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The problem is not really the battery anymore, it's the software mainly. It's all closed source and is often deprecated before the hardware is dead. Then the ma

The problem is not really the battery anymore, it's the software mainly. It's all closed source and is often deprecated before the hardware is dead. Then the manufacturer makes it hard to unlock bootloaders; keeps drivers closed source and effectively bricks the device. For recurring sales are the backbone of modern economy so we must force obsolescence. Why would you want to replace a battery in a useless device? Please, EU: bring a law that forces manufacturers to release their drivers / firmware whenever they stop updating a digital device.

watwut 3y ago
Battery in my last device became too weak long before device was useless. Device was perfectly fine, just that battery did not hold long anymore.
- sdenton4 3y ago
  I had a couple phones I really liked where the battery got puffy - ie, very very bad - while the device was otherwise great. Tried replacing with an ifixit kit, but the screen got borked in the process. Total waste...
- nonethewiser 3y ago
  Yeah battery will virtually always be the first to go. Unless you crack the screen.
  - MostlyStable 3y ago
    in my experience, it's the charge port that goes. My last two devices, each of which I had for 3 years, the charge port failed before the battery did. I just finished fixing my current one. Although I did decide to do a battery replacement anyways while I had the device open. But that was just because of how hard it is to open them at all. My battery health monitoring app said it was at ~80% health still. And while the charge port hasn't always failed on me in the past, I'm not sure the battery has ever been the reason for me personally, although I'm probably just lucky in that regard. Basically, I'm not sure that any one "thing" is the thing that always fails. There are multiple common points of failure and generally speaking, phones are hard to service in any manner these days. I personally would gladly give up water and dust protection, as well as thinness in exchange for ease of serviceability. Unfortunately, that seems to be a relatively uncommon set of preferences (although obviously it's probably much more common in places like Hacker News).
    - thatwasunusual 3y ago
      > in my experience, it's the charge port that goes. I have had this problem on a regular basis with all of the iPhones I have owned, and the problem has never been that the charge port is dead, but that dust and/or lint has gathered in it. The solution is very simple: use a tootbrush or similar, preferably something plastic that won't break, BUT NOT ANYTHING METALLIC, to dig out the dirty stuff. Problem solved.
      - MostlyStable 3y ago
        Sometimes it's been lint, and I've been able to clean it out, but eventually cleaning it out stops working.
      - mnw21cam 3y ago
        A wooden toothpick works very well.
      - isleyaardvark 3y ago
        Compressed air has worked well for me.
    - jandrese 3y ago
      This is why I only buy phones that support inductive charging. It's really not an expensive feature and it saves so much wear and tear on the charging port.
- dragonmost 3y ago
  I'm still running a pixel 2 which is almost 6 years old now. I had to have the battery replaced 5 years in. Although it's not the most practical you don't have to replace the full device. Manufacturers would prefer you do.
- mnw21cam 3y ago
  There are several things that limit the lifetime of a phone: 1. Battery 2. Software 3. Charge port/headphone port 4. eMMC storage runs out of writes 5. Accidental damage 6. Screen scratches 7. Wanting more RAM/storage and faster processing Batteries are getting better, and we can extend the life of a LiIon battery by about 5X by limiting charging to 80%. If batteries inherently had as short a life as they commonly do in phones, then electric cars would be doomed, but there's no real reason why we can't get phone batteries to last 10 years or more. The software can only be solved by constant effort. There are certain things that could possibly be done to make it easier, such as arranging the device-specific stuff so that the effort already spent on producing a newer set of software for a newer device can be more easily back-ported to the older devices. I think this will only be solved by legislation, such as a law saying that the software must be updated for X years, or even just a law saying that the support duration must be very clearly advertised with the phone allowing consumers to make a choice. A USB-C port is rated for a minimum of 10,000 plug/unplug cycles, which should be enough to charge the phone once a day for 30 years. If that isn't actually being achieved then we need to ask why not. The eMMC storage is a problem with many phones. My phone is just starting to slow to a crawl because its main storage is old and it takes a while for it to perform certain writes (or something - it's hard to get an accurate picture of what is happening in there). There is zero information that a consumer has available when deciding which phone to buy to tell them which ones will have a problem with this. This seems to be a fairly obvious target for a law, similar to the software support duration. Accidental damage - I remember reading a statistic about how the average phone survives a ridiculously short time before being dropped and broken, and I don't get it. I haven't dropped/broken a phone ever. I guess we just let the people who are constantly dropping their phones pick up the tab on that one. Screen scratch protection is also getting really good now. My current phone has lived in my pocket for several years, and there's almost zero scratching on the screen. Just don't keep your keys in the same pocket. In terms of replacing a phone because you want something better - I had a look recently to see about replacing my phone. The ones on the market at a comparable price to what I spent on my current one had specifications that were really not much better at all. It doesn't make sense - if a phone with those specifications is deemed suitable for today's market, then my old one with almost identical specifications should be fine too. So, I don't really see any barriers that aren't insurmountable to a phone lasting several times longer than they do at the moment. Ten years should be easy, 15 years should be possible. At the moment, it's more like 3 if you're very lucky.
TremendousJudge 3y ago
Yes but replaceable batteries are a good start and a more pressing issue. A phone with a 4+ year old battery is useless even if you have all the software for it.
- arroz 3y ago
  Not my experience… I replaced my iPhone 6 because it was slow, not because battery was bad And since 2018 I have iPhone XR, and the battery is fine still. So is the phone speed. I’m not changing it anytime soon
  - dainiusse 3y ago
    Do you remember the whole phone throttling issue on a bad battery?
  - photonbeam 3y ago
    The software slows the phone down so not create current spikes that the aged battery cant handle
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    The battery probably made it slow: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/apple-settles-with-states-for-113m-over-iphone-battery-throttling/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/apple-settles-wi...
  - vel0city 3y ago
