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iFixit tells the sad story of how Samsung “ruined” its upcycling program

arstechnica.com

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Re: iFixit tells the sad story of how Samsung “ruined” its upcycling program

#11

Post by hungryforcodes »

dublinben wrote: post #7
babypuncher wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amusing that Samsung couldn't even bring themselves to commit to the lazy alternative to providing OS updates for a reasonable amount of time. Simply unlocking the bootloader and letting the community maintain your product after the paltry 18 month support window seems like the absolute bare minimum. I'm sure Apple made this same calculation, and still decided that directly supporting devices for 5+ years w…

How many users own an iPhone from launch for 5 years? Based on the robust resale market, it seems that users who want to always have the latest model fund that habit by reselling their used device into the secondhand market. If anything, this long support enables higher turnover for the latest models.

I see an incredible number of iPhone 6's and 7's here in Asia. There is a huge thriving repair economy that keeps them going on the cheap. So much so, that I still use my iPhone 6 as my secondary daily driver and it works great. I've had almost every thing replaced in it (battery, screen, camera, etc), all for like $100 in total.

Apple's calculation probably has more to do with its reputation. It understands that older phones are still in service and that doing the minimum to keep these at least functional is great for their brand. Hey, an iPhone is an iPhone...

Re: iFixit tells the sad story of how Samsung “ruined” its upcycling program

#13

Post by AshamedCaptain »

I am the first to avoid buying any device with a locked bootloader, but.... how exactly is an unlocked bootloader after 4 years of use going to help to reduce e-waste?

It's not magically going to convert the phone into a Raspberry Pi anymore than Debian is going to suddenly port itself to a 4-year-old platform. And even that would reduce e-waste only by a rounding error.

Now, guaranteeing Android updates 4 YEARS, or more, that would be something...

Re: iFixit tells the sad story of how Samsung “ruined” its upcycling program

#14

Post by babypuncher »

dublinben wrote: post #7
babypuncher wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it amusing that Samsung couldn't even bring themselves to commit to the lazy alternative to providing OS updates for a reasonable amount of time. Simply unlocking the bootloader and letting the community maintain your product after the paltry 18 month support window seems like the absolute bare minimum. I'm sure Apple made this same calculation, and still decided that directly supporting devices for 5+ years w…

How many users own an iPhone from launch for 5 years? Based on the robust resale market, it seems that users who want to always have the latest model fund that habit by reselling their used device into the secondhand market. If anything, this long support enables higher turnover for the latest models.

Whether you keep your phone for 5 years, or sell it after 2-3 years to someone who will use it for another 2-3, the end result is the same: less e-waste.

A lot of other smartphones aren't even worth selling after 2-3 years of use.

Re: iFixit tells the sad story of how Samsung “ruined” its upcycling program

#15

Post by gumby »

quadrangle wrote: post #6

Conflict-of-interest. If your business model is based on artificial obsolesence and 100% of the cost of e-waste and disposal is externalized, then anything that truly encourages effective continued use of older models is directly opposed to the business model. And while it's something to have marketable trust-building by taking some responsibility for the waste and longer life-span, that also invites people to start…

> If your business model is based on artificial obsolesence and 100% of the cost of e-waste and disposal is externalized, then anything that truly encourages effective continued use of older models is directly opposed to the business model.

You’d think more companies would skip that model: bmw and Apple benefit from the high sale value of their devices, in part due to continued support. It doesn’t hurt that California and Germany have pushed part of the lifecycle cost onto the manufacturers, with some success.

Re: iFixit tells the sad story of how Samsung “ruined” its upcycling program

#16

Post by seventytwo »

quadrangle wrote: post #6

Conflict-of-interest. If your business model is based on artificial obsolesence and 100% of the cost of e-waste and disposal is externalized, then anything that truly encourages effective continued use of older models is directly opposed to the business model. And while it's something to have marketable trust-building by taking some responsibility for the waste and longer life-span, that also invites people to start…

The solution is for elected government to impose rules for this kind of thing. This kind of “tragedy of the commons” is one of the downsides of a market system. There are all kinds of other guard rails we put in place to limit the downsides of unfettered capitalism.

