7 ms·

The Right to Repair people remind me a lot of the Free Software people. Which is to say, fundamentally correct, but struggling to get consumers to care enough t

The Right to Repair people remind me a lot of the Free Software people. Which is to say, fundamentally correct, but struggling to get consumers to care enough to influence purchasing decisions. I don't have the answer to this, but somehow getting consumers to factor in repairability is going to be key to creating the kind of leverage that can drive real change in the industry.

Gigachad 2y ago
IMO phones are the area I care about repair the least. By the time the phone is 5~ years old, I’m going to want the new one anyway. Where repairs would be much more useful is general household appliances where the model 20 years ago was just as good if not better than the one today. I’m never going to want to upgrade my blender, but when the plastic parts snap, I want it to be easy to get a replacement.
- Retric 2y ago
  With a phone from 5 years ago sure it’s feeling its age, but that number keeps going up as the functional differences between each phone generation shrinks. Replacing the battery on year 3 makes a huge difference in how long you would want to keep a phone around for.
  - dylan604 2y ago
    And if the maker offers a free service to replace the battery with the purchase, I'm okay with it. Would it be nice to remove the battery to keep "them" from listening? Probably, but "they" are still listening through the TV, the laptops, and that chip in the back of my mouth so, meh
    - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
      TV (fixed) the laptops (fixed), and that chip in the back of my mouth so (erm...) I still failed because some moron gifted an echo 5 to someone who refuses to let it go.
  - BizarreByte 2y ago
    I have a Windows Phone and it’s a decade old. Very outside the norm to still use it, but phones can last a long time from a hardware perspective if they’re allowed too. My 830’s saving grace has been the ease of changing batteries. If the battery was internal I’d have tossed it years ago.
    - BozeWolf 2y ago
      Does it still get software updates? Not just the apps, but also the operating system. If not, you definitely should not use it anymore. Not only because of security issues in software, but also because of possibly revoked certificates. And newer, safer, web protocols. Also strange if your bank still supports it. Hardware might be fine when it comes to being speedy enough, but may also have issues.A digital device still working is just not good enough anymore.
      - BizarreByte 2y ago
        It doesn’t get updates, but I’m not overly concerned. It’s running WP10 and security would be a bigger concern if any apps supported it to begin with. I don’t bank on my phone beyond checking my balance with SMS. If I need to actually move money around I’d rather do it on my computer. The phone is used for calling, texting, mp3s, the weather, the calendar/reminders, and very occasional maps. I do have my gmail setup via imap with is probably the biggest risk I actually take. I’ve written half a dozen of my own programs for specific things I need, but otherwise there’s nothing installed. I know there’s some risk but I’m well aware of it and accept it.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 2y ago
    I just replace a OnePlus6T from 2018 with a brand new Pixel 8 and I regret it. The 6T had the latest LineageOS and the P8 has GrapheneOS. Both have the latest Android but there's nothing on the Pixel that's better than the OnePlus. 6 years and no noticeable differences in terms of battery, performance, screen, ergonomy, etc. I should have stuck with the old one but I was convinced things were still progressing. My bad.
    - Iulioh 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - eertami 2y ago
        I have a Pixel 4a and everything opens instantly, or at least the delay is imperceptible. I'm sensitive to latency (and have a 360hz monitor for games), but phones have been fast enough for a long time - for at least everything I personally use a phone for.
        0x1ch 2y ago
        Does Google Maps actually work for you? Before I replaced my 4a, most google apps were performing worse by the minute.
    - Rinzler89 2y ago
      To be fair the OnePlus 6T was an actual flagship of its time while the pixel 8 isn't. It's more of a midrange phone.
      - Dylan16807 2y ago
        It launched at $549. So basically the same price after inflation. If the tier of the Pixel is lower, that's a problem not an excuse.
        Rinzler89 2y ago
  - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
    I just want to add that security updates do matter. I agree with everything.
  - toast0 2y ago
    Replacing the battery on a phone would make sense if it was easy to do. But I can't get reasonable phones with a back that comes off intentionally to replace a modular battery. Which means I'm paying someone to unglue the back, replace the battery, and reglue the back. Their time costs money, so I'm thinking ~ $50 for the battery and ~ $50 for their time, plus my time to get there and back and wait, and I'm halfway to a $200 phone that's going to be way better than my 3 year old $200 phone. I don't like how disposable everything is, but labor costs to repair are huge. I just got rid of a van because of a failed head gasket, because it's too much work to get to the not that expensive part.