    > I replaced my iPhone 6 because it was slow, not because battery was bad iPhone slowness can go hand in hand with batteries going bad, especially in the iPhone 6 days. Apple phones will limit peak performance when it detects the battery voltage can't handle it without too much of a voltage drop. From what I understand its now an opt-out setting, but for most of the iPhone 6's life it wasn't an option.
    - astrange 3y ago
      If you opt out of it your phone will suddenly turn off, which is definitely not an improvement over being slow. Having the opt-out is nonsense and an example of bad regulation. This isn't the only reason an old phone would be slow though, batteries are not the only consumable component in a phone.
surgical_fire 3y ago
> Please, EU: bring a law that forces manufacturers to release their drivers / firmware whenever they stop updating a digital device. I wish I could upvote this more. It's a crime how I had to throw away in the past perfectly usable devices because they were forced into obsolescence.
- deelowe 3y ago
  I don't see how this would work given modern supply chains. It can be extremely difficult to track down all of the owners of a particular IP and when you do, many of them may not even exist any longer making it near impossible to get any sort of permission to do something like this.
  - fsflover 3y ago
    Here is how a small company has done it: https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/ https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/.
  - codetrotter 3y ago
    > many of them may not even exist any longer making it near impossible to get any sort of permission to do something like this So plan ahead. For the 2024 model of each iPhone, get all the permissions to release all of the firmware in year 2032.
    - thrashh 3y ago
      The usual concern with regulation is not the big players. It’s the smaller products and businesses that cease to exist because it’s too expensive to meet regulations. Bad regulation raises the cost of entry into the market and strengthens the big players like Apple.
      - asddubs 3y ago
        releasing the firmware primarily would affect the chip makers, phone manufacturers generally do not write this code themselves.
chongli 3y ago
No, it's batteries too. And water/dust/fluid ingress protection. Modern phones are sealed up pretty tight because users want them to be waterproof. This makes it very difficult to build in replaceable batteries!
- dtx1 3y ago
  solved see galaxy s5
  - wesapien 3y ago
    I asked Bard and Samsung started making IP57 phones during the Galaxy S4 era with its "Active" brand.
- blowski 3y ago
  Of all the incredible technology in a modern smartphone, it’s too hard to make replaceable batteries?
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  But really waterproofing the phone doesn't require gluing everything together to within an inch of its life, just a gasket and a few screws. Yes it will add $5 or something to the cost of a phone, totally worth it, and will improve repairability in general to boot.
  - xenadu02 3y ago
    You make this claim but have you ever worked in product design for something trying to achieve an IP water and dust ingress rating? It is far more than "just a gasket and a few screws". The rating can't just be good on unboxing day. You want it to hold even after a few years, several drops on the floor, in cold weather, etc.
    - munk-a 3y ago
      Watch makers solved this problem decades ago - there are very reasonable mechanical solutions to waterproofing. And if some limited components need to be sealed (i.e. the USB port requires special shielding) that sealing can easily exist in a device that is otherwise reasonable to maintain. Watch maintenance has been done by skilled professionals using generic tools and (generally) generic components. Waterproofing is an excuse used to limit our ability to repair and maintain our devices and maybe because somebody didn't like the appearance of a screw face or screw cover on one side of the device.
riedel 3y ago
Actually the EU RF, product liability and cyber security regulations rather point into a direction that disallows use of aftermarket firmware that can delay onsolecense and encourages lockdown. Instead of overregulation we need create an economic system that encourages sustainable use of resources. The EU just does what they can do best: regulate
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  It seems that they are too good at it, to the point of outlawing new competitors and even hobbyists who simply can’t afford to deal with the paperwork; eg see the shit-show that security regulation around OSS. https://hackaday.com/2023/04/21/the-cyber-resilience-act-threatens-open-source/ https://hackaday.com/2023/04/21/the-cyber-resilience-act-thr...
- dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
  > we need create an economic system that encourages sustainable use of resources Which would require regulation, or you have way too much faith in humanity. Regulation isn't bad, just dumb regulations.
  - riedel 3y ago
    Totally agreed but good regulation needs a vision and common values beyond a common single market (alas we just do more regulations centrally in the fear to get regulatory fragmentation decentrally)
- munk-a 3y ago
  Proper cost attribution of externalities could provide an alternative to regulation... unfortunately the only way we currently have to measure these externalities is regulation. Directly regulating the bad outcome instead of the externalities that contribute to it is less likely to lead to misaligned economic incentives. Regulation is not a bad thing - though within the US a fair amount of regulations were constructed to increase the barrier to enter a market at the behest of lobbying.
- kaba0 3y ago
cptaj 3y ago
Its a good precedent to have. There are solutions to the software issue you mention. They're not perfect but for some hardware, they do work. If the software problem ever gets solved, you WILL want to be able to replace the batteries won't you? You can and should fight both battles since they serve the same purpose. The precedent is also good for devices other than phones.
JohnFen 3y ago
> Why would you want to replace a battery in a useless device? I agree with what you say, but even phones I had that became unsupported and I couldn't replace the OS in didn't become useless. They still worked. A user-replaceable battery would be useful for them as well.
qalmakka 3y ago
I think Apple would never tolerate that. I can see them lobbying political parties in order to sabotage EU cohesion if that gets proposed.
- lagadu 3y ago
  Like they never would tolerate being forced into USB-C or being forced into allowing other app stores?
pjmlp 3y ago
Back in the feature phone days there were zero updates. If one was lucky, maybe with developer tools there was a firmware update, and even those happened at most once.
- crabbone 3y ago
  This is apples to oranges. Feature phones weren't a substitute for personal computers. They weren't as necessary of an accessory as it is today. On the other hand, standards governing how those phones worked weren't changing as fast, so, given good care, you could use your phone for 10+ years. Updates today are a way to force users into buying a new phone (eg. my banking up decided not to support an older version of Android, phone vendor doesn't produce updates -- I have to buy a new device). There weren't updates because there weren't banking apps which could've forced you to abandon your perfectly functioning device.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    > Feature phones weren't a substitute for personal computers. They weren't as necessary of an accessory as it is today. On the other hand, standards governing how those phones worked weren't changing as fast, so, given good care, you could use your phone for 10+ years. I am quite sure that many people across the African continent and Asian see it differently. Specially those that were using Symbian devices.
