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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

#21

Post by belltaco »

ketralnis wrote: post #5

> Samsung, like every manufacturer, should set their old phones free. Open up their bootloaders. Let people use their [...] They aren't Samsung's phones. They're yours and mine and whoever traded money to own a device and now OWNS THAT DEVICE. We shouldn't be okay with this new world where we're begging companies to LET us use our OWN devices for whatever the hell we want.

Hah, after the first sentence I was thinking you were going to say they're the carriers' phones. Which is kind of true in the sense that many carriers, especially in the US, enforce a lot of things in phones including locked bootloaders, disabling the second SIM or eSIM, removing FM radio support etc.

Verizon is notorious to be the worst in this regard. OnePlus disabled the eSIM in their latest phone which let to outrage and returns among some of the enthusiast community.

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

#22

Post by SkittyDog »

ketralnis wrote: post #5

> Samsung, like every manufacturer, should set their old phones free. Open up their bootloaders. Let people use their [...] They aren't Samsung's phones. They're yours and mine and whoever traded money to own a device and now OWNS THAT DEVICE. We shouldn't be okay with this new world where we're begging companies to LET us use our OWN devices for whatever the hell we want.

> They aren't Samsung's phones. They're yours and mine...

In English, the grammatical "possessive" is not only used to mean legal ownership... It can refer to nearly any kind of proprietary relationships:

• "Their husbands all laughed at the joke." • "Their jobs disappeared when the factory closed." • "Their comments are disagreeable and combatative."

The previous poster's use of the possessive was entirely appropriate. I believe your correction was unnecessarily combative and shrill.

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

#23

Post by matheusmoreira »

cl0ckt0wer wrote: post #9
ketralnis wrote: post #5

> Samsung, like every manufacturer, should set their old phones free. Open up their bootloaders. Let people use their [...] They aren't Samsung's phones. They're yours and mine and whoever traded money to own a device and now OWNS THAT DEVICE. We shouldn't be okay with this new world where we're begging companies to LET us use our OWN devices for whatever the hell we want.

I wish we owned the software when we bought the hardware.

I wish it wasn't even possible to own software in the first place.

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

#24

Post by spijdar »

belltaco wrote: post #21
ketralnis wrote: post #5

> Samsung, like every manufacturer, should set their old phones free. Open up their bootloaders. Let people use their [...] They aren't Samsung's phones. They're yours and mine and whoever traded money to own a device and now OWNS THAT DEVICE. We shouldn't be okay with this new world where we're begging companies to LET us use our OWN devices for whatever the hell we want.

Hah, after the first sentence I was thinking you were going to say they're the carriers' phones. Which is kind of true in the sense that many carriers, especially in the US, enforce a lot of things in phones including locked bootloaders, disabling the second SIM or eSIM, removing FM radio support etc. Verizon is notorious to be the worst in this regard. OnePlus disabled the eSIM in their latest phone which let to out…

The situation is complicated. I want all our software to be free and hardware easily modifiable, but I'm also aware of why radios are regulated the way they are. This is sort of a separate issue from the locked bootloaders on the phone itself, but the radio/modem on phones is very controlled and locked down, and ... probably for the better?

Bad actors can already get their hands on the technology to spoof/intercept cellular traffic so that cat is kind of out of the bag, but if the modems were totally open and could effectively be turned into SDRs, I worry a bit about the ramifications.

I've talked to script kiddie teens who get their giggles out of downloading some dodgy windows or android app to mass deauth wifi clients from APs. If it truly becomes easy to gain full access of your average phone's modem, I wonder what sorts of similar apps would appear. Maybe it'd be no worse than wifi, but given the much greater scope and potential damage from a DoS'd/jammed cell tower, it's a heavy topic IMO...

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

#25

Post by GuB-42 »

Interesting considering that until 2015 (Galaxy S6), Samsung phones had removable batteries, and even now, the Galaxy XCover Pro has one.

Also, most Samsung phones, at least the flagships are easy to bootloader unlock / root and have an active community.

It looks like Samsung position has always been "do whatever you want with your phone, just don't expect us to help you with that", which is actually much better than many manufacturers who actively try to stop you.

Note: I don't count carrier-subsidized phones. These are not really your phone anyway, they are leased by your carrier.