    - Retric 2y ago
      I find the time it takes to swap to a new phone is significantly longer than the time it takes to get a new battery. Making a battery swap a net time save.
  - rustcleaner 2y ago
    I really want to figure out compiling GrapheneOS for post-EOL pixels. Yeah yeah firmware insecurity, but by failing to make it available (call it CarbonOS?) the older pixels don't get the OTHER big graphene features that alternatives lack!
- pcdoodle 2y ago
  I'd love it if iPhone SE 2016 still got updates. I don't care about the speed, just want Voice/SMS/Music run banking and other low consumption apps. It's still my dedicated MP3 player.
  - timoth 2y ago
    It does. But not beyond iOS 15. Most recent update: 15.8.2 a couple of months ago. Personally I'm really impressed that Apple is still supporting an 8-year-old phone and it's probably the main thing that has been tempting me to jump ship from Android for a while. (Though it seems like Android might be better on this in future.)
  - lelaurent 2y ago
    It's still my dedicated phone. Works quite well mostly still. Why not yours if you don't have very high expectations?
- jasonlotito 2y ago
  You'd be in the minority I think. Judging by the number of phone screen repair shops and what not I see, phone repair is one of the things that people really want. And that's just screen repairs, and not the numerous other things people generally talk about getting fixed. On the flip side, you are the first person I know of talking about about repairing your blender, and I've never seen a blender repair shop. Larger home appliances, sure, but blenders? I'm not saying you are wrong to prioritize these things. Just pointing out that you are an outlier.
  - Domenic_S 2y ago
    Small appliance repair is/used to be a thing, remember TV repair shops? Vacuum repair shops I still see around occasionally. Problem is people buy a $25 hamilton beach blender that doesn't make any financial sense to repair but makes huge amounts of sense as an initial purchase. If you buy a $500 vitamix, you can keep it running forever with new parts, but that's the same price as 20 of the cheap blender. And blender technology isn't really advancing at a huge rate compared to, say, cell phones.
    - ska 2y ago
      > And blender technology isn't really advancing at a huge rate That's part of it, but also the vitamix and hamilton beach really have quite different capabilities. For most peoples usage, it doesn't matter much, but the vitamix (at least the core one) show their commercial kitchen background. The real problem is that there isn't anything much between the $25 one and the $350 one. From a technical point of view, there isn't any reason someone couldn't produce a $90 one that was robust and repairable but less powerful etc. than the vitamix. I dont' think i've ever seen one - if you do find a $90 one it's essentially the $25 one in a fancier looking shell. The market, as they say, has spoken. In most cases you are better off going for commercial suppliers if you want longer life, repairability, etc., but often the only things on offer there are way overkill for e.g. a home kitchen. Small appliance repair is alive and well in parts of the world where it is easy to access parts supply close to the source (i.e. you are paying roughly small batch wholesale prices).
- CodeWriter23 2y ago
  You can get 5 years of usable battery discharge/recharge out of a phone, kudos to you!
  - mey 2y ago
    The primary reason I replaced my Pixel 4a was it going EoL for security updates. The battery did get replaced once, and it brought it back to life. I don't want a halo device, I want something that is secure, functional, repairable and cheap enough that if this portable slab of glass explodes I am not that sad. The primary reason I replaced my device with a Pixel 8 is for the 7 years of security updates. Going from the 4a to the 8? Barely noticed a change in functionality.
    - sumtechguy 2y ago
      I went from a galaxy s5 to s22. About 10 years in diff. The functionality for me is nearly identical. Speed the s22 is much snappier I guess. But not something I care much about. I only replaced it because the touch screen started acting up and security updates were non-existent. I was able to keep the thing going for so long precisely because I could swap out that battery easily. To replace the newer ones involves a heat gun and a suction cup. And as jerryrigeverything says 'glass is glass'.
  - tpmoney 2y ago
    I just replaced an iPhone X last year with a 15 that was still on the original battery. From my records, looks like I got it in early 2018, so pretty much 5 years. Admittedly for about the last year, that usable battery was largely completely depleted by the end of the day and it couldn't last through a heavy usage day without a top up. Realistically, replacing at year 4 probably would have been the smart move, I was mostly waiting to see if the 15 was going to be USB C before deciding.