    - crabbone 3y ago
      I'm mostly familiar with North Afrika, but I can tell you this: at that time in places like Egypt or Morocco you couldn't access government services from your Nokia, it wasn't a thing. 2FA was unheard of. Contactless payment is still a novelty, but definitely didn't exist at the time prior to smartphones. There weren't banking apps. Best you could do on your phone is to play snake or send an email. And if we are talking about places like Zimbabwe... there might have been like a hundred cell-phones in the entire country. As for Asian countries? -- well, places like Japan or Hong Kong weren't much different from Europe. Places like India or China, by and large, didn't have coverage. Even relatively well-off Russia only had cell towers in and around big cities. In Russia at that time there were very few people able to afford a high-end Nokia phone, but even if they had one, those wouldn't be the people who needed a replacement for a PC, nor would they ever use their phone in such capacity. Due to poor economical situation all electronics were seen as a way to prevent wealth from depreciating. Few people who did buy expensive cell phones had no interest in using their advanced abilities, nor was there anything to use such a phone for.
agumonkey 3y ago
It's one chunk of the whole smartphone problem. Software can come after (or during). Let's amplify postmarketos a bit ..
throwbadubadu 3y ago
> The problem is not really the battery anymore. Huh, why not? I'd love yours too, but battery is also good. What do you do with a superb open source phone where you need to replace device because battery is dead and you cannot replace it? Let's please aim for both and everything!
quijoteuniv 3y ago
I have been thinking this a lot! There so many technology that could be still use. Ipad 1 , old phones, i have been salvaging laptops with linux, and apart from video or heavy specs things they work better than new laptops with the microsoft OS.
2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
Why don't they sell updates? Even if they open source everything, I'd pay for them to support my phone for longer and I imagine the margins on a SW update outweigh the cost of producing more hardware.
- crabbone 3y ago
  > Why don't they sell updates? Because given limited resources, companies prefer to spend their resources on what pays the most. Manufacturing updates may be comparable or even more expensive than making new devices.
ephbit 3y ago
> Please, EU: bring a law that forces manufacturers to release their drivers / firmware whenever they stop updating a digital device. I don't see much hope of such a thing being decided soon, if ever. The incentives for politicians are mostly not aligned in this direction. The much more realistic path towards having devices/software that can be used for more than 3-5 years is IMO if more people started supporting projects like postmarketOS, fairphone, shiftphones, Librem, (mntreform for laptops) and other such croud-funded and more open/free designs. Once such devices/OSes work good enough to be usable in day to day life without serious hassle/disappointments, more people will actually use them and a community can grow, allowing the products to mature. I think a very good example (in software) is the f-droid app store that has reached a sufficient level of maturity that many people now use it exclusively (instead of the Google play store).
- 2-718-281-828 3y ago
  > The much more realistic path towards having devices/software that can be used for more than 3-5 years is IMO ... i used any and all of my smartphones that long. no problem.
- crabbone 3y ago
  These phones are unusable in a large part because of marketplace lock-in, and in another large part due to unavailable drivers. These things cannot be changed through "grassroots movement", these need to be recognized as mobile phone companies violations of consumer rights and be treated as such.
  - MayeulC 3y ago
    Not all of them are unusable. Fairphone and shiftphone are more expensive, but perfectly usable. -- sent from my Fairphone 4
    - crabbone 3y ago
      Fairphone runs Android... it's part of the problem, not part of a solution.
pryelluw 3y ago
Are both note true? We should have both. Replace battery, components, and software access.
anigbrowl 3y ago
That's a very worthwhile point but one about a different issue. Consider also the possibility that if my device has been bricked but the battery is still doing OK, I might wish to use it in a different device.
CyberDildonics 3y ago
The battery is still a huge problem, this is just clouding the issue with something else. Batteries wear out and have a fraction of their lifetime in a few years and can be replaced for under $20
forty 3y ago
If this is a priority for you, you could vote with your wallet and purchase a fairphone next time your current phone dies. They provide fairly long software support and always had replaceable batteries.
- kaba0 3y ago
  That doesn’t work at all, and is just some capitalist dream.
  - forty 3y ago
    It'd totally work if people gave a shit (but they don't, and prefer purchasing new shiny Samsung every other year anyway so it doesn't work indeed)
hedora 3y ago
Drivers / firmware aren't quite the right solution. They're tied to obsolete android, so they'd still be useless. They should have to provide documentation for every IP block in the device, source code for any drivers, and the ability to unlock the bootloader. This would make it easier for people to back-port modern android / iOS, or just run linux on old devices.
roenxi 3y ago
Is this really [0] the most [1] important issue [2] that the EU should be focusing [3] on? Going by HN traffic, it appears that what the EU is for is to redesign the iPhone to get the details right that techies disagree with Applle on. We live in extreme times with some remarkable challenges - the EU is wasting bandwidth on this triviality. And it isn't a phone manufacturer, it is probably not going to make phones cheaper or, on net, better for consumers. Please EU, behave rationally and focus on creating a peaceful and prosperous environment. Stop generating headlines about backseat driver phone redesigns. [0] https://theconversation.com/poland-dreams-of-building-europes-largest-army-against-backdrop-of-russias-war-against-ukraine-192580 https://theconversation.com/poland-dreams-of-building-europe... [1] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/europe-s-energy-crisis-understanding-the-drivers-of-the-fall-in-electricity-demand https://www.iea.org/commentaries/europe-s-energy-crisis-unde... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65235579 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65235579 [3] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2022/html/ecb.sp220210~2923b1c6d4.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2022/html/ecb.sp220...
- lannisterstark 3y ago
  >Please EU, behave rationally that'd take actual work from the EU.
- crabbone 3y ago
