asks manufacturers to open up the design, not to dictate how it's supposed to be designed. It doesn't matter if troubleshooting requires an EE degree, it doesn't matter if the repair requires a $1000 machine, it doesn't matter if the device is so delicate that it would only ever be successfully repaired by a trained technician with 100 hours of experience.

Using battery replacement as an example: Right to Repair means you should be able to get a service manual, a new battery, a set of tools, and possibly the technical specification of the battery management protocol from the OEM to replace the battery. But if your phone has been completely sealed for waterproofing by design, it can be extremely difficult to open the cover, remove the battery, and put a new one in without damaging anything - but you still have your Right to Repair, and you should support Right to Repair legislations, since it's still possible for you to find a skilled technician to repair it. On the other hand, without your Right to Repair, you won't even get the service manual, and the OEM can brick your device after you've replaced the battery via DRM.

Just like the Right to Free Speech, the Right to Repair is mostly a negative right, in the sense that it must eliminate restrictions on the (theoretical) exercise of the right, on the other hand, it does not actively empower an individual to exercise the right. The government cannot take my blog down, but I may be unable to get any meaningful traffic from the web.

The reasoning is that the internal design of devices like phones/tablets/etc cannot take self-repair into account when the priorities of most manufacturers these days are to make them small and light (not to mention things like water resistance which also poses design problems). Focusing on user-replaceability makes the design process much harder with these restrictions.

Personally I doubt that's the _only_ reason things have gone in this direction, but it's certainly one of them.

>most manufacturers these days are to make them small and light

I bought pretty much the smallest phone with decent specs I could find when I bought my last phone. Most of the new flagship phones were huge. Like things that would not fit in my jeans pocket with my wallet. None had a replaceable battery. Yet, i've had plenty of small, light, sturdy, water resistant phones with replaceable batteries.

I really have a hard time believing that argument i'm sorry. The only real reason I can see not to allow replaceable batteries is to increase profit for manufacturers. Same with every other 'feature' i've seen marketed to people with the same excuse.

It's nonsense. There's alway a profit motive behind things and the bottom line is...

The less modular consumer devices are, the more restricted our abilities to repair, modify and use our devices become, the less user friendly they become. The only ones benefiting from removing modularity, repairability and turning devices into black boxes without standardized parts requiring either replacement of the entire device or specialized repair services are the manufacturers period.

It's not consumer friendly. Anything else is marketing bullshit to make people accept less control over their devices and more profit for device makers.

There's zero legitimate consumer friendly reason not to standardize things and allow easy repair of devices, including replacing batteries, again a long standard feature in consumer electronics.

Just because it takes a couple years for batteries to die now, doesn't mean they don't die and need to eventually be replaced like old alkaline batteries. The time scale doesn't change the fact that eventually, yes they do need to be replaced, like any other batteries in battery powered devices.

The manufacturers are benefiting, but’s its reductive to say the benefit is solely keeping the walled garden. I work in consumer electronics (but not phones). Here’s a breakdown of your stakeholders when you’re going through the design

-ID, who have a particular vision of what the device should look and feel like. They probably want things thin

-Manufacturing/automation, who wants something production line friendly. They’ll probably be angry if you replace a stamped adhesive sheet with 6 screws

-You and your manager, who want you to keep COGS as low as possible

-The reliability team, who will raise a fuss if you keep failing your drop tests and water/salt spray ingress tests

-HW compliance, who aside from ROHS FCC certs are mostly concerned with battery safety

-Whoever is keeper of the PRD (PM, lead engineer). This is where concerns about user friendliness of the assembly will show up

Given all the other things you need to juggle, and how many of them can be solved with judicious use of adhesives, the line item about user replaceable batteries is going to drop off very quickly at most companies. You can argue that this PRD doesn’t capture your needs, or that incentives are misaligned, and that’s fair. What you’re looking for is a company with industrial designers and product managers that deeply care about repairability and there aren’t many. But the status quo isn’t a nefarious plot, they’re just prioritizing other consumer and company needs over this one particular consumer need.

>all the corporate structure and every middle man

>over this one particular consumer need.

Sorry, i'm glad the needs of everyone trying to make money off me and everyone adding to the worth of their shares comes before the consumers you're squeezing every fucking penny out of.

>More corporate marketing bullshit

Yes...things looking sleek and shiny as opposed to functional and long lasting is exactly what marketers tell consumers they want so they waste more money lining shareholders' pockets.

>before the consumers you're squeezing every fucking penny out of

No one, except for Apple and Samsung, is making any meaningful margin on consumer handsets. Many people would prefer a cheaper device vs a replaceable battery.

>Many people would prefer a cheaper device vs a replaceable battery.

Yet, my new phone without a replaceable battery cost more than my last phone with one.

Did your new phone have the exact same specs and dimensions? Or is this a worthless observation without a control variable?

I have a cell phone on my wrist.

It's about 40x40x10mm, and I can dive wearing it, as long as I don't get too crazy.

Here's the trick: write the legislation, before this object is invented, which allows it to exist, while still mandating that cell phones have replaceable batteries.

Can't? Great. Let's not make laws like this.

Diving computers definitely have replaceable batteries. And they exist.

What I understood, the right to repair is more about the papers than the actual device. The manufacturer can write on the contract that only they have the right to repair the device you bought. It does not mean that it has to be easy to repair it but you should be allowed to try it without them suing you.

Yes it is - if the battery isn't just a dumb power source, and has some kind of ID verification built in, that's a monopoly on repair, and if they don't even sell the replacement part, it's impossible to repair.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com