Apple Shrunk the iPhone’s Carbon Footprint. There’s a Way to Shrink It Even Further
www.bloomberg.com
Ensuring users can hang onto their phones as long as possible would help reduce the biggest source of emissions: producing phones in the first place.

Apple Shrunk the iPhone’s Carbon Footprint. There’s a Way to Shrink It Even Further | Ensuring users can hang onto their phones as long as possible would help reduce the biggest source of emissions…::Ensuring users can hang onto their phones as long as possible would help reduce the biggest source of emissions: producing phones in the first place.

  • narc0tic_bird@lemm.eeEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Force manufacturers to offer official replacement parts for 10 years with no profit margin, at least for common repairs like batteries, displays/glass, cameras etc. (basically everything except the logic board I guess).

    Do the same for software updates and enforce compatibility (i.e. don’t lock out users of the new Apple Watch because they have on older iPhone for example).

    Not going to happen because it’s “not feasible” to manufacture hardware for 10 year old devices or whatever.

    • Pxtl@lemmy.caEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Force manufacturers to offer official replacement parts for 10 years with no profit margin, at least for common repairs like batteries, displays/glass, cameras etc. (basically everything except the logic board I guess).

      I don’t think this solves the root problem.

      Let’s say you buy an entry-level phone. You bought it pretty late in life, so the $200 phone was only $150 for a brand new phone! 2 years later you drop it and its screen is broken.

      The phone was already worthless when you dropped it. The device was past its support lifetime. It’s $40 on eBay.

      And a replacement screen+digitizer? Sure, so let’s say “at cost” they charge like $50 after shipping. Then another $40 for labour for an expert to do the job. You’ve now spent twice what the phone was worth.

      Imho the real problem is the modern glue-sealed phones and short support-lifetimes. I did repairs on old pre-glue devices and it was easy. I’ve swapped out laptop keyboards, replaced screens, etc. I’ve had old devices that last forever, the only real flaw that appears is short battery life.

      If you made phones easy to open, swapping out batteries and screens would be easy, and that would naturally create more demand for affordable swappable parts. But right now, that’s an “expert only” operation because heat-gunning a phone is difficult and dangerous to get right - I’ve killed more than a few devices attempting it (the alternative was the dumpster so it was zero-risk).