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Comment by alanwreath | Hacker News Reader

THIS ^^^. My concerns are less and less about preserving my phone and more and more about preserving my planet. Show me a phone that can be completely recycled instead of giving me the illusion that it won't break because of x or y. Eventually it's going to be to sluggish for modern applications (because of its cpu or because of its battery).

I have a growing pile of now useless phones even at my house that I never broke because I take care of my investments.

And while I wouldn't expect a company to search out "right" solutions, I would hope that MIT as an educational institution could see beyond money and at least get in front of where the hockey puck should be, and not where it's tended to go (I'm speaking of sustainable profits on a planet in which we can live vs just amazing profits on an uninhabitable planet).

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My last phone was used for 6 years before the battery didn't last a day of light use. My new phone has a replaceable battery. I intend to use it for at least 10 years.

Processors in phones haven't been changing much over the last few years. CPU throttling to deal with battery degradation is where most of the slowdown comes from.

Personally I like the idea of modular phones such that you can swap out only components that are obsolete or damaged.

Although, ultimately, this feels like a market/advertising issue over a technical issue. While I'm not convinced a 100% recycle phone will ever be a likelihood; surely we can get to 90%. Or slow down the trash generation with the aforementioned modular phone.

However it's going to require people to want to spend money on such a thing and also industry to want to produce and advertise such a thing. None of which seems like it's happening anytime soon.

How much does a modular design really extend the life of a computer? Very few people (my father aside) are actively trying to keep computers from the 90’s orearly 2000’s alive. That my 10-year-old MacBook is still kicking is kind of a miracle (and only because I have harvested the guts from two others).

I once set up a computer workshop using PCs discarded by university labs. I assembled about a dozen PCs from about 20 discards. One of them served as a DSL router.

In retrospect, I regret it; I saved those PCs from going to the dump, but:

- They were not power-efficient

- Because the hardware was a decade old, they had poor connectivity options

I used to seek out computers that were maximally upgradeable. But in practice, the only thing I ever upgraded was disk and memory. I still have a box of obsolete memory cards. Stuff gets obsolete very quickly these days.

> Stuff gets obsolete very quickly these days.

What do you mean these days? Computers used to obsolete within months in the 90s as ever-faster CPUs kept coming out.

No longer true, with the death of Moore's Law. Computers from 2010 are still quite usable (I have several, servers & laptop) since speed increases over the last decade are incremental at best.

I've been buying computers since the 80s and now is the golden age of longevity for equipment.

Well longevity in terms of "not much performance increases per generation" but the quality of goods isn't necessarily there. My middle mouse button of my thinkpad just randomly fell a day ago. I don't think I've ever even used the middle button... My laptop is about 3years old and for the first 2years was barely used because I used a different machine... My old pixel 3 phone had a few issues with it too. The USB-C port stopped working perfectly after a software update and wasn't being rma'd at the time. Battery bulge popped off the back.

I wish devices were made to last for at least 10years, only my modular desktop with haswell gen CPU has lasted that long. I downgraded it from daily to something else.

The only reason a 10 year old macbook seems like a miracle is because expectations are low for the Apple brand particularly. For other brands of laptop, 10 years old isn't terribly unusual. And for diy PC builds, I dare say 10 years old is actually typical (albeit usually in a 'Ship of Theseus' sense, but that's the point isn't it?)

Is that really the case for anyone but dedicated hobbyists? I would be honestly shocked to learn that the average life of any laptop brand runs higher than 5-6 years on average before being discarded.

In my experience, the average PC gamer upgrades their PC with a few new parts every few years, and even that isn't certain. Replacing the whole thing every 5 years seems atypical, that's a lot of money to be throwing around (particularly when many PC gamers are in it for the long-term economy.)

The average PC gamer is, of course, not the average computer user which is far more likely to be using a generic laptop or smartphone.

Which is all to say, I understand why we want modularity, but - for most computer users - a much more necessary path forward is a reimagining omaterials recyclability.

I think the average computer user is even more likely to be using old hardware than a gamer. The average Joe browsing facebook could be perfectly content with a 15 year old computer. Gamers at least are pressured to periodically update their hardware by the appeal of games that demand more than their old computer can provide.

>"I have a growing pile of now useless phones even at my house that I never broke because I take care of my investments."

pile of useless phones as an investment is some rather novel idea.

I also have few old ones but they're not useless, each is relegated to controlling particular gadget. Camera, drone, etc.

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