Live data from Hacker News

Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

9to5google.com

31–40 of 66 posts

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm implying exactly what I just said before. Google and Microsoft (and Dropbox at one point) are partners of Samsung, so Samsung got paid by them to feature their products preinstalled on their phones and push certain promotions with their phones(free 1TB of cloud storage for one year or something like that). So it stands to reason that if Samsung were to offer crazy amount of NAND storage out of the box, then then…

I'm so freaking confused. The person you replied to said this exact same thing, but you called them out on it. And when I pressed you on that point.....you just repeated what they said? Eh?

>I'm so freaking confused.

I already explained my thought process as best I can. I don't know what more to do.

>The person you replied to said this exact same thing

They didn't say the same thing, to my understanding. Maybe language barrier and cultural differences mean there's a confusion here.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#32
post #26
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash memory doesn't slow down as it ages.

Doesn't it degrade with use? I thought with modern wear leveling you get degraded performance for a long time before it just stops working, but I'm no expert. I'd love to learn more about this actually

What may be the cause that the storage gets slower on older devices is, if they are nearly full. At least I heard this about SSDs. Please someone correct me if I remember this incorrectly

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#33
post #5

Samsung should get the memory card slot back. Heck, I still miss easily replaceable battery from Galaxy S5! In general, I hate how Galaxy S series is just becoming more and more like an iPhone. (Well, other than reasonably long firmware update support. Great job Samsung copying that!) I used to have both Samsung Galaxy S and iPhone — but now it's just iPhone. But yeah, DIY repair is great and there I wish Apple would…

>Samsung should get the memory card slot back. They still have models with SD card slots, but they're never coming back to flagships because: 1. so they can milk you on cloud storage or on the expensive variants with more storage 2. access speed difference of UFS 4.0 vs fast SD cards is huge and unacceptable on a flagship that's supposed to compete with iPhones on speed 3. biggest and most important reason I learned…

Wow. It looks like I must upgrade my phone soon. So far I hung up on the missing audio jack, but I didn't realize the SD card is also missing in Galaxy S. WTF, this sucks.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Samsung should get the memory card slot back. They still have models with SD card slots, but they're never coming back to flagships because: 1. so they can milk you on cloud storage or on the expensive variants with more storage 2. access speed difference of UFS 4.0 vs fast SD cards is huge and unacceptable on a flagship that's supposed to compete with iPhones on speed 3. biggest and most important reason I learned…

Wow. It looks like I must upgrade my phone soon. So far I hung up on the missing audio jack, but I didn't realize the SD card is also missing in Galaxy S. WTF, this sucks.

Not sure if you're sarcastic or not, but SD cards have been absent from flagship Androids for about 10 years now. Wait till you find out the batteries are not swappable anymore.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#35
post #26
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash memory doesn't slow down as it ages.

Doesn't it degrade with use? I thought with modern wear leveling you get degraded performance for a long time before it just stops working, but I'm no expert. I'd love to learn more about this actually

It does degrade, but not performance. The degrading happens when blocks hit their wear limit and can no longer be used. Flash memory typically includes additional blocks to replace those that are at their wear limit, but that will eventually exhaust and then the drive will be in a failure state. This can sometimes be that the drive stops working, or that it shrinks it's capacity, but the bandwidth and access speed characteristics remain constant throughout it's life.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#36
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also because of flash memory degradation. You may notice that older devices are slow even after a full factory reset. The memory chips are reaching their limits.

Flash memory doesn't slow down as it ages.

> The degradation increases the amount of negative charge in the cell over time due to trapped electrons in the oxide and negates some of the control gate voltage, this over time also makes erasing the cell slower, so to maintain the performance and reliability of the NAND chip, the cell must be retired from use.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_memory

IIRC from when I worked making microcontrollers, there is a feedback loop on the erase that makes sure the bits all read 1 as they should. This takes longer based on how many write/erase cycles have occurred.

I’d have loved to find an actual data sheet to show you as an example, but here is something I found:

https://e2e.ti.com/support/microcontrollers/arm-based-microc...

> The erase time is worst case for a single sector when doing sector erase, or the whole bank if doing bank erase. In bank erase all the sectors are being erased at the same time so the time of the bank erase is equal to the time to erase the slowest sector.

> Erase time degrades with the number of write erase cycles. Sometimes during erase traps (an extra electron or hole stuck in the oxide lattice) are formed in the erase oxide. These traps make the next erase harder. Some of the traps will anneal with time and high temperature.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so freaking confused. The person you replied to said this exact same thing, but you called them out on it. And when I pressed you on that point.....you just repeated what they said? Eh?

>I'm so freaking confused. I already explained my thought process as best I can. I don't know what more to do. >The person you replied to said this exact same thing They didn't say the same thing, to my understanding. Maybe language barrier and cultural differences mean there's a confusion here.

Unclad5968 said what you said.

You claim Samsung keeps sd cards off phones because they are motivated to by partners.

Unclad said "it seems excessive to think Samsung is doing keeping sd cards off phones because of partners".

You and they disagree, but he stated your position accurately I believe.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#38

I am currently looking for a new reliable OLED TV. Knowing they added the S90C to their repair program is very reassuring.

My dad just got the 83 incher and it's magnificent. Unfortunately, it looks like they only added the 77, but who knows what the future holds.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#39
This is cool, they even have some parts like the buttons and glass in different colours. So you could even use it to pimp your phone (I wouldn't break the waterproofing just for that but if you need to get in there anyway...)

One thing that's annoying though is that with the S23 you need to buy a new screen when you want to change the battery. The battery is only available as a screen+battery kit. Weird.

I mean, when you replace the screen it makes sense to stick a new battery in, sure. Especially because the old battery might be a few years older or have damage from the impact (safety). The other way around, not so much. Why waste a perfectly good screen just to change the battery? This is really dumb and drives the price up. It also causes unnecessary e-waste.

Now, this is in Europe where Samsung have a real parts shop of their own ( https://samsungselfrepair.shop ), I see in the US it's different because it has to go through iFixit somehow. Edit: Nope, iFixit doesn't seem to sell batteries separately either.

Re: Samsung expands DIY repair program, adds Galaxy S23 and Fold 5 in US

#40

This is a great move. Google committed to 7 years of parts as well via iFixit. Of course, paired with the extra long support it now seems like Samsung is also possibly going to subscription models where they force you to pay to not have features taken away, so maybe it won't turn out well. Who knows.

Google only does it for phones though. If you have a watch and you break the screen, their only solution is to just buy a new one. Even though replacement isn't hard. They just don't bother making spare parts available. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/11-months-after-laun...
Post reply on HN