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Comment by qalmakka | Hacker News Reader

Right to repair is not about being cheap, it is about not caving in to the needs of an industry that doesn't know how to be profitable in a world without consumerism.

Nowadays phones are much more powerful than ever, and can thus last much longer without becoming obsolete. Lots of people (including myself with my Galaxy S8+) are still holding on 3 years old phones, and I honestly don't see any reason to change it any time soon, given that it still works really well.

In a world devastated by the amount of waste we produce it's morally intolerable to force people to throw away what still works and serves them well.

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Responding to this from an iPhone 6 (non-S) purchased in either late 2014 or early 2015. This phone doesn't have the latest and greatest software/hardware (version locked at iOS 12), but it does its job and does it well enough that I haven't had to pay for a phone in 4 years.

It's definitely slowed down and the battery is rated at 76% capacity now, but it can still browse the web, play a handful of games I occasionally open, and handle the few social apps I use.

When it comes to browsing, JS and animation heavy sites can tank performance though, e.g. Apple's product pages and https://blloc.com

I'm only just starting to consider getting a new phone, but am willing to wait till the fall if I can to see if Apple brings back TouchID with the iPhone 12s/13 or whatever they choose to name the upcoming models.

> and the battery is rated at 76% capacity now

I hate this. I was a holdout with an LG G5 (last flagship-esque phone with a removable battery), and went through three battery replacements until the GPS antenna failed, and now I have an LG V35 with a potted battery.

I wasn't able to find a way to configure the charge controller with software, so now I just never plug in overnight and try really hard to manually unplug it before it reaches ~70 or 80%.

This works... The phone is ~2.5 years old and the battery is still fairly close to nominal capacity. I just wish it wasn't such a pain.

This "new" phone is also well out of the support window, so I haven't gotten Android or security updates in over a year, and it had limited enough release that custom ROMs are not an option. With LG leaving the market, I'm considering gritting my teeth and getting an iPhone when this one dies, if only for the longer software/security support window, which feels absolutely ridiculous.

If you're rooted, you can use Advanced Charge Controller App. Gets you a charge limit and charge rate throttling.

Perhaps buy an old school timer outlet and before charing, set it to turn off after x mins.

I think you can estimate how much time it does take to charge from x to 80.

Or for folks who have home assistant and some controllable socket - automation should be possible as mobile phone reports battery charge!

> This phone doesn't have the latest and greatest software/hardware (version locked at iOS 12), but it does its job

I hope you do not browse the Internet on it, since a lot of security bugs are probably not fixed in its browser (and you're not allowed to install another one). So you put all your data on the phone at risk when using the Internet.

That's false.

iOS 12 gets security updates every few months or so. The last update, 12.5.2, was a little over a month ago: March 26.

Source: I also have an old phone.

Thanks, I stand corrected. Do you expect it to last though?

Personally I expect with the release of iOS 15 we'll probably see this happen. Though Apple is the one with the knowledge of how many iPhone 6 and earlier phones are active in the field (assuming telemetry), so decisions would probably be based off that.

iOS 12 is currently in the n-2 slot, but even on macOS older versions have gotten security updates as needed.

I expect updates it to last one or two more years given their track record. And even when it stops for months, they always come back for emergency security updates.

I only upgraded from a OnePlus 3T to a 6T because the former got stolen. I hope LineageOS becomes stable enough on the 6T so that I can keep using an Android OS with recent security patches, but like most phones, the battery will probably be the first thing to give up.

Many of my earlier smartphones had batteries that were easily replaced. The 6T requires special tools, among them a heat gun to soften the glue on the back cover. And ifixit says that's "moderate difficulty".

I would frame the right to repair as the public's desire to understand and manage the total cost of ownership for the decisions they make. For simpler goods such as clothing or bags people already have this "inherent" right.

Cheap wouldn't be my way to put it either, but predictable pricing of repairs is part of understanding the total cost of ownership.

> Right to repair is not about being cheap, is about not caving in to the needs of an industry that doesn't know how to be profitable in a world without consumerism.

Beautiful.

Note that the industry does know how: it's called planned obsolescence. But the replacement rate is not good enough if people get to also repair their stuff.

Also with Moore's law dying there is less and less need to upgrade the hardware, and the semiconductor industry will push more and more planned obsolescence.

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