  What a bunch of nonsense and whataboutism. Mobile phones are very important for European citizens: there's so much stuff that depends on them... companies require their employees to use them for 2FA, governments use them for logging into various government services, it's the preferred method of interfacing with banks, supermarkets, post office... my son's school has a phone app, which is the only way they communicate school schedule, or stuff like teacher's absence, going on field trips etc. Apple is just another empire of evil that needs to be regulated in order not to treat its customers like slaves. It's absolutely not a waste of time to make them play nice or gtfo.
- landemva 3y ago
  >> We live in extreme times I thought fear-driven hyperbole ended with the expiry of covid lockdowns. On to the next end of the world story.
HWR_14 3y ago
Apple mobile devices seem to get deprecated when the hardware is no longer meaningful. The last two deprecation were (a) only 1GB of RAM and (b) 32-bit chips.
gumballindie 3y ago
All firmware should be open source, including drivers and particularly graphics drivers. It boggles the mind that a hardware manufacturer refuses to make available the source of the software that actually runs the hardware you paid for.
userbinator 3y ago
IMHO releasing full hardware documentation is far better. Incidentally, a lot of cheap Chinese phones based on Mediatek have plenty of leaked documentation available, and a thriving aftermarket community as a result of that.
rhaway84773 3y ago
No it’s both. The EU is ensuring the cell phone companies start by fixing at least one issue. They can then move on to the other.
earthboundkid 3y ago
I’ve made a similar suggestion on HN before. Have a minimum support period for internet connected devices, and once you stop updating after that minimum, you’re required to unlock the hardware and open source everything.
- Nemo_bis 3y ago
  That can't work, because the suppliers will be bankrupt already. However one could something like Portico, which keeps journals in archive and releases them to the public if the original goes down. Manufacturers could be forced to deposit all the source code for the software they release on their product, and the deposited source code be released to the public after X years if there is no support for security updates any more. The difference being, if they don't comply the EU can withdraw the products from the market _before_ they're sold.
  - dns_snek 3y ago
    That would be great in theory, but who would actually review and enforce that? Without really strict rules in place this would be doomed to fail. You would need to have a huge number of people whose job it would be to review every single software/firmware submission. Would you mandate that companies must deliver code and build scripts that can be built with a single command and produce usable software/firmware? Otherwise companies would probably submit random archives of plausible looking code that will never be usable because it depends on 100+ proprietary components.
speeder 3y ago
All my last phones the battery had issues, including two phones where the battery became a ball instead of a rectangle right after warranty ended. And the battery caused problems before the software. I ended using even a KaiOS phone just to have a phone I could replace the battery. People keep moaning about phone being waterproof yet my phones fail on me nowhere near water so what is the point?
_ZeD_ 3y ago
>>> Please, EU you know... you could also try asking the US government to do it...
- edflsafoiewq 3y ago
  Yeah, and ask God too while we're at it.
HlessClaudesman 3y ago
If I could control the software and swap out the parts, I would probably still be using my iphone 4, the first device I felt got depreciated out of existence long before it stopped being useful.
- kaba0 3y ago
  I think we should not really extrapolate from earlier smartphone designs, we have seen incredible improvements yearly in the early phase. It has considerably slowed down in the last 3-5 years, so it makes sense to only mandate longer lifespans nowadays.
tiarafawn 3y ago
They made plans to enforce manufacturers to provide updates for longer (3/5 years for OS/security updates) [1]. Though you might argue that 3/5 years is not enough, this seems like a more effective way to elongate the lifespan of an average user's phone who might not be comfortable with installing and using an alternative OS. Not sure what the latest update on this is. IIRC the planned penalty was to make the manufacturer give full refunds to the consumer for devices that violate the requirement. [1] https://www.androidauthority.com/eu-smartphone-updates-rules-3205112/ https://www.androidauthority.com/eu-smartphone-updates-rules...
zhrvoj 3y ago
Aha..just the matter of forcing obsolescence in order to raise profits in modern economy. Please excercise only on yourself, not on me. Another thing, it may be useless from your point of view. But most of the people are using phone just for calling - strange isn't it :) ?
legulere 3y ago
How long software updates are provided is part of the repairability score https://www.heise.de/news/EU-Kommission-bringt-Reparatur-und-Energielabel-fuer-Handys-auf-den-Weg-9190503.html https://www.heise.de/news/EU-Kommission-bringt-Reparatur-und...
Lacerda69 3y ago
A million times yes. My phone practically became useless overnight since banking apps refuse to open on my Android version. No option to update to a newer version, no option to access important accounts without some phone app.
Fnoord 3y ago
Agreed, its not merely the battery. But wireless headsets don't have user replaceable batteries anymore, while the device itself still works. No matter the software, the dying battery killed the product. So I see it as a starting point, and we need further targeted iterations, including the one you pointed out (thank you!)
wwilim 3y ago
My wife is possibly about to be forced to throw away a $8k pair of hearing aids because after 6 years they are no longer supported by the manufacturer's software for hearing care professionals so it's likely she won't be able to get them readjusted.
bboygravity 3y ago
I find it ironic that one of the few phone brands adressing all these issues (replaceable batteries, rootability, 5+ years spare parts sales) happens to be the ultimate "Chinese brand" phone: Unihertz :p No woke bs marketing, no coorporate white washing, no marketing with "green sustainability": they just do it instead of talking about it.
- Renaud 3y ago
  And the result is that nobody knows about it. Doesn’t need to be hyperbolic bs marketing just to advertise that your phone has these features.
matheusmoreira 3y ago
> Please, EU: bring a law that forces manufacturers to release their drivers / firmware whenever they stop updating a digital device. I want to believe that something so good could happen.
programmer_dude 3y ago
It's not an either-or. We need both.
berniedurfee 3y ago
I agree that opening up the software side of devices is important, but this is still a huge win. I and many, many other people don’t mind using a phone or tablet for many years, even with an obsolete OS. But battery life tends to be the #1 factor in this devices ending up in the bin. In fact, by making battery changes easier with less intensive surgery, it’ll put even more pressure on manufacturers to allow for repurposing them with a different OS. Maybe mandate a 5-year limit before a device must be allowed to be unlocked allowing alternative software to be installed, thus giving these disposable devices a far longer lifespan.
Fernicia 3y ago
Seems completely trivial to comply with this law while not releasing firmware. Is there any precedent for forcing firms to release software? And if so, has it resulted in a third party adopting the support after it?

