We're ending our Samsung collaboration | Hacker News Reader

We're ending our Samsung collaboration

ifixit.com

678 pointsskilled396 comments

My partner has a Samsung phone with the curved/wrap around edge screen. The screen is cracked. She's been trying to get it replaced for months, but none of the "Samsung approved" repair shops around here can get a screen. Apparently they have screens meant for the same phone in different colors, but do not have the screen for her phone color. Samsung WILL NOT allow them to use a screen from a different color of the same phone, despite being a working part. Samsung has provided no ETA when the part will be available. This is the kind of problem that shouldn't exist. Would love it if our legislators would tell manufacturers to shove it, and if they want to be the exclusive source for parts that the parts must be sold at some limited/reasonable profit percentage and if they're not available they should not be able to limit the availability or function of 3rd party parts.

Your frustration with the situation is completely understandable

What gets me the most is that the refusal to sell a different color screen is probably the result of some insane delusions about brand representation.

Same with charging an apple mouse - like they can't stand the idea of having a cable sticking out of it while being used.

They're fine with that, but there's no room for the port on the top end of the mouse and they won't alter the design in order to fit a port there, and don't want the cable sticking out of the side, so they just screw the user and hurt the function.

Apple probably knows that power users are buying non-Apple mice anyway so they can have multiple mouse buttons. Their mics have always been some degree of form over function (remember the puck mouse)?

Apple in general is form over function (with a healthy dose of NIH). It's just part of their ethos, for better or for worse.

That hasn't always been the case. Many of their products have been extremely functional -- and even repairable. Have a look at the inside of a PowerMac G4.

But they get into this weirdness where they produce a well-designed functional product, people like it, they assume it's because of the design and then produce something else that sacrifices function for design, then act confounded when people don't like it.

They've skirted the line many times while also frequently releasing great products that combine both. The apple III overheated because they didn't want to put a fan in it for aesthetic reasons. So did the original Macintosh, alright to a less problematic degree.

I honestly don't understand Apple's apparent disdain for more than one mouse button though. The OS and apps support extra buttons, everyone knows how to right click by this point, what's the benefit? At one company where I worked everyone had a MacBook, apple monitor, apple keyboard, and a white Microsoft mouse.

Their mouse and all of their trackpads support right click without extra buttons.

Technically the trackpads have had zero buttons for years now. It's all haptics and pressure sensors. It's a major step up from the old method, since you can reliably click anywhere on the pad. (They also support a hard-press gesture, but not many applications use that out of the box.)

Apple's computer mouse has supported right click for almost twenty years now, since the 2005 Mighty Mouse.

Yes, but always in a less intuitive way than just having a second button.

How do we go from Samsung phone screen to Apple Magic Mouse?

As an owner of multiple Magic mice, this is such a non-issue. I don’t get why people bring it up so much, but I suspect they don’t actually own one.

I forget to charge mine and so go through the approximately monthly dance of charging it just long enough to get to the next break repeatedly until I can properly charge it to 100%. Being unable to use it while charging is an annoyance. It's not the end of the world, but it's still dumb.

Both examples follow the same principle

People bring it up because it's such an obvious design flaw in a premium product that is explained by a disrespectful "form over function" principle which people also don't like

> a disrespectful "form over function" principle which people also don't like

Which some people don’t like.

Apple may have accepted the in their view minor inconvenience of not being able to use the mouse for half an hour or so every few days to get a cleaner look of the device, knowing full well that some people would complain about it.

If they had put the charging connector on the outside, I bet some people (possible even some of the same people) would have complained about the looks.

Also, even assuming it is a design flaw, I don’t see it being an obvious design flaw. Maybe Apple knows it doesn’t work well with a cable attached (modern environmentally cleaner cables tend to be stiffer. How stiff is the cable they supply it with?), or that permanently charging it wil shorten battery lifetime (yes, that’s preventable, but they may have had other constraints, e.g. time to market. Reading https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Magic+Mouse+2+Teardown/51058, it’s not all proprietary chips inside)

>Which some people don’t like.

1. I was answering the question "why people bring it up so much", so your "some" is irrelevant, as is whatever Apple thinks.

> cables tend to be stiffer

2. That would be a non-obvious justification for the obvious design flaw, but still not something that would make it flawless

But also

> it doesn’t work well with a cable attached

You don't need it to, the only difference vs. today is that in those cases where you've forgotten to plug the mouse to recharge it you'd be able to continue work (yes, with some downsides of a stiff cable attached), so that's still a marked improvement over the design where you can't use a mouse at all

> time to market.

how does that explain not fixing it in the time after it hit the market? (but more generally, see 2.)

I think it's a question of being able to do something, even though it's not great doing it, but the alternative might be worse.

I have a Logitech MX something or other which has the charging port where the cable would be if it was wired, so I can charge it while using it. But as you say, the provided cable is so stiff, it's a total PITA to use it. In practice, I never charge my mouse while using it. But if the battery were completely drained and I had to use the mouse right now (it's connected to a desktop, so no touchpad), I could, instead of having to wait around for 10 minutes or however long it takes for the mouse to become usable again.

