They're tiny, they're valuable, and they last a decent while.
Of all the places to point fingers at waste problems, this is a strange one.
Of all the places to point fingers at waste problems, this is a strange one.
Google's refusal to provide Android updates past a meager few years certainly results in a much larger volume of electronic waste in the landfills every year.
Granted Google could probably lean on them a little harder to stop doing that.
Moreover, Apple does the same thing. They might give you longer than HTC, but they still stop issuing updates to perfectly operational devices, and don't publish the documentation necessary for anybody else to make an OS for them.
Compare this to PCs where you can still install the latest Windows or Linux on some piece of hardware that originally shipped with a CRT monitor and whose manufacturer went out of business a decade ago.
The problem does indeed come down to Google and their choice to prioritize rapid market share growth and what the device makers and carriers wanted over what would provide a good end user experience.
The original $399 iPhone SE just started its sixth year of OS and security updates. Android devices get half that support period if you are lucky.
That is part of the kernel. You might as well blame Linus Torvalds.
> The problem does indeed come down to Google and their choice to prioritize rapid market share growth and what the device makers and carriers wanted over what would provide a good end user experience.
Google didn't have market power in phone operating systems when Android was just getting started. They had no power to dictate terms at the time because the device makers would have just used something else.
> The original $399 iPhone SE just started its sixth year of OS and security updates. Android devices get half that support period if you are lucky.
This is whataboutism. They're both doing it wrong, so your defense is that HTC is doing it wronger. But they're both still doing it wrong.
And what are you going to say if Google does get a hardware abstraction layer, so that Android devices are supported indefinitely?
This is a very poor job of excuse making.
The point stands. Google's poor decision making led to a much higher volume of electronic waste on a yearly basis than any imaginable level Airpods sales ever could.
You can't convince them to do that in order to use a new operating system with no market share.
> Google's poor decision making led to a much higher volume of electronic waste than any imaginable level of Airpods sales ever could.
More whataboutism.
You can't blame others for the mountain of electronic waste Google's poor decision making has caused.
Which one causes less electronic waste?
In all your comments on this page you have contorted every negative for Google into a positive but every positive for Apple into a negative.
Nope. Windows 10 and iOS both require two Gigs of RAM at a minimum, although Microsoft's minimum OS requirements have always been regarded as something of a joke in the industry.
Linux does. For that matter Android does.
Also, machines from 2003 support 16GB of RAM:
https://www.tyan.com/Motherboards_S2885_Thunder%20K8W
Whose fault is it that you can't upgrade the memory on the iPhone 4?
Apple supports iPhones for as long as they have enough resources for the new version of the OS to continue running on them.
Google does not. The fact that they only provide half as many years of support at best proves the point.
Meanwhile Apple, like most Android phone makers, don't publish the information needed for third parties to make drivers for their hardware. Which is why you can't install the latest Android on an iPhone 4. And what is Google supposed to do about that? But Apple could do something about it.
I can easily see how having a removable battery might increase failure rate in a product like this
Maybe these unintended side effect are worth considering more than we think.