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Samsung Upcycle Promise
- npodbielski 8mo ago> In other words, there was no clear way for Samsung to make money from Galaxy Upcycling. And for a company that ships hundreds of millions of phones per year, that's likely a death sentence for an internal project How about good PR. This is what is problem with those big corporations: the only thing that matters is money.
- bigwheels 8mo agoEven good PR is an investment in the brand which can be profitable. The real problem is the shortsightedness, where the top dogs only care about money coming in the next 3-12 months. Even this is more a reflection of the system that consistently produces companies which operate this way. Which is a reflection of..
- joe_mamba 8mo ago>How about good PR. They already got that good PR when they made those announcements.
- npodbielski 8mo agoAnd more bad PR. I am not sure it was worth it.
- joe_mamba 8mo agoWho saw the bad PR? HN is not representative of the consumer base.
- npodbielski 8mo agoWho saw the good PR? Techies are not representative of the consumer base.
- jajuuka 8mo agoFine, I'm just a dumbass. Samsung BAD.
- titzer 8mo ago> Welcome to capitalism? Well, judging from the tone of your comment, you said this without a hint of irony or larger awareness, as if just chucking things in a hole, environment and everything be damned, was just sort of inevitable. > It's just not very practical to throw all that money and time away for such a small use case. It's a literal money pit. Throw money in and get nothing back. Huh? Saving consumers money by reusing and repurposing perfectly good devices, save energy use, raw materials, distribution, and waste disposal and recycling of perfectly good devices. Those things save the economy and consumers money overall! We get this not because of capitalism but because of growthism. We get this because big corporations gotta keep generating that profit, regardless of whether they have solved a problem or not. Gotta grow that market, gotta jack that stock.
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- npodbielski 8mo agoYou wrote that like there is no other way. Yes there is. For example I would not consider a job that would consist of writing a malware But I have conscience and doing something like that would make me uncomfortable. Even when I think about myself as more capitalist than socialist.
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- pbhjpbhj 8mo agoWell the theory is the market will offer alternatives that allow consumers to choose the best products. But in reality capitalists get to choose the products and use advertising to brainwash us into wanting whatever shit they're shoveling. Capitalism is supposed to optimise production for efficiency. In reality the people holding the principal capital use it to optimise for profit and we're largely impotent to do anything because they'll just lean more on the 'brainwash' aspect of profitability... Maybe go so far as to sway elections, to put in fascists so they can exercise larger handles of control... all to get a favorable tax regime when they've already got more money than they can spend. Ho-hum. I think there's a way out, through cooperatives, possibly, but it's a multi-generational path before you can really start to make change.
- hamdingers 8mo agoSeems like a lack of creativity, plus painting themselves into a corner by promising unlocked bootloaders. Samsung owns SmartThings, a smart home platform. They could've come up with a suite of apps for turning your phone into a SmartThings-connected camera, or motion detector, or remote control, or button panel, or a dashboard, etc. Either charge a little for the apps, or trust that sucking people into the SmartThings ecosystem will cause them to buy hubs and other devices. Users might be more willing to upgrade their phone if they can turn the old one into a baby monitor vs getting scammed on a trade-in or letting it sit in a drawer.
- maxloh 8mo agoAlthough I don't agree with the FSF's way of advocating it [1], I do believe that unlocking the bootloader should be a customer's basic right. You don't truly own your device if you cannot control the software you run with it. [1]: Linus Torvalds argues that the FSF tried to "sneak in" an additional clause to prohibit hardware locking. Since Linux was originally licensed with an "or later version" variant of GPL v2, that would've created a situation where Linus could not merge other people's work into the kernel without relicensing the upstream project to GPL v3. To prevent this, he later explicitly relicensed the kernel as GPLv2-only. https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU
- ACCount37 8mo agoOne of the very few genuinely bad takes Linus had. Bootloader unlocking should be a basic consumer right, and if Linux went GPLv3, it would be closer to reality.
- blell 8mo agoIt’s not Linus Torvalds’ duty to make bootloader unlocking a reality.
- ACCount37 8mo agoIt isn't. But he could have contributed massively to it, and hasn't, and I can and will hold it against him.
- ivell 8mo agoThere will always be more ways for companies to extract value without contributing. Linus would have to continuously upgrade licenses from GPLV2 to V3 to Affero and so on. It is not really practical. What Linus has contributed is already huge. We can't put all the burden of making the world right on him.
- 627467 8mo agoLike the industry wouldn't adapt to a more hostile license from linux? Huawei built their own OS, google has fuschia (and g* knows what else) Would it be better if apple and google flipped the switch and made all future devices 100% closed sourced?
- raphinou 8mo agoAm I a fool to think that upcycled devices might not dent the sales of new devices, but would be used in new ways that would actually be positive for the vendor?
