Why the average lifespan of a smartphone is only three years
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Repair costs are ludicrous. My 4 year old phone has a crack on the corner of the front glass. Repair shops are quoting me $250 to repair it. I can find old new stock of the same phone for less.
Welcome to "hiring a human to do a few hours technical labor involving low-volume parts." I don't think it's crazy, I think we just can't fathom how inexpensive per-unit manufacturing costs are and how efficient modern logistics is.
Outside of the really unique designs (folding, etc.), most phone screens tend to fall into a few basic size classes, but we still end up with wildly varying designs within those classes. The connectors are different, it's 2mm larger or smaller, etc.
I suspect when a manufacturer orders 100,000 the engineering costs to make it a little custom are insignificant on a per-screen basis.
If we had more top-down economic planning, there would likely be a single Display Monopoly, and they would say "here's the one six-inch display model for 2023". Whether it went into a Samsung or a Umidigi, there would just be one replacement SKU, and it would be far more feasible for repair vendors to stock it.
I busted my Lumia 1020 back in the day, and ended up retiring it because local repair shops were all 'weeks, if we can get the parts". If you had an iPhone or certain Galaxy S models, you at least had some chance spares were available from parts phones.
This would mean that even if you had something other than an iPhone or a recent Galaxy S, you'd have a chance of an affordable replacement part.
That happened in the VCR era. There were only six VCR mechanisms at peak. Hundreds of cases and brands, though.
I am the kind of person that never drops a phone and can replace a dying battery by myself. As long as parts are available, the most decisive factor for me to change a phone is the available RAM for apps, seconded by the lack of security updates.
I wish proper software optimization and testing on older hardware was given more attention, It is sad to replace perfectly good hardware due to bloated software. That and society requiring me to use 5 different chat apps that could but refuse to talk to each other.
Hate updates with a passion. If they don't break something rightaway (most of the times they do), are guaranteed to turn a snappy phone into a sluggish, barely-usable sort of a brick.
Afterall you never install Windows 11 on your Windows 95 machine and if you did, it would be unusable. Yet the Win95 software is perfectly usable if you decide to stick to it.
If I want new software I'll buy a new device that can run it.
Old phones can last A LONG TIME. I only replaced my mother's Samsung Galaxy S4 last month and only because WhatsApp refused to work with it anymore (not that it couldn't but so are corporate decisions). In all it lasted 10 years, not bad for a phone with no updates.
Like "the market will always go up long term", software updates are the cancer we were brainwashed to accept as some unquestionable axiom.
With Google’s “ooh shiny”, ship new features to get a promotion culture, no team is going to want to support a 7 year old product that isn’t generating new sales.
How will that ever show “impact”?
Phone repair costs: also yep. My friend owns a cell phone repair chain. They cannot get front glass for iPhone 1[345] Pro (or Pro Max) because the screens just aren't available for any price. The consequence is the third-party cell phone repair business is presently dying.
How much of that is intentional on the vendors' part is an open question, but I'm sure they aren't losing sleep over it.
It seems like hardware has greatly outpaced software requirements these days. I imagine phones with 2023 hardware will be more than viable in 2029, whereas a phone purchased in 2010 would definitely be a piece of junk compared to a phone in 2016.
Its amazing that the general public have accepted that as another other than a deliberate ploy to sell more new phones more regularly.
Regulators need to start enforcing repairability if they actually want to tackle e-waste.
I really hope vendors get forced to open up their hardware for the user to install their own OS once they stop supporting a device with updates.
I know the hardware on Android is fragmented but by now we should be able to handle this? PC are way more fragmented. Maybe drivers need to be open sourced?
Is it just too much competitive interest?
What manufacturer would want a phone that last more than 3 years when there is no downside and a possibility of someone buying another phone.
The only scenario where I see this change is by a law or phones become something you no longer own but rent. Then it would be in the interest of the manufacturer to keep the costs as low as possible and try to make you keep the same phone as long as possible.
[1] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210557?cid=iOS_SettingsUI_...
As well as the fact that back then phones progressed much faster so by the time your battery gave out, the new phone was much much better.
Easily swappable batteries would be a big value add now for a lot of people.
4 years old, effectively rendered obsolete by a software update.
If you consider buying and replacing hardware as a subscription, the price finally doubled.
I was very proud of Apple for their long lasting hardware. A MacBook Pro from 2013 was 8 years very useful. But sadly this has changed drastically without reason.
I booted it yesterday, and it still has that issue where you can’t type a alphanumeric passcode on boot, because the keyboard doesn’t show up. The workaround is to click on emergency, then get back to the passcode screen.
I don’t think the comment you’re replying to suggests never stopping updates. I don’t suggest that either. Otherwise people will think software is properly patched when it isn’t and application developers will not be able to modernize their stacks. I think currently 5 years is acceptable but we should strive for more. Some of these Android ones are BS.
Yes, Wintel figured this out, after the legacy of IBM PC.
Google just can’t manage a platform or more realistically doesn’t care to as long as they can serve ads on the device.
Hoping it lasts even longer.
It's the same reason as how software moved from pay once, use the version forever, to subscriptions: to keep you spending money.
The EU should regulate this as well.
The Pinephone was a great idea but it never become what it promised to be. Mine has essentially become electronic waste due to its lacking functionality.
I'd rather have a handheld computer with an alternate operating system and a replaceable phone communication module than any of the available options on the smartphone market.
Showing a persistent notification that “the battery has degraded and should be replaced” can increase the average lifespan of a smart phone significantly. These people don’t really care about shiny new apps or security patches. They just call people and send messages on WhatsApp. And maybe do some browsing on Facebook.
On iPhones, if the battery is degraded at least it drains up quickly and this hints that there is a problem with the battery. However, on most Android phones even 4-5 years old batteries last at least a day and they do so by reducing the CPU clock speed significantly. I know that Apple got fined for doing this in the past, but I haven’t heard any Android brand got fined for the same thing.
As anecdata, I have replaced the battery of my iPhone 6S at least three times and I will probably replace it again in a few months. And the phone is still very much usable.
The problem is manufacturers of Android phones that stop meaningful software updates and support basically directly after sale.
iPhone have 8 years lifespan easily today. EU should mandate 10-12 years. I look forward to Samsung et al following that.
Capitalism 101 I guess.