A persistent question in my mind is why do customers buy unrepairable products, from smart phones and high-tech tractors. Why is the market failing? Or is it working perfectly?
You can pay $150 to get a new battery put into your old phone but that doesn't seem worth it when you can get an entirely new phone that's "better" than your old one for $500.
If it were cheaper and easier to replace old batteries I'm guessing that people would keep their old phones much longer. That's my #1 reason for buying new phones: The battery in the old one just doesn't last as long as it used to and replacement batteries can be hard to come by and/or they're a serious pain to install (high risk too!).
Within the next two to three years though (assuming the global chip shortage lets up) we should start seeing phones with carbon cathode technology. Then again, car manufacturers might hog all the dual carbon and carbon cathode batteries so it might take a bit longer.
Apple will replace an iPhone screen for ~$100. I’m fine with that. But my washing machine which is repairable and has parts and schematics available from the manufacturer will cost me > $400 in labor to replace a $20 part. Plus it’s > 10 years old so I know more parts will fail. I’m just going to buy a new one.
Yes it is more efficient for you to buy a new washer. Delivery and haul-away are great upcharges (and worth it IMO). They will then repair and resell your old one at a much higher rate than phones are being reserviced.
Apple doesn't do board repair. They make you buy new, whole components. So when your laptop breaks, instead of spending $120 to fix it they say you need to buy a new $1,000 component and with labor that's more than the price of a new laptop.
I actually have repaired iPhones myself in the past, including screens and batteries.
That turned out to be a waste of time because the replacement parts failed in a much shorter time than the originals
The reason I continue to buy iPhones is that more recent models don’t typically need to be repaired. I would much rather have a phone that doesn’t fail easily than one that can be easily repaired.