Speaking of mice, the best one I've had was a Logitech G703 or similar, which would convert to wired mode if you plugged in the charging cable to the computer. The cable was also quite great during use, much suppler than on most common wired mice.

I have always wanted that feature! Ideally Bluetooth but wired if plugged in to the charging cable or with the option of the dongle for wireless.

My use case is when the drivers don't work setting up a Ubuntu PC rather than high speed gaming. The dongle is always lost so the charging cable is always going to be helpful.

Whilst at it, I want some USB storage on there too plus the full sensor suite that you can expect on an Android phone for things like where north is, how light it is, G-forces, GPS and so on.

Clearly there is no market for such a gadget, so I have compromise devices for now. I would want to get the Logitech ones but - left handed!

Well, this particular model was of the "gaming" persuasion, so I'm surprised it even had blinky lights, since the goal was to be light. The MX master is a freakin' brick, so they could probably stuff all kinds of sensors in there without any issue.

The G703 didn't do bluetooth at all but had a small "lightspeed" dongle which was absolutely the best wireless experience I've ever had on a mouse. My current MX doesn't feel laggy, but whenever I switch to my wired "gaming" mouse, it somehow feels more responsive. I didn't feel any difference with that mouse. Note I'm not actually a gamer, I just love these mice because of the high sensitivity, very low weight and on-board memory. There may be better wireless options out there.

Too bad the scroll wheel started behaving funny, I was actually thinking that since they were supposed to be able to take a beating while playing, they would last forever as "office" mice.

> The dongle is always lost so the charging cable is always going to be helpful.

Logitech were actually nice enough to provide a female micro-usb to female usb-a adaptor, so you could actually keep the dongle on the charging cable. And even though the provided cable had some kind of weird mechanical connector surrounding the usb port, which would fit "securely" to the mouse, you could actually use any random micro-usb cable to charge the mouse if the connector wasn't absurdly thick. This was a nice touch, because the battery life was pretty terrible so I always had to have the chargin cable on hand. I had to charge it basically every week when using it heavily. My MX master has a much better battery life.

I swore to never buy Samsung after an ordeal with their warranty repair. Some of the data pins on its USB port wore out, so my Android Auto and fast charging became extremely flaky. It was still under warranty so I took it to their authorized repair centres. They did not have a fast charger and showed me that the standard charging was working, and refused to admit a problem. Finally I mailed it to Samsung, and they said that the display needed to be replaced because of some water damage (it worked perfectly fine!) as well.

Finally I got some local electronics repair guy to just solder a new USB port onto the circuit board and that fixed everything. But never buying their phones again.

I stopped buying anything Samsung for essentially the same reason. I was overseas and my S7 switched off and wouldn't turn back on. I walked into the flagship store and was immediately turned away because I didn't purchase it in that country.

I had a different experience, I bought a S21U overseas. While in UK the screen wouldn't turn on while the phone was on. I went to Samsung KX in London and a day later I had my S21 with a new screen and battery for no cost.

I think it's worth comparing to Apple here. I bought an iPhone from Amazon in UK and the screen developed a defect. Walked into an Apple Store after 19 months, without AppleCare and they gave me a new phone and migrated all the stuff over for me right there and then.

Not sure if they're that good now but I sure hope they are.

The UK has strong consumer warranty laws (extending to several years), and that rather than Apple's kindness of heart could be the reason. Thank the famous European red tape!

It’s probably a mix. I’ve had lots of stuff incl AirPods fixed for free well beyond warranty multiple times (I think because Apple knew they were prone to a defect causing cracking) and an Apple phone case replaced that others would probably say is “normal wear and tear” but legitimately degraded quicker than it should have etc. Apple online chat is also awesome!

Actually when I got my iPhone 13 Pro they said they said keep the receipt for the case in case it falls to bits so they can replace it free. YMMV.

19 months is less than the 24 month minimum warranty for consumers across the EU (which used to include the UK).

There is no such thing anywhere in the EU, it's a very common misconception. What there is is a 24 month(actually 6 years in some cases) seller's responsibility for the product against manufacturing defects and being "not as described"(which can include lack of described performance too). What the law also says is that within the first 6 months(12 in the EU) any defect is automatically presumed to be a manufacturing fault and the seller has to rectify it free of charge. After that time the seller is also responsible, but you as the buyer have to prove that the defect happened because of a manufacturing problem. If your macbook stops working 23 months after purchase the seller doesn't have to fix it unless you can prove that it's because of a manufacturing problem.

For all practical purposes it works like a warranty though.

I just checked my local amazon clone, and for a mac mini the warranty is listed as 24 months for consumers and 12 months for companies.

There is no official Apple presence in Romania so I can't check their official position.

There’s a difference between a guarantee and warranty. You only have a guarantee for the first 12 months. The next 12, you have a warranty. It’s almost Impossible to prove a warranty.