With air pollution, the market has never solved that problem. Regulation addressed it. If there had been a market solution invented, why is air pollution still rampant in unregulated regions?

The market won’t solve any other niches of the waste problems either (recycling, other pollution, carbon emissions, etc.) until it’s too late. The equilibrium point where the incentives to address waste are as strong as the incentives to produce waste exists at a point which would be untenable for human living. Proof? We have millions of people all over the world who basically live in garbage dumps, and there’s not some magical incentive for them to clean things up. They live off it. If there’s not an incentive that’s developed for them, then the point at which the incentive equilibrium exists is beyond even that.

Re: iFixit tells the sad story of how Samsung “ruined” its upcycling program

#17

Post by slownews45 »

Folks give endless crap around apple's lack of repairability. Bottom line however is that Apple's phones get a ton of use and re-use for a number of reasons.

1) Really hard now to do the fake replacement battery scams, Apple alerts buyer if a new battery was put in outside of apples approved ecosystem.

2) Fantastic duration on updates. Despite the claims of the more repairable androids, far too many NEVER update, AND ship with crap / older versions from the start. Apple by contrast has iOS 14 running on: iPhone 12 iPhone 12 mini iPhone 12 Pro iPhone 12 Pro Max iPhone 11 iPhone 11 Pro iPhone 11 Pro Max iPhone XS iPhone XS Max iPhone XR iPhone X iPhone 8 iPhone 8 Plus iPhone 7 iPhone 7 Plus iPhone 6s iPhone 6s Plus iPhone SE (1st generation) iPhone SE (2nd generation) iPod touch (7th generation)

iOS 13 and even iOS 12 are STILL getting updates that cover iPhone 5S, iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, iPad Mini 2, iPad Mini 3 and original iPad Air.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212341 came out just this month for iOS 12.

3) Phone is pretty durable, everything is glued down and surprisingly waterproof.

4) Hard to root the device. When you buy a used phone / do a reset, you are less likely to be getting backdoored.

5) Resulting in fantastic resale and down market value which means the phones go and go and go.

Re: iFixit tells the sad story of how Samsung “ruined” its upcycling program

#18

Post by tootie »

quadrangle wrote: post #6

Conflict-of-interest. If your business model is based on artificial obsolesence and 100% of the cost of e-waste and disposal is externalized, then anything that truly encourages effective continued use of older models is directly opposed to the business model. And while it's something to have marketable trust-building by taking some responsibility for the waste and longer life-span, that also invites people to start…

I don't think that's really the issue here. The upcycling program was based around repurposing old phones. Not keeping them in use as phones. In fact, this likely helps them sell more phones because fewer end up in the secondary market and the Samsung ecosystem becomes more valuable because the old phones can make up whatever IoT network they had dreamed up.

Re: iFixit tells the sad story of how Samsung “ruined” its upcycling program

#20

Post by AshamedCaptain »

babypuncher wrote: post #3
dylan604 wrote: post #2

This seems like one of those ideas that got floated, but then they realized it could cut into sales. If an open source ecosystem came along that ran on no longer supported hardware, there could be a reason for people to not upgrade that device.

I find it amusing that Samsung couldn't even bring themselves to commit to the lazy alternative to providing OS updates for a reasonable amount of time. Simply unlocking the bootloader and letting the community maintain your product after the paltry 18 month support window seems like the absolute bare minimum. I'm sure Apple made this same calculation, and still decided that directly supporting devices for 5+ years w…

Samsung is outright evil regarding software updates and 100% using them for obsolescence. One example is when they announced Linux for DeX. They were beta testing it on their Galaxy Note 8s / 9s, but they made it abundantly clear that once the public beta testing was over, they would discontinue and kill the program in Galaxy Note 8/9 and then release it only alongside the new Galaxy Note 10.

Eventually they killed the program altogether, likely due to poor demand. But to use the owners of the previous devices as betatesters, only to tell them they will have to uselessly buy the new device if they actually want to run the final version is just evil.

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