- r00fus 2y ago
  I used to be like this, but I don't sell my old phones, I hand them down - and I'd love to be able to get parts for the iPhones 6,8 and XR when they go off the wagon.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > By the time the phone is 5~ years old, I’m going to want the new one anyway. Fair enough. But there are also a fair number of people who, like myself, would be pretty irritated to have to replace their phone after only 5 years.
  - ornornor 2y ago
    Especially if we’re talking about a phone that costs 800—1000+$ (as flagships are trending around)..!
- ornornor 2y ago
  Maybe a five year old phone isn’t good enough for you, but it might be for someone else. But if the screen can’t be repaired or the battery replaced, it will end up as ewaste somewhere in a poor country polluting the world’s air and soil/water.
  - berkes 2y ago
    Which is why everyone should care about the right-to-repair. A phone that can be repaired, is worth something. For ewaste you get €0 (some recycler may get a few bucks from rare materials). For a phone that can have a second life, you might get some €100. This is one reason why people love iPhones: their value, second hand, remains rather high.
sersi 2y ago
The problem is that to be able to make a purchasing decision toward repairability there must be actual choices that offer better repairability. That doesn't seem to be the case for phones unfortunately.
realusername 2y ago
How would consumers know anyways, it's pretty hard to purchase on repairability even us as experts.
wyldfire 2y ago
> Which is to say, fundamentally correct, but struggling to get consumers to care enough to influence purchasing decisions. You're right that customers don't care about Free software and yet it won. Free software has moved from a niche to dominating the software marketplace. The linux kernel, GNU coreutils, gcc, binutils - these are amazingly popular and keep getting ported to new platforms. And of course, Open Source software is yet more popular still.
- em-bee 2y ago
  Free Software won because almost everyone, especially businesses can benefit from it. who is going to benefit from right to repair besides consumers and small repair shops?
  - ornornor 2y ago
    Everyone as well? Lower costs, better looking carbon footprint, longer lifecycles, better secondhand market, more efficient software (if you don’t assume everyone uses a new phone, you design your apps/web apps with a little more care towards performance and battery efficiency), more competition between manufacturers (because it’s not a given that you’ll sell new devices every 2–3 years)…
    - hot_gril 2y ago
      Designing a very small device to be DIY repairable has a cost too.
      - ornornor 2y ago
        Probably. I don’t think it’s much more than the cost of shrinking everything down and shaving 1/2 mm off your design or engineering a whole protocol, chips, and software to pair components together and implement “features” at the OS level to disable some things if it detects new parts.
schrijver 2y ago
While right to repair is in part about getting consumers to care it is just as much about getting regulators to care. They can do things like force the availability of replacement parts etc. The right to repair movement seems to have its effects in the EU, with a ‘right to repair’ directive adopted by the EU parliament. Of course it still needs to be implemented into national legislations and the devil will be in the details… it shows the impact though. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240419IPR20590/right-to-repair-making-repair-easier-and-more-appealing-to-consumers https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240419IP...
- hot_gril 2y ago
  I don't like using the entity that brought us cookie banners as an example of how to regular tech.
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    regulate*
WheatMillington 2y ago
I feel alone on HN for not caring about repairability at all on phones. I use a phone for ~3 years and replace it. I'd rather have a phone that's slimmer and smaller, than repairable or user-servicable.
ledgeditor 2y ago
This isn't just about persuading consumers - it is also about passing laws to protect consumers from abusive practices. Those might include labeling and disclosure laws/regulations that give consumers the information they need to make smart purchasing decisions. For example: repairability scores, explicit declarations of support lifespans, etc.
rustcleaner 2y ago
>Which is to say, fundamentally correct, but struggling to get consumers to care enough to influence purchasing decisions. If history is a guide, people generally take abuse from authority in stride so long as the intensity generally remains below a threshold.
hot_gril 2y ago
Maybe it's ok that people don't care about repairable phones, and there isn't a need to force them. Also, the closest consumers got to using free software was Android and Chromebook (i.e. not exactly free) plus using services hosted on Linux servers, cause it actually makes sense there, and GNU/Linux home desktop has still not won.

