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Mainstream phones today can generally be repaired commercially, even if they are devices criticized as not being self-repairable. > the same is true even if yo

Mainstream phones today can generally be repaired commercially, even if they are devices criticized as not being self-repairable. > the same is true even if you then choose to buy a new one, because an old appliance that can be repaired and resold has a higher trade in value. The lack of repairability costs you money whether you do the repairs yourself or not. TCO is a complicated subject. A more repairable device does not necessarily have a cheaper TCO. Some of the costs of building and/or repairing a device scale linearly, and some scale exponentially. And they tend to depreciate logarithmically. Based solely on TCO, there is an optimum expected lifetime, and it mathematically isn't "as long as possible"

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> Mainstream phones today can generally be repaired commercially, even if they are devices criticized as not being self-repairable. Doing this raises the labor cost to the point of making it uneconomical in many cases that it wouldn't be otherwise. It also raises the parts cost (and the amount of waste), because a failed logic board that has every chip in the device soldered to it is going to cost more to replace than a card with only the bit that failed on it. > Some of the costs of building and/or repairing a device scale linearly, and some scale exponentially. Which ones scale exponentially? How come a Fairphone isn't dramatically more expensive than an iPhone? > And they tend to depreciate logarithmically. Depreciation on existing devices is precisely because they can't be upgraded or repaired. If your phone has a 3G cellular modem in it, it stops being useful as a phone when they shut down the 3G towers -- unless you can replace the modem. Compare this to PC components that don't depreciate quickly, like a standard ATX chassis or power supply or monitor. Or an AM4 system board that could have been purchased in 2016 yet supports 2022 CPUs that could viably still be in use for five or ten more years. And a decline in value of a component only makes the repairs more affordable. A Ryzen 7 2700X has lost half its value over 5 years, which only means that if you should need to replace one it costs half as much -- or can be replaced with a faster model in the same system.
- kube-system 3y ago
  >> Some of the costs of building and/or repairing a device scale linearly, and some scale exponentially. > Which ones scale exponentially? How come a Fairphone isn't dramatically more expensive than an iPhone? Nothing that they've chosen. The Fairphone isn't dramatically more expensive than other phones because it really isn't dramatically different. They don't have any modular parts that aren't already available on other phones in various combinations. They are just offering a slightly different box of COTS parts with a promise to support it. This is relatively cheap to do. It still suffers from some of the problems you mention and more: the logic board is all soldered, the modem is not modular, the software support promises are reliant on third parties, etc.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    They built something which is repairable but not upgradeable. The modular parts are the ones most likely to fail, not the ones most likely to become obsolete. But that doesn't seem to have increased the cost by any significant degree, so why doesn't everybody else do at least that? Meanwhile many PC laptops do make the upgradeable parts modular. Laptops with modular memory, CPU, wireless etc. are available for less than a Macbook or iPhone. So where is the exponential cost? > the software support promises are reliant on third parties This is a "current vendors are crap" problem rather than any kind of technological barrier. And that can't be the reason that Apple can't do it.
    - kube-system 3y ago
      > They built something which is repairable but not upgradeable. The modular parts are the ones most likely to fail, not the ones most likely to become obsolete. But that doesn't seem to have increased the cost by any significant degree, so why doesn't everybody else do at least that? It's a few cents, and it makes packaging more difficult. If Samsung shaves a single penny off of each phone they sell, they are more a million dollars more profitable per year. But most mid-to-high end phones do have a significant number of modular parts. Battery, camera, speakers, displays, and sometimes IO are modular on many phones, and repair shops will fix these for customers. > Meanwhile many PC laptops do make the upgradeable parts modular. Laptops with modular memory, CPU, wireless etc. are available for less than a Macbook or iPhone. Modular CPUs are generally not available on laptops anymore, that's a thing of the past anymore. Modular memory and wireless are starting to disappear, in part due to latency requirements for the later memory standards, and packaging and power requirements for popular thin-and-light segment devices. If you're asking why phones don't have modular memory, the answer is simple: they're optimized for small size and low power, and adding a connector would compromise on that. Also, it would require inventing a new memory standard since modular LPDDR does not exist. > So where is the exponential cost? You see exponential costs if you look at devices that actually have extended lifetimes. I'm not talking about one consumer phone compared to another. In the scheme of things, they really all have expected lifetimes around a handful of years. Compare the redundancy and expected lifetime of consumer products to industrial products to aerospace products if you want to see how making something last a long time can be very expensive. If you want to double a product's lifetime, you are often looking at 10x the cost, if not more. > This is a "current vendors are crap" problem rather than any kind of technological barrier. Well, it's not possible to make a phone without relying on vendors for some parts. There are too many specialized parts. Not even Apple has enough resources to in-house it all, and they have been trying.
- coryrc 3y ago
  > Doing this raises the labor cost to the point of making it uneconomical in many cases that it wouldn't be otherwise. You're arguing against the specialization of labor. I don't think this is a winning argument.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    I'm arguing against making a repair that needs to be done 3% of the time cost $200 more in order to save $0.05 on the price of the device. Labor specialization is supposed to make things more efficient. You have some expert who can do the job in five minutes that would take you an hour, and then you can justify paying them ten times your own hourly rate for those five minutes. It doesn't do any good to cause something to take the high-paid expert an hour instead of five minutes, all it does send the device to the landfill because the repair becomes uneconomical.