- kimbernator 8mo agoI think any effect on Samsung, positive or negative, would be negligible. It would help their PR slightly, but mostly among a relatively small part of their customer base. On the negative side, it would probably have a minor impact on the number of new phones sold if old ones were able to be "refurbished" in this way. Again, probably not significant, but if it's even a penny cash flow negative, why invest their resources in it? Overall the only significant gain to be made is the announcement because it can be spun and quoted to the average consumer as Samsung being more eco-friendly. It's akin to enabling consumerism, and consumers generally don't go to check if companies were telling the truth about this stuff.
- caerwy 8mo agoYou can go a long way with just Termux. You can upcycle old phones by installing or building code in Termux to turn the phones into a compute grid, AI inference nodes, file servers, compute servers, web servers.
- jayd16 8mo agoI was actually just going to do that with an old Galaxy S24. Seems like there's no easy way to add something like docker. Best I can find is to try to use qemu to get a full Linux VM. Do you happen to know what kind of performance you can expect? Or perhaps a better way?
- numpad0 8mo agoThere's an app called Termux that comes with distro sources compiled for the Android/Linux. They're not binary compatible with regular GNU/Linux, but runs most software through distro standard ways.
- yjftsjthsd-h 8mo ago> AI inference nodes Are phones any good for that? (I agree with the rest, and I'm a big fan of termux, I just wouldn't have thought of a phone - especially an old phone - as a useful way to run AI)
- ACCount37 8mo agoModern phones pack a good bit of compute, and can run things like VLAs decently well. Of course, that would require today's phones to age out of "being used as a phone" bracket, and robotics VLAs to become actually useful. But things like the Comma AI autopilot hardware use slightly obsolete smartphone chips internally - so it's not like it's impossible to run a useful AI on this kind of HW.
- anjel 8mo agohttps://www.analyticsinsight.net/gadgets/old-android-phone-reuse-how-to-turn-it-into-a-media-server https://www.analyticsinsight.net/gadgets/old-android-phone-r...
- kittikitti 8mo agoI really dislike how people consider Android a Linux operating system. It's incredibly misleading and serves as more marketing than substance. If it were, then the Samsung Upcycle program would be ready to go.
- kube-system 8mo agoBecause it is. Android runs a modified Linux kernel. There's nothing misleading about it at all, unless you think "Linux" means something that it does not.
- titzer 8mo agoWhy not keep using them as...phones? Snark aside, why are the entirely functional devices obsolete? It's because the growing demands of the endless software bloat, web bloat, feature bloat. New wireless technologies and better protocols, sure, but I've been using software for 35 years and the software contribution to this mess really gets me down.
- 0xC0ncord 8mo agoPart of the reason why Android phones specifically are not supported for very long is because the baseband and modem firmwares from Qualcomm only receive official support and updates for about 2 years.
- floam 8mo agoFor everyone? I mean it doesn’t seem to apply to Apple, need it apply to Google or Samsung?
- thewebguyd 8mo agoMy assumption is that Apple has a better contract with Qualcomm, being their biggest customer (for now, until they completely move over to their custom modems). Apple probably also has been abstracting the firmware from the start inside iOS, while Android didn't until project treble. Samsung & Pixel are now offering 7 years of updates for flagships, so it would seem it's no longer a hardware/support limitation and purely a financial decision by other android manufacturers, and by Samsung for their non S-series of phones. TL;DR OEMs are deliberately choosing to not support their devices, not due to any limitations anymore (thanks to project treble).
- ACCount37 8mo agoApple only uses Qualcomm chips as modems. Almost everyone else uses Qualcomm chips as main SoCs. Now, could hardware vendors tell Qualcomm to go pound sand and run their own support for old SoCs? Yes they could. Do they want to? Hell no, supporting old devices doesn't make any money.
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- user_7832 8mo agoSlight tangent, but I find it mind boggling that so few phones offer bootloader unlocking - which is essential if you truly want to own your phone. I was recently in the market for a new phone, and (correct me if I'm wrong) the only companies that offer bootloader unlocking is Google Pixels, Motorola, Nothing, and OnePlus. Samsung and Xiaomi I think both technically support it but it's a pain in the butt practically. That's... a shockingly small list!? . In my case, after adding "I want a CPU that isn't crap while being expensive" (eliminating Tensor) and "I don't want to pay full flagship prices for sub flagship performance" (eliminating Nothing), OnePlus and Motorola were pretty much the only two options! Is it that hard to get a phone you can truly own? I don't know, I honestly hope I'm missing something.
- rainingmonkey 8mo agoFxTec Pro1 comes with an unlocked bootloader, and a slide-out keyboard for the true 2010 experience!
- stonogo 8mo agoDoes the OnePlus process work for people? They've got a form that allows you to beg them to let you unlock your phone, but it's never worked for me. Motorola works similarly but it does work, which is why I stick with them.
