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How many people do you see using 2010 smartphones with replaceable batteries? Or put another way: people throw away phones after 3-4 years regardless of if you

by 323 5y ago

How many people do you see using 2010 smartphones with replaceable batteries? Or put another way: people throw away phones after 3-4 years regardless of if you can replace the battery or not. You can pretty cheaply replace the battery in any phone at a repair shop. But people don't want that, they want the new phone with new look and new features.

DoingIsLearning 5y ago
> How many people do you see using 2010 smartphones with replaceable batteries? How many 2010 smartphones have security updates that you can safely use? It's a chicken and egg problem. For every person that chases the shinny new thing there are plenty of people who don't care about that and just want to have minimal functions, phone, sms, video chat, some decent photos/video, and occasional online banking. However due a broken business model from Tech giants and firmware lock-in from Mobile SoC manufacturers this is unattainable at the moment. Vendors should be forced to maintain an LTS work stream to give the alternative to those costumers who do want to act sustainably. Unfortunately that will never happen unless they are forced by regulatory changes.
- 323 5y ago
  For the last 6 years, the average number of new smartphones sold per year was 1.5 billion. There are 6.5 billion people with smartphones in the world. So that's at most a 4 year churn rate. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone-sales-to-end-users-since-2007/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone... https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-w...
  - danShumway 5y ago
    Aren't you kind of reinforcing GP's point? Either your research is showing that people on average keep their phones longer than 4 years, which seems to line up well with the argument that they don't throw out their phones every 3-4 years for the best new features for no reason; Or your research is showing that they do churn through at a 4 year rate, which seems to roughly line up with the average battery lifespan and security lifespan across the market. 3 years is right about the time period where I need to replace my phone battery. It would not surprise me at all to see stats that suggest that a lot of people keep their phones until the batteries are unusable or until they're no longer getting updates, and then swap to a new phone -- and across multiple manufacturers, I would not be surprised at all to see that work out to be a ~4 year churn rate, if not a little higher. I'm not sure what this proves. Anecdotally, I know more than a few people who prefer Apple devices specifically because of their longevity and support lifespan, so I don't think that the "we have to throw this out because a new phone got announced" characterization is universally true or even necessarily the most common consumer attitude. I also know people who have bought new phones because the battery was getting weak. I have argued with them to take their phones to a repair shop and to pay $60 to replace the battery, but they felt weird doing that for whatever reason. I suspect some of that might come from the fear of having their phone broken during the repair process before a new one comes in, but that's pure speculation on my part. And yeah, I also know a few people who have bought new phones just because they care about getting a slightly fancier camera. But I don't necessarily think they're the majority, and an average churn-rate of 4 years across the market would seem to reinforce that point more than anything else.
InitialLastName 5y ago
How many 2010 smartphones are still getting security updates, or updates that let them work with modern network standards? LTE was only barely available in 2010, and 3G is almost gone now.
- 323 5y ago
  LTE/5G is a hardware thing, you can't add it with a software update. Yet another point that it's not the sealed battery which is the problem.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    You can't add it with a software update, but you could provide a modular phy (or continue support for older standards).
    - 323 5y ago
      Not talking about you since I don't know, but a funny thing I noticed, is that people who are very loud about saving the environment are always the ones with the latest iPhone 13 Max/Macbook Pro M1 in their hands one week after it's released.
      - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
        Notice that you just went from "people don't really want it", to "it's not really feasible", all the way to straight up ad hominem.
        323 5y ago
        It was a side point, because it's always very rich people with iPhone 13 Max which are like "poor people should use 10 year old phones, but not me, I can't be seen on gram with that, I need credibility so I can speak out about the climate" Modular phones were tried and were a complete market failure. Because they sacrifice thinness, robustness and water proofing. Older standards are removed because they are not used anymore, so the bandwidth is freed for newer ones. And "people don't really want it" remains just as true. Just like people didn't want small screens, until even Apple famously yielded.
GuB-42 5y ago
In 2010, smartphones were just taking off, every new generation offered significant improvement. 2010 smartphones are terrible by today's standards: small storage, underpowered, no 4G, bad camera, etc... 2015 smartphones are a different story. Things have stabilized, and a good 2015 smartphone should be perfectly usable today, a bit sluggish, but usable. And interestingly, that's when they stopped having user replaceable batteries. More generally, the market shifted from real obsolescence to planned obsolescence.

