If all modern phones were as repairable as those we could eliminate so much garbage!
It seems that most people want more than just usable. They may not want to pay more for a device up front, knowing they will be missing out on the latest technology down the road.
People can still buy new stuff earlier if they want. But their old stuff can be reused by those that do not need, want or can afford the new devices. There are many categories of devices where that's a good option for many, not only phones. Besides, it's always good to have the option to repair that thing you have when it breaks even if initially you did not think you would need that. You might have grown to like it.
Smartphones have largely caught up to traditional computers in terms of the time it takes for upgrade-worthy advancements in hardware. I expect we'll see smartphone upgrade cycles continue to lengthen until they mirror desktop/laptop upgrade cycles.
I've been using a 6S since 2015 (this thread caught my interest because it's now somewhat of a Ship of Theseus as I've replaced so many parts over the years), but the 11 Pro I bought last year was the first time a multi-year-gap upgrade felt rather incremental, especially for $1100. I returned it and expect to continue to use and repair the 6S until they drop iOS support for it.
* OnePlus 3, released in June 2016, 6 GB RAM.
vs
* iPhone 7, released in September 2016, 2 GB RAM.
* iPhone 12 Pro Max, released in October 2020, 6 GB RAM.
From my perspective smartphones have not changed much.
By contrast the processor in my work phone (an Iphone) is faster than my laptop.
This is the worst kind of planned obsolesces
I agree that the manufacturer or carrier doesn't owe you updates indefinitely, but they definitely should give you all the resources you need to develop these updates yourself if you wanted to.
The landscape can change. Maybe there's going to be a huge open-source project that will make these updates. Maybe someone will figure out a way to automatically handle a large number of hardware configurations at scale (a powerful enough hardware abstraction layer should be able to deal with it). Maybe someone will make a business out of it, providing security updates at a reasonable cost. Either way, there shouldn't be any artificial hurdles against the customer developing and running their own firmware on hardware they paid money for.
I would really like to hack on a tablet I have that's 5 years old, but I can't because the firmware and drivers are both closed source.
I think when I buy a device, I should get the source code to it once the manufacturer decides it's not worth it for them to continue patching the software for the device I've bought.
I3 runs reasonably well, but Gnome would probably be too heavy to make for an enjoyable experience.
Would you be willing to pay whatever your share is of how much generating the update would cost, in order to get it? With a clear indicator when you buy the phone that you automatically get a subscription to 3 years worth of security updates; past that, you pay whatever amount is needed to keep it up to date.
Conceptually, I dislike that mobile development hasn't followed a similar path. Samsung should not dictate how many updates my phone gets and for how many years. Practically, I realize that this is a consequence of how we've built SOCs and mobile hardware and there's no incentive for companies to change. That doesn't make it less problematic.
Also, we’ll have to figure out how to manage with a sort of stagnation.
Essentially this entails curbing change. Curbing change means slowing progress (initially in this niche), but if we extend this into other areas it can mean significant stagnation because since things are good enough we don’t need to improve and progress (ie. we’re at equilibrium )
We'll have to grow comfortable with that outlook.
But sure. Repairability is one thing, it just means that devices can continue the things they were made for. For new workloads they would need upgradeability, which is a completely different beast.
I don't think having repairability will slow things at all. It will simply prune some behaviors corporations engage in that destroy the planet, like glueing in batteries. Stopping such practices will not even make new devices more expensive - we have old designs that did it right. Falling back to them and innovating there could even save money.
The problem is that this has happened despite my usage not changing.