10 Year Smartphone
10yearphone.com
10yearphone.com
But I think the call for the Right for Repair is needed. Mandating companies provide (at least security) updates and keep parts availability for 10 years seems like a good thing. I doubt Apple will keep supporting the 5s forever, and even so that's currently the oldest smartphone with current security updates. The next closest (outside of iPhones) is Samsung at 4 years and Google at 3 years.
Even if the phones will get slower and don't get fancy new features, I know plenty of people that are still happily using 5+ year old phones. And manufacturers should definitely be required to provide security updates long past that point.
I gave it to my daughter who just started secondary school here in the UK. She had to have it switched off at school, and switched it on when she left so a few hours of charge was fine until she got home. I got her a new phone that Christmas, but for a few months she got good use out of it.
If one wants a slightly lighter-touch regulation strategy, instead of directly mandating that "a phone must have security updates for n years", legislation could require that (a) CO2 emission cost used to manufacture (b) MTBF (c) warranty period and (d) guaranteed security+OS update lifetime be included on the packaging (like nutrition labels). Then, when shopping, consumers can see that the $700 phone has a 5 year MTBF (and is repairable) while the $400 phone has a 2 year MTBF - similar to the unit prices that are already included on grocery store price tags.
All the Android manufacturers, with the exception of Samsung, rely on their parties for hardware components and therefore device driver binaries that would need supporting and patching. And all of them including Samsung rely on Google for OS patches (well, except Google). Third party firmware is why Google struggles to support their devices for more than 3 or 4 years.
A lot of manufacturers wouldn't even exist after 10 years. Blackberry, Nokia, Palm, all gone in the last 10 years. HTC were big back in 2011 but gave up on phones a few years ago. I'm sure there are more I'm forgetting.
1. All phones should allow the bootloader to be unlocked, without compromising security, so that the user can install any OS on it.
2. All hardware parts should provide details of an API so that anyone can make device drivers for them for any OS.
Here's an example: The other day I was using a lidar sensor has a very well documented API, into its c-library. I do have the source for that c-library, and can build it, but it's calling into the part which doing many undocumented things because the part itself has a micro inside it and it has been updated since the documentation was written. And that c-library comes with a binary file that is filled with micro firmware and magic numbers that were determined by the factory during calibration. I have no idea how those measurements represent or how they were made, not that I can reproduce them anyway.
Is this sensor compliant? And, it probably was compliant once, but now is it still? Because the sensor itself changed, even though the C API remained constant.
Also, many parts, like this sensor, are made internationally: hardware is from one country, firmware is from another, company headquarters are a third.
I've got a drawer full of 2000's era 'open source' hardware where the possibility is there but nobody bothered to create a good working operating system.
Phone makers can just decide to build better SoC (or to purchase better ones) that are easier to keep working when you update the Kernel.
Or they are free to run Android on top of an easier Kernel to work with.
What we're seeing is Apple innovating and writing good software for almost 30 years since the NeXT purchase. Investing in good tech is just like compound interests, it pays over time.
Microsoft has no trouble supporting Windows and Windows Server for 10 years, and they're installed on innumerable number of different hardware configurations. The core issue is that Android's OS stack was built without a properly decoupled hardware abstraction layer (HAL), necessitating the phone's OEM, the SOC manufacturer and the carrier to all work together to prep an OS update. Google tried addressing this in Android 8 (https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/google-hopes-to-fix-...), but even now, an OEM still needs a carrier's input when prepping a new Android OS update, and there's still simply no motivation from either.
And that's completely setting aside how unworkable this would be in reality (think about things like hardware support for encryption standards and codecs in use in 2032).
Even if the OS gets security patches for 10 years, does anyone think app developers are going to continue improving and supporting their apps on this thing?
Their SoCs include proprietary drivers in order to run Linux on them, and because of that the kernel can never be updated. This means important features and security fixes can't be applied, as you can upgrade to the latest version of Android but the kernel underneath remains ancient.
Until SoC vendors are forced to support much longer timeframes, or ideally upstream their drivers, then we're never going to get phones which can last 10 years.