watwut 3y ago

Battery in my last device became too weak long before device was useless. Device was perfectly fine, just that battery did not hold long anymore.

sdenton4 3y ago
I had a couple phones I really liked where the battery got puffy - ie, very very bad - while the device was otherwise great. Tried replacing with an ifixit kit, but the screen got borked in the process. Total waste...
nonethewiser 3y ago
Yeah battery will virtually always be the first to go. Unless you crack the screen.
- MostlyStable 3y ago
  in my experience, it's the charge port that goes. My last two devices, each of which I had for 3 years, the charge port failed before the battery did. I just finished fixing my current one. Although I did decide to do a battery replacement anyways while I had the device open. But that was just because of how hard it is to open them at all. My battery health monitoring app said it was at ~80% health still. And while the charge port hasn't always failed on me in the past, I'm not sure the battery has ever been the reason for me personally, although I'm probably just lucky in that regard. Basically, I'm not sure that any one "thing" is the thing that always fails. There are multiple common points of failure and generally speaking, phones are hard to service in any manner these days. I personally would gladly give up water and dust protection, as well as thinness in exchange for ease of serviceability. Unfortunately, that seems to be a relatively uncommon set of preferences (although obviously it's probably much more common in places like Hacker News).
  - thatwasunusual 3y ago
    > in my experience, it's the charge port that goes. I have had this problem on a regular basis with all of the iPhones I have owned, and the problem has never been that the charge port is dead, but that dust and/or lint has gathered in it. The solution is very simple: use a tootbrush or similar, preferably something plastic that won't break, BUT NOT ANYTHING METALLIC, to dig out the dirty stuff. Problem solved.
    - MostlyStable 3y ago
      Sometimes it's been lint, and I've been able to clean it out, but eventually cleaning it out stops working.
    - mnw21cam 3y ago
      A wooden toothpick works very well.
    - isleyaardvark 3y ago
      Compressed air has worked well for me.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    This is why I only buy phones that support inductive charging. It's really not an expensive feature and it saves so much wear and tear on the charging port.
dragonmost 3y ago
I'm still running a pixel 2 which is almost 6 years old now. I had to have the battery replaced 5 years in. Although it's not the most practical you don't have to replace the full device. Manufacturers would prefer you do.
mnw21cam 3y ago
There are several things that limit the lifetime of a phone: 1. Battery 2. Software 3. Charge port/headphone port 4. eMMC storage runs out of writes 5. Accidental damage 6. Screen scratches 7. Wanting more RAM/storage and faster processing Batteries are getting better, and we can extend the life of a LiIon battery by about 5X by limiting charging to 80%. If batteries inherently had as short a life as they commonly do in phones, then electric cars would be doomed, but there's no real reason why we can't get phone batteries to last 10 years or more. The software can only be solved by constant effort. There are certain things that could possibly be done to make it easier, such as arranging the device-specific stuff so that the effort already spent on producing a newer set of software for a newer device can be more easily back-ported to the older devices. I think this will only be solved by legislation, such as a law saying that the software must be updated for X years, or even just a law saying that the support duration must be very clearly advertised with the phone allowing consumers to make a choice. A USB-C port is rated for a minimum of 10,000 plug/unplug cycles, which should be enough to charge the phone once a day for 30 years. If that isn't actually being achieved then we need to ask why not. The eMMC storage is a problem with many phones. My phone is just starting to slow to a crawl because its main storage is old and it takes a while for it to perform certain writes (or something - it's hard to get an accurate picture of what is happening in there). There is zero information that a consumer has available when deciding which phone to buy to tell them which ones will have a problem with this. This seems to be a fairly obvious target for a law, similar to the software support duration. Accidental damage - I remember reading a statistic about how the average phone survives a ridiculously short time before being dropped and broken, and I don't get it. I haven't dropped/broken a phone ever. I guess we just let the people who are constantly dropping their phones pick up the tab on that one. Screen scratch protection is also getting really good now. My current phone has lived in my pocket for several years, and there's almost zero scratching on the screen. Just don't keep your keys in the same pocket. In terms of replacing a phone because you want something better - I had a look recently to see about replacing my phone. The ones on the market at a comparable price to what I spent on my current one had specifications that were really not much better at all. It doesn't make sense - if a phone with those specifications is deemed suitable for today's market, then my old one with almost identical specifications should be fine too. So, I don't really see any barriers that aren't insurmountable to a phone lasting several times longer than they do at the moment. Ten years should be easy, 15 years should be possible. At the moment, it's more like 3 if you're very lucky.

TremendousJudge 3y ago

Yes but replaceable batteries are a good start and a more pressing issue. A phone with a 4+ year old battery is useless even if you have all the software for it.

arroz 3y ago
Not my experience… I replaced my iPhone 6 because it was slow, not because battery was bad And since 2018 I have iPhone XR, and the battery is fine still. So is the phone speed. I’m not changing it anytime soon
- dainiusse 3y ago
  Do you remember the whole phone throttling issue on a bad battery?
- photonbeam 3y ago
  The software slows the phone down so not create current spikes that the aged battery cant handle
- willcipriano 3y ago
  The battery probably made it slow: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/apple-settles-with-states-for-113m-over-iphone-battery-throttling/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/apple-settles-wi...
- vel0city 3y ago
  > I replaced my iPhone 6 because it was slow, not because battery was bad iPhone slowness can go hand in hand with batteries going bad, especially in the iPhone 6 days. Apple phones will limit peak performance when it detects the battery voltage can't handle it without too much of a voltage drop. From what I understand its now an opt-out setting, but for most of the iPhone 6's life it wasn't an option.
  - astrange 3y ago
    If you opt out of it your phone will suddenly turn off, which is definitely not an improvement over being slow. Having the opt-out is nonsense and an example of bad regulation. This isn't the only reason an old phone would be slow though, batteries are not the only consumable component in a phone.