Gigachad 2y ago

IMO phones are the area I care about repair the least. By the time the phone is 5~ years old, I’m going to want the new one anyway. Where repairs would be much more useful is general household appliances where the model 20 years ago was just as good if not better than the one today. I’m never going to want to upgrade my blender, but when the plastic parts snap, I want it to be easy to get a replacement.

Retric 2y ago
With a phone from 5 years ago sure it’s feeling its age, but that number keeps going up as the functional differences between each phone generation shrinks. Replacing the battery on year 3 makes a huge difference in how long you would want to keep a phone around for.
- dylan604 2y ago
  And if the maker offers a free service to replace the battery with the purchase, I'm okay with it. Would it be nice to remove the battery to keep "them" from listening? Probably, but "they" are still listening through the TV, the laptops, and that chip in the back of my mouth so, meh
  - catlikesshrimp 2y ago
    TV (fixed) the laptops (fixed), and that chip in the back of my mouth so (erm...) I still failed because some moron gifted an echo 5 to someone who refuses to let it go.
- BizarreByte 2y ago
  I have a Windows Phone and it’s a decade old. Very outside the norm to still use it, but phones can last a long time from a hardware perspective if they’re allowed too. My 830’s saving grace has been the ease of changing batteries. If the battery was internal I’d have tossed it years ago.
  - BozeWolf 2y ago
    Does it still get software updates? Not just the apps, but also the operating system. If not, you definitely should not use it anymore. Not only because of security issues in software, but also because of possibly revoked certificates. And newer, safer, web protocols. Also strange if your bank still supports it. Hardware might be fine when it comes to being speedy enough, but may also have issues.A digital device still working is just not good enough anymore.
    - BizarreByte 2y ago
      It doesn’t get updates, but I’m not overly concerned. It’s running WP10 and security would be a bigger concern if any apps supported it to begin with. I don’t bank on my phone beyond checking my balance with SMS. If I need to actually move money around I’d rather do it on my computer. The phone is used for calling, texting, mp3s, the weather, the calendar/reminders, and very occasional maps. I do have my gmail setup via imap with is probably the biggest risk I actually take. I’ve written half a dozen of my own programs for specific things I need, but otherwise there’s nothing installed. I know there’s some risk but I’m well aware of it and accept it.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 2y ago
  I just replace a OnePlus6T from 2018 with a brand new Pixel 8 and I regret it. The 6T had the latest LineageOS and the P8 has GrapheneOS. Both have the latest Android but there's nothing on the Pixel that's better than the OnePlus. 6 years and no noticeable differences in terms of battery, performance, screen, ergonomy, etc. I should have stuck with the old one but I was convinced things were still progressing. My bad.
  - Iulioh 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - eertami 2y ago
      I have a Pixel 4a and everything opens instantly, or at least the delay is imperceptible. I'm sensitive to latency (and have a 360hz monitor for games), but phones have been fast enough for a long time - for at least everything I personally use a phone for.
      - 0x1ch 2y ago
        Does Google Maps actually work for you? Before I replaced my 4a, most google apps were performing worse by the minute.
  - Rinzler89 2y ago
    To be fair the OnePlus 6T was an actual flagship of its time while the pixel 8 isn't. It's more of a midrange phone.
    - Dylan16807 2y ago
      It launched at $549. So basically the same price after inflation. If the tier of the Pixel is lower, that's a problem not an excuse.
      - Rinzler89 2y ago
- catlikesshrimp 2y ago
  I just want to add that security updates do matter. I agree with everything.
- toast0 2y ago
  Replacing the battery on a phone would make sense if it was easy to do. But I can't get reasonable phones with a back that comes off intentionally to replace a modular battery. Which means I'm paying someone to unglue the back, replace the battery, and reglue the back. Their time costs money, so I'm thinking ~ $50 for the battery and ~ $50 for their time, plus my time to get there and back and wait, and I'm halfway to a $200 phone that's going to be way better than my 3 year old $200 phone. I don't like how disposable everything is, but labor costs to repair are huge. I just got rid of a van because of a failed head gasket, because it's too much work to get to the not that expensive part.
  - Retric 2y ago
    I find the time it takes to swap to a new phone is significantly longer than the time it takes to get a new battery. Making a battery swap a net time save.
- rustcleaner 2y ago
  I really want to figure out compiling GrapheneOS for post-EOL pixels. Yeah yeah firmware insecurity, but by failing to make it available (call it CarbonOS?) the older pixels don't get the OTHER big graphene features that alternatives lack!
pcdoodle 2y ago
I'd love it if iPhone SE 2016 still got updates. I don't care about the speed, just want Voice/SMS/Music run banking and other low consumption apps. It's still my dedicated MP3 player.
- timoth 2y ago