Based on what's actually being promised on that page, this sounds like wish-casting. There's no mention at all of swapping out CPU/RAM for upgrades.
I'm trying to imagine how much bigger this "phone" is going to be now that it has, say, a socketed CPU and slots for RAM. Will cargo pants still cut it, or do I need to go to a messenger bag for carrying my new "phone"?
If the goal is to make parts replaceable to reduce waste, what is the difference between keeping a phone for five years and throwing it away to buy a new one, then keeping that for five years, vs replacing all the parts in "one" phone over a ten year period? Two complete sets of parts are used.
My son has a six year old phone. When he lost it, he wanted the same model, which we bought used. It still has the latest software, because it's not android.
What is the difference between ten people owning ten 10 year phones, and ten people each handing down a phone that one person bought new?
Do I think this solves e-waste? No, but it would be nice to have some of these options.
This is because of a phase mismatch - a phone bought 10 years ago would have been in the middle of the 3G lifetime. 3G started getting adopted in 2002-ish and had ~200M users in 2007 according to WP[1]. That's between a 13 and 20 year window for usage - which overlapped with 4G during the tail decade (or so), so, in fact, there's a good chance that a 10-year-old phone would work today because it could have been released with a 4G radio (and, if it was built to be a 10-year phone, it absolutely would have had one).
> If the goal is to make parts replaceable to reduce waste, what is the difference between keeping a phone for five years and throwing it away to buy a new one, then keeping that for five years, vs replacing all the parts in "one" phone over a ten year period? Two complete sets of parts are used.
Different parts have different Mean Times Between Failure (MTBF), so you don't end up replacing all parts at equal rates. CPUs tend to last far longer than batteries and screens - having a repairable phone means that you can replace the battery several times over a 10-year lifespan, whereas you're almost never going to replace the CPU.
That is, buying two five-year phones results in you paying for two CPUs, two batteries, two baseband modems, and two of everything, regardless of which component in the first actually failed. Buying one ten-year repairable phone results in you paying for one CPU, one baseband modem, one display driver, ..., ...and two batteries. Far less e-waste. Every time a non-repairable phone breaks, you have to throw the whole thing out. Most times a repairable phone breaks, you can fix what's broken.
Additionally, he MTBF of a composite, non-repairable device is lower than the MTBF of its least reliable component - meaning that (theoretically - I'm ignoring the durability costs of building dis-integrated devices) it's more expensive to build a single, non-repairable device that lasts five years than to build a device composed of components that will individually last five years each.
> What is the difference between ten people owning ten 10 year phones, and ten people each handing down a phone that one person bought new?
As it stands, most phones sold nowadays won't last 10 years, so the latter scenario doesn't really happen. Some manufacturers (Apple) make relatively reliable devices, but those come with severe freedom and privacy restrictions (the argument is that reparability should be a right, not a feature of a particular company), and their devices are infamously non-repairable.
Which is it? I need to be able to replace everything or just the battery?
Is there a problem with replacing batteries in current phones? The free phone I got from AT&T came with the battery separate, so that one is fine. I have had third parties replace batteries in iPhones.
>but those come with severe freedom and privacy restrictions
Ironically, I find the opposite is true, because my freedoms and privacy are not violated by Apple, but by the shitware you find on Android phones. And if you mean the "freedom" to choose between paying Apple or Epic, well I prefer the freedom to choose a phone that just works. If you value the "freedom" of paying Epic, then you have the freedom to buy an Android phone. But you don't really want Freedom, you want what you want to apply to everyone else. I choose Apple. You don't have to. Demanding that my preference be eliminated is the antithesis of Freedom.
>their devices are infamously non-repairable
non-repairable by others. I've had iPhones repaired by Apple several times. Like the Epic issue, you could buy an Android phone which would meet all your requirements, but you want an Apple phone, and then complain that it doesn't have the "freedoms" of an Android phone. You seem unable to see that the very reasons why you want the Apple phone are a direct result of the policies you complain about. Put the other way, the reasons you don't want an Android are because they have "Freedom" that allows malware to proliferate, or are "repairable" but manufacturing tolerances caused by having to fit multiple parts from multiple vendors means things break or disconnect or you get a bad batch, and the assembler can't support upgrades to the new OS because it's just too expensive to support all the different combinations of driver binaries, so old, unpatched Android for you forever.
