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Comment by mnm1 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, but I can buy 5 to 6 android phones for the price of Apple's high end phones. So while this makes sense for their cheapest product, even that is twice the price. So the comparison is between 2 to 5 generations of android phones and one generation of an apple phone.

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And who cares about the stupid environment, am I right?

Typically price is a pretty good indicator of the amount of resources that went into making something. I'd expect the environmental cost of an iphone to be a similar multiple of the environmental cost of an android.

Cheaper devices also tend to be less environmentally-friendly.

You are right. Few do. If people cared about the environment that much, they would have lobbied for laws against planned obsolescence. Me buying 5 phones or even 500 won't make a difference to the environment. Laws forcing phone makers to support their phones for a minimum of x years might. Clearly, our society is not interested in that. Why should I then go out of my way to inconvenience myself to do something that will make zero difference? No reason to at all.

Well, a smartphone is fairly bad for its small size, but we're talking less than 100kg of CO2[1][2] to make and operate for its lifetime. But driving a car for a year in the US produces 4600kg[3]...

1: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-iphone-x-environmental-repor...

2: https://sustainability.google/reports

3: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...

My understanding is that CO2 output is the least worrying part of smartphone usage. It's all the other toxic waste released during mining. Also, if cars are more polluting, that just means cars are bad too, not that smartphones are magically ok.

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-ways-smartphone-environment.ht...

The corollary of your point is that its okay because we can just buy more phones more often, which seems like an environmentally horrible option.

Socially and legally, we are ok with it, indeed. Otherwise, we wouldn't allow such a short support window. Our culture is now completely based upon planned obsolescence. I don't agree with it, but that's reality. These are the incentives society provides. In theory, it could easily provide others. In reality, Apple/Google are in many way more powerful than our government so it's unlikely. Like I said above, if this is a problem, it can be fixed. It's not a problem for me. I'd like more support, but I'm ok without support also. Not ideal, but I'm also not going to waste a thousand bucks on a phone either. Or even $400 for the cheapest iphone.

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