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Comment by fsflover | Hacker News Reader

> who the heck is willing to keep their phone if they can buy a $30 replacement battery on Amazon

How about reusing an iPhone by someone else?

Ok, so who the heck is willing to re-use someone else's phone and would do so if they could replace it with a $30 part from Amazon, but because they need to take it to Apple or some other retailer and pay up to $120 to have it replaced for them, would rather drop $1k on a new phone?

At some point in the depreciation curve of the iPhone, it will not make sense for certain types of users (students?) to pay $120 for Apple to replace the battery, since $30 battery is not available, and instead would make more sense to buy a newer used iPhone. The price sensitive user themselves would not drop $1k on a new phone, but someone else in the upgrade treadmill will.

I really doubt any significant number of people would be buying $1k phones repeatedly if the cost wasn't amortized like they are. People don't feel like they're preserving a luxury item that costs that much, they feel like they're preserving something for the price of $120 that costs 1000/24 or whatever. When I go and actually spend $600 straight up for my non-iPhone (more than I'd prefer for the value it offers me) it hurts, and I'm going to do what I can within reason to keep it running.

Sure, at a certain point in every product's lifespan there's a certain point where it doesn't make sense for certain buyers of used products to pay higher prices for replacement parts if lower prices were available. But the claim made was: "the products are destined to become e-waste faster than necessary due to inevitable battery degradation and intentionally difficult battery replacement."

So in order for iPhones to "become e-waste faster than necessary" and also for Apple to be doing this "[because] they want to sell entire $1000+ phone/$3000+ laptop upgrades, not replacement batteries", is the assertion that the market for users who would buy a used iPhone, for which it is not economical for them to spend $90 more on a battery replacement are generating enough extra disposal of used iPhones that Apple has intentionally chosen this design in order to maximize the sale of new phones to people that are selling their phones to this contingent of buyers?

Is there even any evidence to suggest that the number of used iPhones that would otherwise be sold to someone for whom a $30 battery replacement is economical, but not a $120 replacement is significantly routed instead to the trash instead of being sold to other users who are not as price sensitive? Even just a study of the average used market lifespan of iPhones compared to other cell phones might be instructive here.

The charge definitely has an impact on the market lifespan of the phone. It makes an older phone less attractive.

Let's do a thought experiment: The cost of an iPhone 16 is $800 brand new in 2024. The year is now 2028 and someone is giving a student the phone for free (and they need a phone), but warn that the battery is glitchy and worn out. Let's say there is no third party replacement. At what price will the student accept the phone and replace the battery? At what price would the student just get a brand new iPhone 20 at $800? Assume the following replacement charges: $700/$480/$240/$120.

Yes, the price is relevant compared to the price of a new phone. And for what it's worth, the $120 price point only applies to the pro models, so your entry price is $900. But that aside, again I ask who are these people that are forgoing a $120 battery for a phone (one they'd be perfectly happy with if they could get a $30 replacement battery) in favor of a new $800 phone instead?

Yes in a hypothetical world where Apple charges $700 for a new battery, and a brand new iPhone can be had for $800, it's reasonable to think a good chunk of phones with degraded batteries would be discarded in favor of new phones. Likewise if we imagined a hypothetical world where iPhones randomly explode, killing the owner but only after it has been sold second hand, we'd also see a decline in the lifespan of used iPhones. But we don't live in such a world, and the batter replacement cost is not $700, or $480, or $240. It's $120 for two models and $99 for most others. And this $120 battery replacement world is the world the original commenter suggests that iPhones are becoming e-waste at a rate much more rapidly than they otherwise would if only they had $30 amazon replacements and sliding battery doors. It's the world where the original commenter implies that the only (or at least a significant) reason Apple designs the iPhone batteries the way they do is to drive sales of $1k+ phones. So in this world, who are the people rejecting $120 battery replacements for $1k+ phones?

I don't understand your comment - are you saying that there should be no difference in behavior between a $30 expense and a $120 expense? Maybe for you there's no distinction, but population effects on behavior always occur in the margins, and there's a considerable difference between $30 and $120 for a lot of people.

Otherwise why not make it $200 or $300 for a battery replacement? Why is $120 just perfect?

> are you saying that there should be no difference in behavior between a $30 expense and a $120 expense?