Make your 10 year phone. The company wont be around in 10 years and you'll have a rooted virus fest or a brick. The planet wont be around in 10 years, but fuck me, you'll have done your part right? Look at me and my ten friends! There's gigatons of CO2 to support the internet and mobile phone network, but I replaced my mobile phone battery instead of buying a new phone!
Further, this would be a nightmare to developers when it comes to supporting the software for the phone. They would definitely reach a point where introducing new features are arduous due to tight requirement of backward compatibility.
Apple's SOC's are years ahead of the competition and they support the devices longer than any other company. And Apple will exist in 10 years when this company likely won't. I say that as an Android user since the HTC Evo.
I don't perceive any difference with my new one, which is a newer generation. But maybe it's because I don't spend my life glued to a mobile phone.
I'm pretty sure though, that I would have been very happy to use it for other 5 years. Heck, I'd be happy even to use my very old Galaxy S3 (but not the S2 ;)), which unfortunately broke.
I have a Fairphone 2 as my main phone (released in 2015) and I am running Lineage based on Android 10.
Is that compelling to anyone? If you asked me to trade my new phone for a 9 year old phone, and in exchange I am allowed to drive for 3 hours, I would keep my current phone. I'd probably give up driving for a week for a phone that's just a year newer.
That, and I drive a Nissan Leaf.
I remember hanging onto that phone for about 3 years I think, and replacing a battery somewhere along the way, so I thought I'd remind myself how that process went since it wasn't stuck in my memory anymore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI30NPW5Kls
Turns out that one could actually open the case with a Phillips screwdriver. 3 screws to pull total. A little bit of glue behind the battery.
Obviously things have changed quite a bit, but I could see hanging onto that phone and replacing components as they died. Would I actually want to be using that phone now? Probably not. Should we insist on things being that easy to fix? Almost certainly.
I don't understand the fuss about glue, for the phones I worked on it was just a small blob of tacky gel that came un-stuck and then re-stuck again pretty easily.
While making phone calls still works, the software side is problematic. It's 32-bit which and totally unsupported. It won't reliably connect to iCloud. Hardware wise the wifi won't connect to my WPA2 router and the memory is too small to fit a modern website in the browser which means the phone will hang a while when browsing to the wrong URL. Still a nice phone to look at, no wonder they reused the design a bit for the iPhone 12.
That bloat occurs up and down the stack, and at some point perfectly good older phones just can't run the bloat without being really slow or crashing.
Once a device can use sophisticated software, it becomes easy to make it obsolete by changing the software.
A 10 year device is not the solution, the solution is very long term software.
Developers already know how to write long term software, as opposed to short term software. Ubuntu already has LTS.
Software seems to be progressing quickly enough, and it seems like it may be a reasonable choice soonish for those who can live without iOS/Android.
Upgradable? Not so much, but that would be much harder for smartphones when basic things like in-screen fingerprint or front camera get adopted.
With the wide angle cameras, half a TB of storage, phones should be able to do everything a dashcam can do.
It smells like bullshit, NO one is lobbying against it...but also not for it.
I get that most hardware companies want to go full John Deere/Apple on this, but that's an issue with the hardware/software integration. An iPhone is made of the same general components as any other phone, but the special sauce is the easy of use from the software for many consumers.
I don't think most people actually want a 10 year phone, the same way most people don't want to drive a functional but utilitarian car. They want a name brand that reflects their values, and most people don't value being able to cheaply and efficiently fix things. If they did, we wouldn't have had the same erosion of R2R.
That said, this page pissed me off massively because I do like this stuff (We grow herbs/veggies, repair/mend our clothes, usually cook our own meals) and this was a set up for a fucking lobbying campaign on a continent I don't reside on. When I see groups like this supporting causes I also support I usually warn people AWAY from them and towards other, less "clever" people attempting to address the issue without these tactics.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-20/microsoft...
I think Apple is smart enough not to be so public in their support of an unpopular policy