  It does. But not beyond iOS 15. Most recent update: 15.8.2 a couple of months ago. Personally I'm really impressed that Apple is still supporting an 8-year-old phone and it's probably the main thing that has been tempting me to jump ship from Android for a while. (Though it seems like Android might be better on this in future.)
- lelaurent 2y ago
  It's still my dedicated phone. Works quite well mostly still. Why not yours if you don't have very high expectations?
jasonlotito 2y ago
You'd be in the minority I think. Judging by the number of phone screen repair shops and what not I see, phone repair is one of the things that people really want. And that's just screen repairs, and not the numerous other things people generally talk about getting fixed. On the flip side, you are the first person I know of talking about about repairing your blender, and I've never seen a blender repair shop. Larger home appliances, sure, but blenders? I'm not saying you are wrong to prioritize these things. Just pointing out that you are an outlier.
- Domenic_S 2y ago
  Small appliance repair is/used to be a thing, remember TV repair shops? Vacuum repair shops I still see around occasionally. Problem is people buy a $25 hamilton beach blender that doesn't make any financial sense to repair but makes huge amounts of sense as an initial purchase. If you buy a $500 vitamix, you can keep it running forever with new parts, but that's the same price as 20 of the cheap blender. And blender technology isn't really advancing at a huge rate compared to, say, cell phones.
  - ska 2y ago
    > And blender technology isn't really advancing at a huge rate That's part of it, but also the vitamix and hamilton beach really have quite different capabilities. For most peoples usage, it doesn't matter much, but the vitamix (at least the core one) show their commercial kitchen background. The real problem is that there isn't anything much between the $25 one and the $350 one. From a technical point of view, there isn't any reason someone couldn't produce a $90 one that was robust and repairable but less powerful etc. than the vitamix. I dont' think i've ever seen one - if you do find a $90 one it's essentially the $25 one in a fancier looking shell. The market, as they say, has spoken. In most cases you are better off going for commercial suppliers if you want longer life, repairability, etc., but often the only things on offer there are way overkill for e.g. a home kitchen. Small appliance repair is alive and well in parts of the world where it is easy to access parts supply close to the source (i.e. you are paying roughly small batch wholesale prices).
CodeWriter23 2y ago
You can get 5 years of usable battery discharge/recharge out of a phone, kudos to you!
- mey 2y ago
  The primary reason I replaced my Pixel 4a was it going EoL for security updates. The battery did get replaced once, and it brought it back to life. I don't want a halo device, I want something that is secure, functional, repairable and cheap enough that if this portable slab of glass explodes I am not that sad. The primary reason I replaced my device with a Pixel 8 is for the 7 years of security updates. Going from the 4a to the 8? Barely noticed a change in functionality.
  - sumtechguy 2y ago
    I went from a galaxy s5 to s22. About 10 years in diff. The functionality for me is nearly identical. Speed the s22 is much snappier I guess. But not something I care much about. I only replaced it because the touch screen started acting up and security updates were non-existent. I was able to keep the thing going for so long precisely because I could swap out that battery easily. To replace the newer ones involves a heat gun and a suction cup. And as jerryrigeverything says 'glass is glass'.
- tpmoney 2y ago
  I just replaced an iPhone X last year with a 15 that was still on the original battery. From my records, looks like I got it in early 2018, so pretty much 5 years. Admittedly for about the last year, that usable battery was largely completely depleted by the end of the day and it couldn't last through a heavy usage day without a top up. Realistically, replacing at year 4 probably would have been the smart move, I was mostly waiting to see if the 15 was going to be USB C before deciding.
r00fus 2y ago
I used to be like this, but I don't sell my old phones, I hand them down - and I'd love to be able to get parts for the iPhones 6,8 and XR when they go off the wagon.
JohnFen 2y ago
> By the time the phone is 5~ years old, I’m going to want the new one anyway. Fair enough. But there are also a fair number of people who, like myself, would be pretty irritated to have to replace their phone after only 5 years.
- ornornor 2y ago
  Especially if we’re talking about a phone that costs 800—1000+$ (as flagships are trending around)..!
ornornor 2y ago
Maybe a five year old phone isn’t good enough for you, but it might be for someone else. But if the screen can’t be repaired or the battery replaced, it will end up as ewaste somewhere in a poor country polluting the world’s air and soil/water.
- berkes 2y ago
  Which is why everyone should care about the right-to-repair. A phone that can be repaired, is worth something. For ewaste you get €0 (some recycler may get a few bucks from rare materials). For a phone that can have a second life, you might get some €100. This is one reason why people love iPhones: their value, second hand, remains rather high.

