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It's your device, you should be able to repair it

bbc.com

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Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#341

Post by PartiallyTyped »

leoedin wrote: post #53

PCs and even most laptops have been very repairable for decades. You can still run Windows or Linux on a 10+ (20+?) year old laptop without an issue. The idea that a 5 year old laptop would be unusable or not get the latest version of Windows is unacceptable. Yet phones cost similar amounts and have nowhere near the repairability. A decade ago you could argue that it wasn't that important - specs were changing so qui…

Repairable is not limited to just OS support, but fair and equal access to replacement components. For example, apple can ask Texas Instruments to not sell a particular chip that is used on their logic boards to anyone else but them, rendering odds of third party repair slimmer [1].

Apple went as far as to prevent genuine, that is, salvaged parts, from legitimately bought phones, from being used to replace camera units [2,3,4], or lock phones with replaced batteries.

[1] https://youtu.be/w4eHZCuHob8?t=175 Louis talks about part availability

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/30/21542242/apple-iphone-12...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnG3h3Jewq4

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez3f1HgOa1o

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#342

Post by ChrisLomont »

passivate wrote: post #331
ChrisLomont wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where does this crazy idea come from that you have to glue shut a device to make it waterproof? Glue helps with heat dissipation, physical shocks, vibration knocking plugs loose, provides electrical insulation, chemical resistance, and makes the components less able to vibrate over time and knock things loose, makes sensor positioning more stable, and even makes things easier to assemble since less individual faste…

You're saying "glue helps" but you seem to mean "glue is required". Those are not identical concepts. Yes glue may help, just like using bolts screws and gaskets may help. The entire point is that glue is not _required_ to achieve those goals.

What is glue is cheaper and works better at achieving all those disparate goals?

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#343

Post by mntmn »

alexvoda wrote: post #165
css wrote: post #2

This article moves the goalposts on what "right to repair" is several times. It generally means that manufacturers should not hide schematics from device users or disallow third party manufacturing of first party parts. However, the author states: > The law doesn't yet cover smartphones and tablets that she says are getting harder to fix. One problem is keeping older devices updated with new software. Now "right to r…

Electronics used to come with full schematics as part of the documentation. As an example, this (1) is how the manual looks for a ~1970-1974 stereo record player I have. You have diagrams of the boards and lists of parts as in individual caps, etc. We should strive to move in that direction, not away from it. Permanently locked bootloaders, DRM for componets, etc. are a move in the oposite direction. To move the over…

Shameless plug: We're doing this with the MNT Reform laptop: https://mntre.com/reform2/handbook/schematics.html

There's also a print version of this book that is included with the assembled version of the device: https://shop.mntmn.com/products/mnt-reform-operator-handbook

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#344

Post by ChrisLomont »

fsh wrote: post #278
ChrisLomont wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where does this crazy idea come from that you have to glue shut a device to make it waterproof? Glue helps with heat dissipation, physical shocks, vibration knocking plugs loose, provides electrical insulation, chemical resistance, and makes the components less able to vibrate over time and knock things loose, makes sensor positioning more stable, and even makes things easier to assemble since less individual faste…

None of this makes any sense. In modern smartphones, the PCBs (i.e. the parts that get hot and contain the sensors and other components) are usually screwed into the frame without any glue. Only the battery, display, and back covers are glued in. This makes repairs of the most commonly damaged parts much more difficult without providing any functional benetfits.

You ignored a significant part of the list. The list is not mine - it's listed on manufacturing process feature availability when you source things.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#345

Post by ghaff »

vkou wrote: post #288
devoutsalsa wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big reason that stuff isn't replaceable anymore is because consumers wants some of the benefits that come w/ non-replaceable parts. For example, it's nice that I can drop my iPhone in water w/o worrying (too much) about destroying it. I spent ~$1500 on an iPhone 12 Pro in November & dropped it in a lake in December. Part of the reason it's (more) waterproof if because it's not covered w/ ports/hatches/openings that…

> A big reason that stuff isn't replaceable anymore is because consumers wants some of the benefits that come w/ non-replaceable parts. This may be true, but we shouldn't confuse 'a decision made by a product manager' with 'the customers want this'. Some design decisions succeed because of the other strengths of a product (and the competition cargo-cult copies them), not because they are good design decisions. Some d…

>yet you need to flip the cable over three times before you can plug it in

I used to know one of the folks involved with the USB standard pretty well professionally. At one point, he told me that this aspect of USB is one thing he wished they could have dealt with differently.

(That said, the fact that the mini and micro versions are more explicitly keyed doesn't make that much of a different and I assume that a USB-C or Lightning-type design just wasn't possible at the time without undesirable tradeoffs.)

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#346

Post by toss1 »

On a site called Hacker News, I'm surprised to see so much criticism of a right to repair.

What is hacking, if not the act of digging into the guts of a mechanism or device?

What is open source, but providing the ability for anyone to read, modify, and rebuild their software?

I'd expect nothing less than full-throated support for the right to dig into things.

Sadly, it seems that many here are more supportive of the right to lock things. Perhaps because they are employed in the rent-seeking parts of the industry that want everything to be a subscription?

"It is very difficult to get someone to understand something when their salary depends on not understanding it".

[edit: to be sure, I understand that surface mount technology, adhesive bonding, direct-soldered-in batteries, etc., are genuinely useful advances, and make certain component-level repairs at least impractical. I would not propose to require that these be undone. But, we should be able to have whatever level of access is physically possible, without unnecessary locks the perform no useful user function, so we can try whatever we want. Anything less is surrendering ourselves to rent-seeking. ]

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#348

Post by passivate »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #342
passivate wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying "glue helps" but you seem to mean "glue is required". Those are not identical concepts. Yes glue may help, just like using bolts screws and gaskets may help. The entire point is that glue is not _required_ to achieve those goals.

What is glue is cheaper and works better at achieving all those disparate goals?

It doesn't though. It fails when it comes to repairability, re-use and reduction of e-waste. This is the topic of the primary article, and therefore the context for this thread.

You can also weld an entire car together to make it cheaper, but this is not something we should celebrate or promote if it impacts the environment in terms of repair.

But yes, I value your opinion so don't want to shut you out of the discussion, I'm just saying there are more important things than making sure an executive at Apple or Google pockets a few more $100 bills.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#349

Post by swiley »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #220
swiley wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android was explicitly designed to make it easy for component manufacturers to keep their drivers closed. Now that Qualcomm essentially has a monopoly on Android SoCs you can't really build a modern phone that will have up to date software in 3 years. This is why projects like the Pinephone and lebrem5 use such weird SoCs. Open source drivers are absolutely the only way to know that the phone manufacturer will even h…

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think the only reason you need a SoC is if you're trying to make the phone small. If you don't care about size you can have discreet components. There are millions of people with big enough pockets (literally and metaphorically) , who wouldn't notice the extra weight of their phone. edit: discreet might be the wrong word because they would all be ICs but not quite a SoC.

Find me a low power discrete CPU and we can draw the board for another open source phone together.

Re: It's your device, you should be able to repair it

#350

Post by [deleted] »

OrwellianChild wrote: post #316
usaphp wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a good intention behind it, but it only works only if only honest people and companies exist. It’s not the case in real world. What would prevent a competitor simply copying the whole product and offering a cheaper price because they didn’t have to invest in R&D, and those engineers who spent many years working on a finished schematics will be out of job because the company won’t be able to make a living sellin…

You're basically arguing for IP protection via obscurity/complexity, but I assure you that anyone who wants to clone tech products at industrial scale can already do so today. This just gives repair documentation and parts availability to independent repair shops and DIYers...

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