this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
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It's like the only way they sell new ones now.
If batteries didn't fail, phones from 5 years ago would still be fine. Mobile OS and app demands haven't increased that much, so the only barrier to using our devices are the wear on the battery, and the refusal to provide security updates.
Next we need laws forcing some kind lf bare minimum of software support, though I have no idea what that would look like.
Sadly, it’s not just the batteries, there’s plenty of software stuff too.
Many phone manufacturers will release updates for only 2 years, if you got the most expensive flagship model; otherwise it’s just 1 year. So if you like having the new features of the latest version of Android, you need to upgrade hardware every year.
What if you don’t care about cutting edge software? Fortunately for you, a 3 year old phone should still receive security updates. For example, Samsung knows that many people don’t update every year. If you don’t support them at all, it’s going to be like Windows 95 all over again, and that would be bad for business.
Eventually, even the security updates will stop, because testing new software for a model that is used by only 0.1% of your customers takes a disproportionate amount of time, effort and money, so phone manufacturers simply can’t see the profit in that. If you get one of the enterprise models, you can expect to get firmware and security updates for 5 years. If you got a consumer model, expect much less than that.
Apple is a bit different, but I don’t want to make this wall of text any longer than it already is.
Nah, its the biggest driver for people who care. Most people will see the "you just got your last update" notification and happily keep using the phone for several more years. It's not safe, but the reason that actually makes people dump their old phones right now, is the battery.
There are ways to make phone batteries replaceable, and water-resistant. One would be to allow water to enter the battery compartment, but make everything inside impervious to water, and merely protect the electrical contacts with something. We survived thicker phones before, we will again.
And besides, the main reason people value water resistance, is because if you do drop your phone in a lake, you can't have it affordably repaired, so people pay a premium for phones that are resistant to being damaged in the first place.
An yet, it can still be better.
Apple has a tendency to undercut this type of legislation by preempting it with options that are just barely good enough that 90% of users are satisfied. This way they can continue screwing over third party repair partners, the customers, and the planet, only ever doing just enough to not be forced to go all the way to doing it all right. They tightly control component availability, device schematics access, and more.
As long as they only wrong a minority, they can get away with it, because a majority has to be upset with them to force them right.
As for your need for a more damage resistant phone... An iPhone is never going to be it. It has always prioritized form over function in that regard. Modern phones only ever introduced water proofing and impact resistance, once it could be done without making them ugly or too large. Yet most people slap on a case anyway. If phones were made in a way that integrated the space taken up by a case into the actual device, making it larger and heavier, the case unnecessary in the first place, we could have it all. Case and point, caterpillar phones, and the old XCOVER Samsungs, which had swappable batteries, AND waterproofing.
If durability is a priority due to your need of always having a functioning mobile device, a user replaceable, even hot-swappable battery, is a boon, not a detriment. Your argument is self-contradictory.
No. It doesn't. It has a absolutely horrible design for repairability, which apple has desperately worked around to be able to claim they've done their due diligence, so they wont have to change how they design, make, and market products.
You main point is that in this case, we cannot have our cake and eat it too, but the only reason that's true, is because the practices of modern device manufacturers choose not to develop products in that direction.