surgical_fire 3y ago

> Please, EU: bring a law that forces manufacturers to release their drivers / firmware whenever they stop updating a digital device. I wish I could upvote this more. It's a crime how I had to throw away in the past perfectly usable devices because they were forced into obsolescence.

deelowe 3y ago
I don't see how this would work given modern supply chains. It can be extremely difficult to track down all of the owners of a particular IP and when you do, many of them may not even exist any longer making it near impossible to get any sort of permission to do something like this.
- fsflover 3y ago
  Here is how a small company has done it: https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/ https://puri.sm/posts/breaking-ground/.
- codetrotter 3y ago
  > many of them may not even exist any longer making it near impossible to get any sort of permission to do something like this So plan ahead. For the 2024 model of each iPhone, get all the permissions to release all of the firmware in year 2032.
  - thrashh 3y ago
    The usual concern with regulation is not the big players. It’s the smaller products and businesses that cease to exist because it’s too expensive to meet regulations. Bad regulation raises the cost of entry into the market and strengthens the big players like Apple.
    - asddubs 3y ago
      releasing the firmware primarily would affect the chip makers, phone manufacturers generally do not write this code themselves.

chongli 3y ago

No, it's batteries too. And water/dust/fluid ingress protection. Modern phones are sealed up pretty tight because users want them to be waterproof. This makes it very difficult to build in replaceable batteries!

dtx1 3y ago
solved see galaxy s5
- wesapien 3y ago
  I asked Bard and Samsung started making IP57 phones during the Galaxy S4 era with its "Active" brand.
blowski 3y ago
Of all the incredible technology in a modern smartphone, it’s too hard to make replaceable batteries?
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
But really waterproofing the phone doesn't require gluing everything together to within an inch of its life, just a gasket and a few screws. Yes it will add $5 or something to the cost of a phone, totally worth it, and will improve repairability in general to boot.
- xenadu02 3y ago
  You make this claim but have you ever worked in product design for something trying to achieve an IP water and dust ingress rating? It is far more than "just a gasket and a few screws". The rating can't just be good on unboxing day. You want it to hold even after a few years, several drops on the floor, in cold weather, etc.
  - munk-a 3y ago
    Watch makers solved this problem decades ago - there are very reasonable mechanical solutions to waterproofing. And if some limited components need to be sealed (i.e. the USB port requires special shielding) that sealing can easily exist in a device that is otherwise reasonable to maintain. Watch maintenance has been done by skilled professionals using generic tools and (generally) generic components. Waterproofing is an excuse used to limit our ability to repair and maintain our devices and maybe because somebody didn't like the appearance of a screw face or screw cover on one side of the device.

riedel 3y ago

Actually the EU RF, product liability and cyber security regulations rather point into a direction that disallows use of aftermarket firmware that can delay onsolecense and encourages lockdown. Instead of overregulation we need create an economic system that encourages sustainable use of resources. The EU just does what they can do best: regulate

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
It seems that they are too good at it, to the point of outlawing new competitors and even hobbyists who simply can’t afford to deal with the paperwork; eg see the shit-show that security regulation around OSS. https://hackaday.com/2023/04/21/the-cyber-resilience-act-threatens-open-source/ https://hackaday.com/2023/04/21/the-cyber-resilience-act-thr...
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
> we need create an economic system that encourages sustainable use of resources Which would require regulation, or you have way too much faith in humanity. Regulation isn't bad, just dumb regulations.
- riedel 3y ago
  Totally agreed but good regulation needs a vision and common values beyond a common single market (alas we just do more regulations centrally in the fear to get regulatory fragmentation decentrally)
munk-a 3y ago
Proper cost attribution of externalities could provide an alternative to regulation... unfortunately the only way we currently have to measure these externalities is regulation. Directly regulating the bad outcome instead of the externalities that contribute to it is less likely to lead to misaligned economic incentives. Regulation is not a bad thing - though within the US a fair amount of regulations were constructed to increase the barrier to enter a market at the behest of lobbying.
kaba0 3y ago

cptaj 3y ago

Its a good precedent to have. There are solutions to the software issue you mention. They're not perfect but for some hardware, they do work. If the software problem ever gets solved, you WILL want to be able to replace the batteries won't you? You can and should fight both battles since they serve the same purpose. The precedent is also good for devices other than phones.

JohnFen 3y ago

> Why would you want to replace a battery in a useless device? I agree with what you say, but even phones I had that became unsupported and I couldn't replace the OS in didn't become useless. They still worked. A user-replaceable battery would be useful for them as well.

qalmakka 3y ago

I think Apple would never tolerate that. I can see them lobbying political parties in order to sabotage EU cohesion if that gets proposed.

lagadu 3y ago
Like they never would tolerate being forced into USB-C or being forced into allowing other app stores?

pjmlp 3y ago

Back in the feature phone days there were zero updates. If one was lucky, maybe with developer tools there was a firmware update, and even those happened at most once.

crabbone 3y ago
This is apples to oranges. Feature phones weren't a substitute for personal computers. They weren't as necessary of an accessory as it is today. On the other hand, standards governing how those phones worked weren't changing as fast, so, given good care, you could use your phone for 10+ years. Updates today are a way to force users into buying a new phone (eg. my banking up decided not to support an older version of Android, phone vendor doesn't produce updates -- I have to buy a new device). There weren't updates because there weren't banking apps which could've forced you to abandon your perfectly functioning device.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  > Feature phones weren't a substitute for personal computers. They weren't as necessary of an accessory as it is today. On the other hand, standards governing how those phones worked weren't changing as fast, so, given good care, you could use your phone for 10+ years. I am quite sure that many people across the African continent and Asian see it differently. Specially those that were using Symbian devices.
  - crabbone 3y ago
    I'm mostly familiar with North Afrika, but I can tell you this: at that time in places like Egypt or Morocco you couldn't access government services from your Nokia, it wasn't a thing. 2FA was unheard of. Contactless payment is still a novelty, but definitely didn't exist at the time prior to smartphones. There weren't banking apps. Best you could do on your phone is to play snake or send an email. And if we are talking about places like Zimbabwe... there might have been like a hundred cell-phones in the entire country. As for Asian countries? -- well, places like Japan or Hong Kong weren't much different from Europe. Places like India or China, by and large, didn't have coverage. Even relatively well-off Russia only had cell towers in and around big cities. In Russia at that time there were very few people able to afford a high-end Nokia phone, but even if they had one, those wouldn't be the people who needed a replacement for a PC, nor would they ever use their phone in such capacity. Due to poor economical situation all electronics were seen as a way to prevent wealth from depreciating. Few people who did buy expensive cell phones had no interest in using their advanced abilities, nor was there anything to use such a phone for.