I'm saying the number of people who:

  1) Would buy a used iPhone
  2) Would buy said iPhone so late in its depreciation cycle that the difference between a $30 and a $120 expense is the difference between buying and not buying the device
  3) Are unwilling to entertain any other form of battery replacement for such an old phone (like 3rd party vendors who will replace it for say $70)
  4) Are the buyers of last resort for the given iPhone and because they didn't buy it the phone has gone instead to the landfill because no one else would buy it except for them

is so vanishingly small a quantity of people, that they have no measurable impact on the speed which with iPhones become e-waste relative to a world where iPhones had batteries easily replaced with a $30 amazon purchase, and also have no measurable impact on the rate of new iPhone purchases such that it would even be a factor in how Apple chooses to design or not design any given iPhone model.

> that the difference between a $30 and a $120 expense is the difference between buying and not buying the device

Why does it matter? It doesn't have to be the difference between buying and not buying. It just could help students to save money.

It matters because the original claims I was responding to was that Apples iPhone battery designs are accelerating their path to e-waste relative to a world where these cheaper easily replaced batteries were available and that the (or at least a significant) reason Apple chooses this design is to sell more $1k+ new phones instead of selling batteries. For these claims to be true, there must be a significant enough fraction of people who either replace their phone with $1k+ new phones when their old battery dies because for some reason spending $120 on a battery replacement is too much or a significant number of people who would buy/use them second hand, but refuse to because $120 for a battery replacement (or any of the available cheaper options) is too much. And such a significant number that they are actively moving the needle on the number of new iPhones sold and the speed at which otherwise wanted iPhones are being sent to the trash.

> For these claims to be true, there must be a significant enough fraction of people

No. For this effect to be significant, there must be a significant enough fraction of such people. For this effect to exist, there must exist any fraction of such people.

If the effect exists but has no net impact, then that effect might as well not exist. It is meaningless and irrelevant to a discussion on whether a given design is good or bad or what its intentions are.

Let's say that one such person exists, and they personally have caused 5 iPhones over their lifetime to go to the trash pile earlier than they would have if the design was different. In the mean time, in a parallel world, we have different design. And in this other world, 6 iPhones over the same time period go into the trash earlier than they otherwise would have because of faulty water ingress protection where the battery contacts penetrate the shell, or because of a broken battery contact, or because someone put a cheap 3rd party replacement in that caught fire. When we compare the two worlds side by side, we discover then that the "replaceable battery" world is one where the iPhone battery design is the one that drives iPhones to become e-waste faster and drives the sale of more $1k phones.

Since we can't have two parallel worlds, the best we can do is compare the iPhone to other phones and/or look at the size of the effect and whether it's significant enough to show up in design planning. If it does not generate a significant effect on the market, then claiming the effect of this minuscule fraction of people makes iPhones "destined to become e-waste faster than necessary" or that they factor into the design decision because apple wants "to sell entire $1000+ phone/$3000+ laptop upgrades, not replacement batteries." is fallacious. It's fallacious in the same way that claiming that butterflies flapping their wings in Beijing are causing more iPhones to become e-waste sooner than necessary because they contribute to hurricanes and many phones are damaged or lost in such storms. Butterflies might indeed create a very real effect on air currents when they flap their wings. But I'm not about to start an advocacy program for slaughtering butterflies to keep iPhones from becoming e-waste in a hurricane without some evidence that the effect is significant. And no one would accept the claim that butterflies cause iPhones to become e-waster sooner than necessary as true because the effect butterflies have exists, no matter how insignificant it is.

It's not always just battery replacement:

Spend 12% of the cost of a new phone to keep the deficient one running, spend even bigger fraction on both battery and another overpriced fix to have decent QoL on the used phone (or other way around, fix a broken screen to have a working old phone with bad battery or spend bigger part of the price of a new phone to fix both), expecting the new battery to die sooner, requiring another 12% as well as other overpriced fixes due to the phone's age -- or just buy a new phone and impress whomever you want without any hassle and worry?

I don't think that's majority of cases, but I bet it's a significant amount (>5%), in a large market

And if neither fixes nor selling deficient phone aren't expected to yield decent profit on used phone market, many won't hassle with it.

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