sersi 2y ago

The problem is that to be able to make a purchasing decision toward repairability there must be actual choices that offer better repairability. That doesn't seem to be the case for phones unfortunately.

realusername 2y ago

How would consumers know anyways, it's pretty hard to purchase on repairability even us as experts.

wyldfire 2y ago

> Which is to say, fundamentally correct, but struggling to get consumers to care enough to influence purchasing decisions. You're right that customers don't care about Free software and yet it won. Free software has moved from a niche to dominating the software marketplace. The linux kernel, GNU coreutils, gcc, binutils - these are amazingly popular and keep getting ported to new platforms. And of course, Open Source software is yet more popular still.

em-bee 2y ago
Free Software won because almost everyone, especially businesses can benefit from it. who is going to benefit from right to repair besides consumers and small repair shops?
- ornornor 2y ago
  Everyone as well? Lower costs, better looking carbon footprint, longer lifecycles, better secondhand market, more efficient software (if you don’t assume everyone uses a new phone, you design your apps/web apps with a little more care towards performance and battery efficiency), more competition between manufacturers (because it’s not a given that you’ll sell new devices every 2–3 years)…
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    Designing a very small device to be DIY repairable has a cost too.
    - ornornor 2y ago
      Probably. I don’t think it’s much more than the cost of shrinking everything down and shaving 1/2 mm off your design or engineering a whole protocol, chips, and software to pair components together and implement “features” at the OS level to disable some things if it detects new parts.

schrijver 2y ago

While right to repair is in part about getting consumers to care it is just as much about getting regulators to care. They can do things like force the availability of replacement parts etc. The right to repair movement seems to have its effects in the EU, with a ‘right to repair’ directive adopted by the EU parliament. Of course it still needs to be implemented into national legislations and the devil will be in the details… it shows the impact though. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240419IPR20590/right-to-repair-making-repair-easier-and-more-appealing-to-consumers https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240419IP...

hot_gril 2y ago
I don't like using the entity that brought us cookie banners as an example of how to regular tech.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  regulate*

WheatMillington 2y ago

I feel alone on HN for not caring about repairability at all on phones. I use a phone for ~3 years and replace it. I'd rather have a phone that's slimmer and smaller, than repairable or user-servicable.

ledgeditor 2y ago

This isn't just about persuading consumers - it is also about passing laws to protect consumers from abusive practices. Those might include labeling and disclosure laws/regulations that give consumers the information they need to make smart purchasing decisions. For example: repairability scores, explicit declarations of support lifespans, etc.

rustcleaner 2y ago

>Which is to say, fundamentally correct, but struggling to get consumers to care enough to influence purchasing decisions. If history is a guide, people generally take abuse from authority in stride so long as the intensity generally remains below a threshold.

hot_gril 2y ago

Maybe it's ok that people don't care about repairable phones, and there isn't a need to force them. Also, the closest consumers got to using free software was Android and Chromebook (i.e. not exactly free) plus using services hosted on Linux servers, cause it actually makes sense there, and GNU/Linux home desktop has still not won.