agumonkey 3y ago

It's one chunk of the whole smartphone problem. Software can come after (or during). Let's amplify postmarketos a bit ..

throwbadubadu 3y ago

> The problem is not really the battery anymore. Huh, why not? I'd love yours too, but battery is also good. What do you do with a superb open source phone where you need to replace device because battery is dead and you cannot replace it? Let's please aim for both and everything!

quijoteuniv 3y ago

I have been thinking this a lot! There so many technology that could be still use. Ipad 1 , old phones, i have been salvaging laptops with linux, and apart from video or heavy specs things they work better than new laptops with the microsoft OS.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

Why don't they sell updates? Even if they open source everything, I'd pay for them to support my phone for longer and I imagine the margins on a SW update outweigh the cost of producing more hardware.

crabbone 3y ago
> Why don't they sell updates? Because given limited resources, companies prefer to spend their resources on what pays the most. Manufacturing updates may be comparable or even more expensive than making new devices.

ephbit 3y ago

> Please, EU: bring a law that forces manufacturers to release their drivers / firmware whenever they stop updating a digital device. I don't see much hope of such a thing being decided soon, if ever. The incentives for politicians are mostly not aligned in this direction. The much more realistic path towards having devices/software that can be used for more than 3-5 years is IMO if more people started supporting projects like postmarketOS, fairphone, shiftphones, Librem, (mntreform for laptops) and other such croud-funded and more open/free designs. Once such devices/OSes work good enough to be usable in day to day life without serious hassle/disappointments, more people will actually use them and a community can grow, allowing the products to mature. I think a very good example (in software) is the f-droid app store that has reached a sufficient level of maturity that many people now use it exclusively (instead of the Google play store).

2-718-281-828 3y ago
> The much more realistic path towards having devices/software that can be used for more than 3-5 years is IMO ... i used any and all of my smartphones that long. no problem.
crabbone 3y ago
These phones are unusable in a large part because of marketplace lock-in, and in another large part due to unavailable drivers. These things cannot be changed through "grassroots movement", these need to be recognized as mobile phone companies violations of consumer rights and be treated as such.
- MayeulC 3y ago
  Not all of them are unusable. Fairphone and shiftphone are more expensive, but perfectly usable. -- sent from my Fairphone 4
  - crabbone 3y ago
    Fairphone runs Android... it's part of the problem, not part of a solution.

pryelluw 3y ago

Are both note true? We should have both. Replace battery, components, and software access.

anigbrowl 3y ago

That's a very worthwhile point but one about a different issue. Consider also the possibility that if my device has been bricked but the battery is still doing OK, I might wish to use it in a different device.

CyberDildonics 3y ago

The battery is still a huge problem, this is just clouding the issue with something else. Batteries wear out and have a fraction of their lifetime in a few years and can be replaced for under $20

forty 3y ago

If this is a priority for you, you could vote with your wallet and purchase a fairphone next time your current phone dies. They provide fairly long software support and always had replaceable batteries.

kaba0 3y ago
That doesn’t work at all, and is just some capitalist dream.
- forty 3y ago
  It'd totally work if people gave a shit (but they don't, and prefer purchasing new shiny Samsung every other year anyway so it doesn't work indeed)

hedora 3y ago

Drivers / firmware aren't quite the right solution. They're tied to obsolete android, so they'd still be useless. They should have to provide documentation for every IP block in the device, source code for any drivers, and the ability to unlock the bootloader. This would make it easier for people to back-port modern android / iOS, or just run linux on old devices.

roenxi 3y ago

Is this really [0] the most [1] important issue [2] that the EU should be focusing [3] on? Going by HN traffic, it appears that what the EU is for is to redesign the iPhone to get the details right that techies disagree with Applle on. We live in extreme times with some remarkable challenges - the EU is wasting bandwidth on this triviality. And it isn't a phone manufacturer, it is probably not going to make phones cheaper or, on net, better for consumers. Please EU, behave rationally and focus on creating a peaceful and prosperous environment. Stop generating headlines about backseat driver phone redesigns. [0] https://theconversation.com/poland-dreams-of-building-europes-largest-army-against-backdrop-of-russias-war-against-ukraine-192580 https://theconversation.com/poland-dreams-of-building-europe... [1] https://www.iea.org/commentaries/europe-s-energy-crisis-understanding-the-drivers-of-the-fall-in-electricity-demand https://www.iea.org/commentaries/europe-s-energy-crisis-unde... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65235579 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65235579 [3] https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2022/html/ecb.sp220210~2923b1c6d4.en.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/key/date/2022/html/ecb.sp220...

lannisterstark 3y ago
>Please EU, behave rationally that'd take actual work from the EU.
crabbone 3y ago
What a bunch of nonsense and whataboutism. Mobile phones are very important for European citizens: there's so much stuff that depends on them... companies require their employees to use them for 2FA, governments use them for logging into various government services, it's the preferred method of interfacing with banks, supermarkets, post office... my son's school has a phone app, which is the only way they communicate school schedule, or stuff like teacher's absence, going on field trips etc. Apple is just another empire of evil that needs to be regulated in order not to treat its customers like slaves. It's absolutely not a waste of time to make them play nice or gtfo.
landemva 3y ago
>> We live in extreme times I thought fear-driven hyperbole ended with the expiry of covid lockdowns. On to the next end of the world story.

