421–430 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With the storage cost crisis which will make future phone more expensive I'm sure a lot of people will wish they could prolong the lifetime of theri current device with a battery swap.
>With the storage cost crisis On that note, mandating an SD card slot as a requirement would be a very much welcome next step. Manufacturers selling space-crippled devices just to upsell "premium" models is such an environmental waste (at the very least).
Batteries have been used as part of planned obsolescence for too long and a whole small business industry of replacing phone batteries has appeared because of it. Next the EU are going to have to address security patches because its another aspect being used to sell new phones.
I have found out that the main phone providers (Apple, Google, Samsung) have extremely long support period. I really don't get the "planned obsolescence" thing. As an example, in Jan 2026, Apple published iOS 12.5.8 which provides updates for iPhone 5s which released in Sept 2013. That's 12.5 years ago. The equivalent would be to connect to the internet using ADSL in Jan 2000 with your IBM PS/2 rocking in intel 8086,…
One of the most frustrating things about HN is that people seem so unaware of how idiosyncratic their preferences are. If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery". It's okay to have idiosyncratic preferences (I certainly do), but people should recognize that this law wil…
I doubt most people wouldn't even think that this is a thing they can wish for or that this is even within realm of possibility.
It has to be explicitly named as an option - as, I'm afraid, people have forgotten that you can have "nice things".
Also I feel rather uncomfortable every time somebody purports to be representitive of or know that "most people" want.
One of the most frustrating things about HN is that people seem so unaware of how idiosyncratic their preferences are. If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery". It's okay to have idiosyncratic preferences (I certainly do), but people should recognize that this law wil…
At the same time, 5.78 billion people have a smartphone worldwide. It is obviously wildly unsustainable to live in a world where 5.78 billion people have to throw away their old phone and buy a new one every 2-3 years. However, phone manufacturers have figured out that if they force people to, they can amass ridiculous levels of wealth because the demand for new phones would be constantly high. So obviously the incentives here are completely wrong. This has happened before with lightbulbs in the 20th century and is a legitimate form of market failure that needs to be resolved, as it wastes a lot of consumer spending to replace what consumers already had (like the parable of the broken window).
For many years since phone manufacturers started gluing phones together with a consumable part inside, consumers have been denied the ability to replace their battery. Where the option does exist, it's often very inconvenient, difficult, or with a price inflated to be nearly as expensive as buying a new one.
Phones stopped advancing significantly many years ago. Phone manufacturers now re-release practically the same phone with slight CPU and camera improvements, something completely unheard of until relatively recently. Lately the main marketing trend for new phones has been AI, but this is a nonsense trend because most of modern AI runs in the cloud, and very few are actually utilizing any local AI features, so the only "AI" thing about the phone is just a preinstalled ChatGPT-like app you can get on any other phone. So clearly they have run out of things to improve, and things to market around. In a normally functioning market, this would mean phones have become a solved technology and we can stop replacing our phones as often, maybe once every 10 years if you're careful with your phone. But this is not what we see precisely because phone manufacturers have been manufacturing problems that are most easily solved by buying a new phone, which they will push people to do whatever way they can for profit. The phone industry has failed to regulate itself, and so this is why we are seeing a push for this type of regulation.
One of the most frustrating things about HN is that people seem so unaware of how idiosyncratic their preferences are. If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery". It's okay to have idiosyncratic preferences (I certainly do), but people should recognize that this law wil…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was true 15-20 years ago. Nowadays changing the phone is basically because: 1) battery dying / not lasting enough 2) shattered glasses whose replacement costs 35-40% of the cost of the phone new (for budget/mid-range phones, not everybody has iPhones) distant 3rd) not enough free internal storage
Batteries are generally a cheap fix from third party stores. If you wanted to keep the phone why not spend the small dollars and just replace the battery?
Every single Pixel upgrade I made - every single one - in the last decade has been because of battery life. This law will be tragic for Google and Apple. What will compel people to upgrade their functional phones?
There was nothing stopping you (and others) getting the battery swapped previously for a fraction of the price of a new device.
One of the most frustrating things about HN is that people seem so unaware of how idiosyncratic their preferences are. If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery". It's okay to have idiosyncratic preferences (I certainly do), but people should recognize that this law wil…
Your experience is not at all what I see out there. Most people I know only get new phones because their battery will no longer get them through the day. They hate having to set up a new phone when their old one is totally fine other than the battery. For the people I know that do upgrade their phones regularly, they typically want to give their old phone to someone who would love a usable phone, but can't afford a n…
Getting the battery replaced is already trivial and cheap. Revealed preference is that most people say they want it, but don't. This won't even decrease the cost or difficulty (you'll still need a screwdriver).
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I agree, but also battery life has significantly improved over the last decade. Every phone I or my friends have replaced recently has been because the screen has broken. I would put good money on this being true for most people. I think if the EU really wanted to reduce phone waste they'd make it easier or cheaper to fix screens. Still, this doesn't seem like a terrible move. I bet you can make it relatively easy to…
I'm really unsure how broken screens happen. Don't you have a protective case on your phone? I've had smartphones for over 20 years, and have never broken a screen. Am I just lucky? More careful? I drop my phones too, but have never broken the screen. The only thing that ever failed on any phone I've owned has been the battery.
Dropped it off the top of some pallet racking, ping ponged down, broke the button and cracked the screen at the bottom near the button. Bought a case (and kept the screen protector on under it, lol)
Left it sitting on top of trailer tongue tool box to run timer to check/flip lunch that was being grilled in the vicinity. Trailer was involved in a minor industrial accident. Phone got tossed and crunched. Lunch was fine.
Exposed the 3rd one to, IDK, something, that etched it without hurting the case. IDK what that would be though since I can't think of anything that I have around or use that would do that.
Current phone has survived since 2022. Last month the case finally wore out to the point where corners were coming apart and it would sometimes get caught on its way in/out of pockets and got replaced.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery". Are you sure about this? I've heard this complaint from a lot of non-tech people who are old enough to remember flip phones with replaceable batteries. It might be age related.
My old flip “feature phone” could go about two weeks on a charge. I miss that.