- Nekobai 8mo agoIs this country-specific? I've owned plenty of OnePlus devices over the years and the have all being unlockable without any issues, or without having to ask anything from anyone.
- npodbielski 8mo agoAt some point OnePlus announced that they will stop sharing firmware blobs. Lineage os team announced that they will be dropping the support. Then after another few years they were back. I remember because I bought 3 and I was planning to stay with that brand because of easy unlock (via ADB), decent price and good Lineage support. Probably OnePlus reconsidered this at some point. Right now fairly new ones have support. Maybe OP was unlucky and bought one of those models from this period of time.
- haunter 8mo agoWhy are korean tech companies so toxic? Samsung, LG, SK etc all the same. Doesn’t matter if they sell you a phone, a TV, or a refrigator there is something inherently wrong how korean companies are treating the customers.
- stackghost 8mo agoAre Korean tech companies more toxic than, say, American tech companies? Doubtful. I can't think of a company that clearly hates its users more than Microsoft or Meta. I'd say it's the tech industry as a whole that's toxic. And long overdue for a reckoning.
- encom 8mo agoI can't really think of a tech company that does not hate its users. Yes of course there's Framework, but I mean large tech companies. It's all glued shut, proprietary, planned obsolescence, AI slop-ified, privacy invasive and over priced. Feel free to add to the list. Related anecdote: My old washing machine is about to die, and I was discussing this with a co-worker the other day. He told me, with much excitement, about his new washing machine with AI, and a smartphone app where he can program his own washing cycles. I... just don't feel like I belong on the same planet as this person. It's the polar opposite of what I want.
- anjel 8mo agoFlip Phones are gaining in popularity. Though I imagine the mfrs get as much of the same offenses them as the simpler devices will afford them.
- nickorlow 8mo agoMost handset manufacturers are like this, don't think it's specific to samsung
- mhitza 8mo agoWhen Samsung accounts for almost 25% of South Korea's GDP they are allowed to do whatever they want, and they will set the tone and consumer approach. Good reminder that companies so large are never a good thing.
- alias_neo 8mo agoI'm almost certain this was to win some sort of grant, award, subsidy, exemption, green credentials....something, and then once they had it, immediately forgotten. I've seen this happen plenty where companies start campaigns for reasons and then ditch it as soon a they've achieved the thing from the list above.
- quapster 8mo ago[dead]
- artisin 8mo agoMy guess, is it boils down to legal liability. Every time I look into repurposing my old smartphones, I inevitably go down the "well, it probably won't burn my house down… but. " It's the same reason why I don't use Molex-to-SATA power adapters, even though I could save a few bucks. Regardless, Samsung ghosting iFixit is inexcusable.
- zozbot234 8mo agoIf you remove the battery and power it externally (which you should if you're expecting to run it 24/7) what's the house-burning risk?
- Peteragain 8mo agoI think they missed a trick. This phone could be replaced - I think it might be time - but it works fine. I won't replace it now, but if I could use it for something else then I would likely go okay, if I get a new phone I also get a baby monitor!
- zb3 8mo agoAnd then they completely removed bootloader unlocking with OneUI 8, in many cases increasing the anti-rollback version so you can't even downgrade.. I can't wait for them to go out of business..
- pjmlp 8mo agoThis is why legislation matters, capitalism cannot sort out such misbehaviors when the public keeps giving money to the same bad actors.
- RobotToaster 8mo ago> 76 points by 1970-01-01 2 hours ago Did we accidentally time travel again?
- andersa 8mo ago> Meanwhile, Samsung's own recycling numbers tell a different story. Its old phone collection campaign, running since 2015, had collected just 38,000 phones as of May 2019. Samsung had sold 2 billion Galaxy devices by February 2019. Well... duh? Their program offers far less money for the old phone than selling it used on ebay. Why would anyone use it?
- tgrowazay 8mo ago> Their program offers far less money for the old phone than selling it used on ebay. Why would anyone use it? It sets the price floor and provides liquidity, so the phone doesn’t go into a trash bin instead.
- AshamedCaptain 8mo agoThis was not going to come from Samsung, one of the most over-zealous companies out there when it comes from preventing rolling out purely software features from today's phones to yesterday's. E.g. "Now Bar" a literal online feature is blocked on older phones. (Don't get me wrong, it's a useless feature, just shows their thinking) Or when they announced that "Linux on Dex", for which they had been doing public beta testing on Note 9 phones, would only support the just-released Note 10. (And then they dropped the entire thing anyway). These are phones for which the only difference between generations may be a couple mAh in the battery. Yet they still use software to gate features.
- cpill 8mo agoI'm in the market for a new phone. is there a list of phones somewhere that are hackable?