AnthonyMouse 3y ago

> Mainstream phones today can generally be repaired commercially, even if they are devices criticized as not being self-repairable. Doing this raises the labor cost to the point of making it uneconomical in many cases that it wouldn't be otherwise. It also raises the parts cost (and the amount of waste), because a failed logic board that has every chip in the device soldered to it is going to cost more to replace than a card with only the bit that failed on it. > Some of the costs of building and/or repairing a device scale linearly, and some scale exponentially. Which ones scale exponentially? How come a Fairphone isn't dramatically more expensive than an iPhone? > And they tend to depreciate logarithmically. Depreciation on existing devices is precisely because they can't be upgraded or repaired. If your phone has a 3G cellular modem in it, it stops being useful as a phone when they shut down the 3G towers -- unless you can replace the modem. Compare this to PC components that don't depreciate quickly, like a standard ATX chassis or power supply or monitor. Or an AM4 system board that could have been purchased in 2016 yet supports 2022 CPUs that could viably still be in use for five or ten more years. And a decline in value of a component only makes the repairs more affordable. A Ryzen 7 2700X has lost half its value over 5 years, which only means that if you should need to replace one it costs half as much -- or can be replaced with a faster model in the same system.

kube-system 3y ago
>> Some of the costs of building and/or repairing a device scale linearly, and some scale exponentially. > Which ones scale exponentially? How come a Fairphone isn't dramatically more expensive than an iPhone? Nothing that they've chosen. The Fairphone isn't dramatically more expensive than other phones because it really isn't dramatically different. They don't have any modular parts that aren't already available on other phones in various combinations. They are just offering a slightly different box of COTS parts with a promise to support it. This is relatively cheap to do. It still suffers from some of the problems you mention and more: the logic board is all soldered, the modem is not modular, the software support promises are reliant on third parties, etc.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  They built something which is repairable but not upgradeable. The modular parts are the ones most likely to fail, not the ones most likely to become obsolete. But that doesn't seem to have increased the cost by any significant degree, so why doesn't everybody else do at least that? Meanwhile many PC laptops do make the upgradeable parts modular. Laptops with modular memory, CPU, wireless etc. are available for less than a Macbook or iPhone. So where is the exponential cost? > the software support promises are reliant on third parties This is a "current vendors are crap" problem rather than any kind of technological barrier. And that can't be the reason that Apple can't do it.
  - kube-system 3y ago
    > They built something which is repairable but not upgradeable. The modular parts are the ones most likely to fail, not the ones most likely to become obsolete. But that doesn't seem to have increased the cost by any significant degree, so why doesn't everybody else do at least that? It's a few cents, and it makes packaging more difficult. If Samsung shaves a single penny off of each phone they sell, they are more a million dollars more profitable per year. But most mid-to-high end phones do have a significant number of modular parts. Battery, camera, speakers, displays, and sometimes IO are modular on many phones, and repair shops will fix these for customers. > Meanwhile many PC laptops do make the upgradeable parts modular. Laptops with modular memory, CPU, wireless etc. are available for less than a Macbook or iPhone. Modular CPUs are generally not available on laptops anymore, that's a thing of the past anymore. Modular memory and wireless are starting to disappear, in part due to latency requirements for the later memory standards, and packaging and power requirements for popular thin-and-light segment devices. If you're asking why phones don't have modular memory, the answer is simple: they're optimized for small size and low power, and adding a connector would compromise on that. Also, it would require inventing a new memory standard since modular LPDDR does not exist. > So where is the exponential cost? You see exponential costs if you look at devices that actually have extended lifetimes. I'm not talking about one consumer phone compared to another. In the scheme of things, they really all have expected lifetimes around a handful of years. Compare the redundancy and expected lifetime of consumer products to industrial products to aerospace products if you want to see how making something last a long time can be very expensive. If you want to double a product's lifetime, you are often looking at 10x the cost, if not more. > This is a "current vendors are crap" problem rather than any kind of technological barrier. Well, it's not possible to make a phone without relying on vendors for some parts. There are too many specialized parts. Not even Apple has enough resources to in-house it all, and they have been trying.
coryrc 3y ago
> Doing this raises the labor cost to the point of making it uneconomical in many cases that it wouldn't be otherwise. You're arguing against the specialization of labor. I don't think this is a winning argument.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  I'm arguing against making a repair that needs to be done 3% of the time cost $200 more in order to save $0.05 on the price of the device. Labor specialization is supposed to make things more efficient. You have some expert who can do the job in five minutes that would take you an hour, and then you can justify paying them ten times your own hourly rate for those five minutes. It doesn't do any good to cause something to take the high-paid expert an hour instead of five minutes, all it does send the device to the landfill because the repair becomes uneconomical.