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

#26

Post by [deleted] »

slownews45 wrote: post #17

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…

[deleted]

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

#27

Post by ketralnis »

SkittyDog wrote: post #22
ketralnis wrote: post #5

> Samsung, like every manufacturer, should set their old phones free. Open up their bootloaders. Let people use their [...] They aren't Samsung's phones. They're yours and mine and whoever traded money to own a device and now OWNS THAT DEVICE. We shouldn't be okay with this new world where we're begging companies to LET us use our OWN devices for whatever the hell we want.

> They aren't Samsung's phones. They're yours and mine... In English, the grammatical "possessive" is not only used to mean legal ownership... It can refer to nearly any kind of proprietary relationships: • "Their husbands all laughed at the joke." • "Their jobs disappeared when the factory closed." • "Their comments are disagreeable and combatative." The previous poster's use of the possessive was entirely appropria…

> In English [...]

I'm a native speaker, I'm not responding to the grammar. I'm responding to the very notion that Samsung "allow" users to do what they want with their own devices. Quotes like all of these...

> by allowing users to unlock the bootloaders of devices Samsung decided to no longer support

> Samsung was going to let users replace the shipping Android OS with whatever they wanted

> Samsung [...] should set their old phones free

> Let people use their cameras, sensors, antennas, and screens for all kinds of purposes, using whatever software people can dream up

...start out with the premise that Samsung should have any say at all what people do the things that they own.

That's what the article is about. iFixit wanted to participate in a partnership with Samsung where Samsung would deign to permit users to repurpose their own devices that are no longer profitable to Samsung, and then Samsung changed their minds and you're still not actually allowed to do that and iFixit is annoyed that Samsung tricked iFixit into doing a bunch of marketing for Samsung on the back of a project that doesn't really exist.

That's the world that we're in right now, you really do have to beg Samsung to allow you to repurpose your own hardware. But it's not okay, that's not the world we should live in.

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

#28

Post by WorldMaker »

gumby wrote: post #15
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 Californi…

Samsung gives the impression that they'd love their business model to look like Apple or BMW and be a "lifestyle brand" (if not quite a "luxury brand"). My immediate thoughts from the article was wondering how much Samsung regrets being tied to Android at this point. The timing of the project suggests to me that maybe there may have been some hope at Samsung that they could use "upcycling" as a trojan platform for migrating older hardware to a larger Tizen install base as devices aged out of Android support just before realizing that being chained to Android's continual software obsolescence also chained them to wild shifting winds of Android's hardware strategy (and getting Tizen drivers from some of the "mandatory" Android partners).

Android as a platform in general, with its wild fragmentation and ever moving software goal posts, seems almost cruelly designed almost entirely for the artificial obsolesence path and that path alone.

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

#29

Post by webmobdev »

slownews45 wrote: post #17

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…

Here's a different perspective:

    Really hard now to do the fake replacement battery scams
Really hard to replace battery. Period. It's a scammy tactic to make battery repairs very costly.

    Fantastic duration on updates
An open system like the Sony Open Devices phone, that allows you to unlock the bootloader, is better for consumers as it allows users to even install a different mobile operating system on their phone! ( https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/ and https://jolla.com/sailfishx/ ).

    iOS 13 and even iOS 12 are STILL getting updates
They are only getting security updates that plug holes that allow an iDevice to be Jailbroken. They sadly don't get updates for the default apps like Safari or Photos.

    Phone is pretty durable, everything is glued down and surprisingly waterproof.
You don't need to glue things to make it durable or waterproof. It just makes repairs more difficult and that's the real endgame.

    Resulting in fantastic resale and down market value
This is only partly true, especially for Intel only mac systems because you can install and run other operating systems in it. iDevices for which OS updates have been stopped also greatly devalue and don't have the same resale value.

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

#30

Post by webmobdev »

AshamedCaptain wrote: post #13

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…

    how exactly is an unlocked bootloader after 4 years of use going to help to reduce e-waste?
It allows you install a different operating systems. When newer versions of Windows ran slower on old systems, many people switched to Linux to use the same hardware for some more years. And we do have different mobile OS too today. The free LineageOS also has breathed new life to many an old device. Jolla, a Finnish company, even sells licenses for their Sailfish OS ( and https://jolla.com/sailfishx/ ) for Sony Open Devices ( https://developer.sony.com/develop/open-devices/ ). They supported their first phone with 7 years of free OS updates. ( https://blog.jolla.com/jolla7/ ).
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