by 323 5y ago

DoingIsLearning 5y ago

> How many people do you see using 2010 smartphones with replaceable batteries? How many 2010 smartphones have security updates that you can safely use? It's a chicken and egg problem. For every person that chases the shinny new thing there are plenty of people who don't care about that and just want to have minimal functions, phone, sms, video chat, some decent photos/video, and occasional online banking. However due a broken business model from Tech giants and firmware lock-in from Mobile SoC manufacturers this is unattainable at the moment. Vendors should be forced to maintain an LTS work stream to give the alternative to those costumers who do want to act sustainably. Unfortunately that will never happen unless they are forced by regulatory changes.

323 5y ago
For the last 6 years, the average number of new smartphones sold per year was 1.5 billion. There are 6.5 billion people with smartphones in the world. So that's at most a 4 year churn rate. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone-sales-to-end-users-since-2007/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone... https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-world https://www.bankmycell.com/blog/how-many-phones-are-in-the-w...
- danShumway 5y ago
  Aren't you kind of reinforcing GP's point? Either your research is showing that people on average keep their phones longer than 4 years, which seems to line up well with the argument that they don't throw out their phones every 3-4 years for the best new features for no reason; Or your research is showing that they do churn through at a 4 year rate, which seems to roughly line up with the average battery lifespan and security lifespan across the market. 3 years is right about the time period where I need to replace my phone battery. It would not surprise me at all to see stats that suggest that a lot of people keep their phones until the batteries are unusable or until they're no longer getting updates, and then swap to a new phone -- and across multiple manufacturers, I would not be surprised at all to see that work out to be a ~4 year churn rate, if not a little higher. I'm not sure what this proves. Anecdotally, I know more than a few people who prefer Apple devices specifically because of their longevity and support lifespan, so I don't think that the "we have to throw this out because a new phone got announced" characterization is universally true or even necessarily the most common consumer attitude. I also know people who have bought new phones because the battery was getting weak. I have argued with them to take their phones to a repair shop and to pay $60 to replace the battery, but they felt weird doing that for whatever reason. I suspect some of that might come from the fear of having their phone broken during the repair process before a new one comes in, but that's pure speculation on my part. And yeah, I also know a few people who have bought new phones just because they care about getting a slightly fancier camera. But I don't necessarily think they're the majority, and an average churn-rate of 4 years across the market would seem to reinforce that point more than anything else.

InitialLastName 5y ago

How many 2010 smartphones are still getting security updates, or updates that let them work with modern network standards? LTE was only barely available in 2010, and 3G is almost gone now.

323 5y ago
LTE/5G is a hardware thing, you can't add it with a software update. Yet another point that it's not the sealed battery which is the problem.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  You can't add it with a software update, but you could provide a modular phy (or continue support for older standards).
  - 323 5y ago
    Not talking about you since I don't know, but a funny thing I noticed, is that people who are very loud about saving the environment are always the ones with the latest iPhone 13 Max/Macbook Pro M1 in their hands one week after it's released.
    - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      Notice that you just went from "people don't really want it", to "it's not really feasible", all the way to straight up ad hominem.
      - 323 5y ago
        It was a side point, because it's always very rich people with iPhone 13 Max which are like "poor people should use 10 year old phones, but not me, I can't be seen on gram with that, I need credibility so I can speak out about the climate" Modular phones were tried and were a complete market failure. Because they sacrifice thinness, robustness and water proofing. Older standards are removed because they are not used anymore, so the bandwidth is freed for newer ones. And "people don't really want it" remains just as true. Just like people didn't want small screens, until even Apple famously yielded.

GuB-42 5y ago

In 2010, smartphones were just taking off, every new generation offered significant improvement. 2010 smartphones are terrible by today's standards: small storage, underpowered, no 4G, bad camera, etc... 2015 smartphones are a different story. Things have stabilized, and a good 2015 smartphone should be perfectly usable today, a bit sluggish, but usable. And interestingly, that's when they stopped having user replaceable batteries. More generally, the market shifted from real obsolescence to planned obsolescence.