- cross-posted to:
- apple@lemdro.id
- climate@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- apple@lemdro.id
- climate@slrpnk.net
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.
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).