HWR_14 3y ago

Apple mobile devices seem to get deprecated when the hardware is no longer meaningful. The last two deprecation were (a) only 1GB of RAM and (b) 32-bit chips.

gumballindie 3y ago

All firmware should be open source, including drivers and particularly graphics drivers. It boggles the mind that a hardware manufacturer refuses to make available the source of the software that actually runs the hardware you paid for.

userbinator 3y ago

IMHO releasing full hardware documentation is far better. Incidentally, a lot of cheap Chinese phones based on Mediatek have plenty of leaked documentation available, and a thriving aftermarket community as a result of that.

rhaway84773 3y ago

No it’s both. The EU is ensuring the cell phone companies start by fixing at least one issue. They can then move on to the other.

earthboundkid 3y ago

I’ve made a similar suggestion on HN before. Have a minimum support period for internet connected devices, and once you stop updating after that minimum, you’re required to unlock the hardware and open source everything.

Nemo_bis 3y ago
That can't work, because the suppliers will be bankrupt already. However one could something like Portico, which keeps journals in archive and releases them to the public if the original goes down. Manufacturers could be forced to deposit all the source code for the software they release on their product, and the deposited source code be released to the public after X years if there is no support for security updates any more. The difference being, if they don't comply the EU can withdraw the products from the market _before_ they're sold.
- dns_snek 3y ago
  That would be great in theory, but who would actually review and enforce that? Without really strict rules in place this would be doomed to fail. You would need to have a huge number of people whose job it would be to review every single software/firmware submission. Would you mandate that companies must deliver code and build scripts that can be built with a single command and produce usable software/firmware? Otherwise companies would probably submit random archives of plausible looking code that will never be usable because it depends on 100+ proprietary components.

speeder 3y ago

All my last phones the battery had issues, including two phones where the battery became a ball instead of a rectangle right after warranty ended. And the battery caused problems before the software. I ended using even a KaiOS phone just to have a phone I could replace the battery. People keep moaning about phone being waterproof yet my phones fail on me nowhere near water so what is the point?

_ZeD_ 3y ago

>>> Please, EU you know... you could also try asking the US government to do it...

edflsafoiewq 3y ago
Yeah, and ask God too while we're at it.

HlessClaudesman 3y ago

If I could control the software and swap out the parts, I would probably still be using my iphone 4, the first device I felt got depreciated out of existence long before it stopped being useful.

kaba0 3y ago
I think we should not really extrapolate from earlier smartphone designs, we have seen incredible improvements yearly in the early phase. It has considerably slowed down in the last 3-5 years, so it makes sense to only mandate longer lifespans nowadays.

tiarafawn 3y ago

They made plans to enforce manufacturers to provide updates for longer (3/5 years for OS/security updates) [1]. Though you might argue that 3/5 years is not enough, this seems like a more effective way to elongate the lifespan of an average user's phone who might not be comfortable with installing and using an alternative OS. Not sure what the latest update on this is. IIRC the planned penalty was to make the manufacturer give full refunds to the consumer for devices that violate the requirement. [1] https://www.androidauthority.com/eu-smartphone-updates-rules-3205112/ https://www.androidauthority.com/eu-smartphone-updates-rules...

zhrvoj 3y ago

Aha..just the matter of forcing obsolescence in order to raise profits in modern economy. Please excercise only on yourself, not on me. Another thing, it may be useless from your point of view. But most of the people are using phone just for calling - strange isn't it :) ?

legulere 3y ago

How long software updates are provided is part of the repairability score https://www.heise.de/news/EU-Kommission-bringt-Reparatur-und-Energielabel-fuer-Handys-auf-den-Weg-9190503.html https://www.heise.de/news/EU-Kommission-bringt-Reparatur-und...

Lacerda69 3y ago

A million times yes. My phone practically became useless overnight since banking apps refuse to open on my Android version. No option to update to a newer version, no option to access important accounts without some phone app.

Fnoord 3y ago

Agreed, its not merely the battery. But wireless headsets don't have user replaceable batteries anymore, while the device itself still works. No matter the software, the dying battery killed the product. So I see it as a starting point, and we need further targeted iterations, including the one you pointed out (thank you!)

wwilim 3y ago

My wife is possibly about to be forced to throw away a $8k pair of hearing aids because after 6 years they are no longer supported by the manufacturer's software for hearing care professionals so it's likely she won't be able to get them readjusted.

bboygravity 3y ago

I find it ironic that one of the few phone brands adressing all these issues (replaceable batteries, rootability, 5+ years spare parts sales) happens to be the ultimate "Chinese brand" phone: Unihertz :p No woke bs marketing, no coorporate white washing, no marketing with "green sustainability": they just do it instead of talking about it.

Renaud 3y ago
And the result is that nobody knows about it. Doesn’t need to be hyperbolic bs marketing just to advertise that your phone has these features.

matheusmoreira 3y ago

> Please, EU: bring a law that forces manufacturers to release their drivers / firmware whenever they stop updating a digital device. I want to believe that something so good could happen.

programmer_dude 3y ago

It's not an either-or. We need both.

berniedurfee 3y ago

I agree that opening up the software side of devices is important, but this is still a huge win. I and many, many other people don’t mind using a phone or tablet for many years, even with an obsolete OS. But battery life tends to be the #1 factor in this devices ending up in the bin. In fact, by making battery changes easier with less intensive surgery, it’ll put even more pressure on manufacturers to allow for repurposing them with a different OS. Maybe mandate a 5-year limit before a device must be allowed to be unlocked allowing alternative software to be installed, thus giving these disposable devices a far longer lifespan.

Fernicia 3y ago

Seems completely trivial to comply with this law while not releasing firmware. Is there any precedent for forcing firms to release software? And if so, has it resulted in a third party adopting the support after it?