I’m in Europe in a country where it works like this (not sure about the exact numbers). Last time I exercised my consumer rights was when the bottom glass fell off my Samsung smartwatch. I handed it over to the seller literally one day before the end of the 24 month period. There were some remarks about it being almost too late, but I got it repaired for free. I’ve never had a seller dispute my warranty claim at any point of the two years. I’ve never had to prove anything.

Well, I guess you were lucky - legally the seller didn't have to repair it unless you proved that the glass fell off due to a manufacturing defect - just because they don't have to do it doesn't mean they won't(it's less hassle and I guess you left a happy customer not one that will go and write them a bad review).

Where I am I don't have to care about that, it seems.

In some places it is a minimum you describe and in other cases (a percentage of) the expected life of the product. Washing machines have different lifespans than phone for instance. Here we only have the 12 months of proof by seller/manufacturer and then it is the reasonable lifespan of the product.

Apple has a long history of being generous with repairs, nothing to do with the EU. Friend of mine, here in the US, got an entirely new laptop when his failed just out of warranty. Goodwill repair. And because they didn't have the old laptop available as a refurb, he got the current equivalent -- which was actually a pretty substantial upgrade.

It's hit or miss. My wife had keys failing under the butterfly keyboard replacement program, and the Apple Store tried to charge her to fix it. Apparently the technician who examined it "didn't know" about the warranty extension program.

How do you have a major repair program covering every laptop sold in the last 5 years and the technician doesn't know about it?

I’ve had similar incidents happen with Apple and other premium things, nowhere near Europe. It’s market forces that created an upmarket company with stuff like this as part of its identity. Thank goodness for global capitalism.

Same here. I have Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max with AppleCare+ which I broke during a trip to US (I'm in Canada). They were able to swap it with replacement at the Apple store in LA without any hassle. Too bad the SIM Card was also busted though :(

Get an iPhone, swallow your pride and just get one.

Anecdotes work both ways. Apple recently locked and forced a reset of Apple ID accounts for no reason.[0] This happened to my elderly mother at an incredibly inconvenient time, making her phone completely unusable, and the phone was set up for her by my elderly father, who had had strokes since then, and couldn't remember the account password, and had lost access to the email address. I spent hours on the phone begging Apple to help, and they could do nothing but direct me toward recovery Web pages that had long, mandatory waiting periods. It took weeks for my mom's phone to no longer be a useless brick, and it very nearly didn't work (they already denied one request without explanation). Even sending them proof of purchase from the mobile carrier, as they demanded, was rejected. All in the name of "protecting" the user.

I provided the link to the Forbes article to multiple representatives, including a senior advisor. None of them admitted to knowing anything about it, even a week later. It was reported on various Apple news sites as well.

So, no, I cannot in good conscience recommend buying an Apple device. Even if you pay for it, it effectively does not belong to you, and Apple may suddenly disable it at any time, for any reason, without warning.

0: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2024/04/28/apple-id...

Morale of the story: Don't use face/fingerprint unlock. Sooner or later you/they will need to use the password anyway.

Wouldn’t face or fingerprint be more likely to be useable when memory issues strike (like they did for the OP)?

The device in question had no locking enabled of any kind. The associated Apple ID account was locked by Apple without warning, and so the phone itself was locked for any use other than emergency calls.

> All in the name of "protecting" the user.

It’s a bit of a bind though isn’t it? If they loosen their rules, someone will exploit it. Where is the balance?

Complying with the user preferences would be a good one.

My elderly dad doesn't use his iPhone for anything sensitive and it is not even password protected. If that phone gets lost I will replace it. He doesn't need his apple ID to be "protected" by Apple this way.

It seems like they still haven’t said what happened. I was in a restaurant at the time and first I knew was my Apple Pay wouldn’t work. Awkward is an understatement… thankfully I just happened to have my wallet on me that time, I don’t always though!

They now have a new way to recover lost passwords, is called “recovery contacts” and allows that contact to recover your mothers phone

AFAICT, this feature requires the recovery contact to also use an Apple device, which does not help us. It seems like another way to try to lock users into using Apple.

Its interesting to me to think that when Steve Jobs was still around, the iPhone was always on the cutting edge of design and tech features. You constantly heard the tech media saying how far ahead Apple was of its competitors in terms of features and camera specs.

Once Jobs passed and Tim Cook took over, everything changed. Now they're years behind other companies in terms of features and specs. It took them years to have wireless charging, even longer to have simple widgets - stuff Android phones had as standard features for years.

I've stayed away from them for the reasons you pointed out and the fact they just seem so far behind, even on features that have become standard on every other manufacturers handsets. Now its painted as "Apple sees what other companies are doing. They sit and wait and let other companies vet features and tech before integrating them into their handsets - its a very smart approach."

Copy and paste on iPhones, anyone?

Pride? It's a just a phone.

Man, the cult-like aspect of Apple is such a turn off...

It’s the opposite :-) the poster said “swallow your pride” … the cult-like aspect of Apple haters is such a turn off

Is English not your first language? "Swallow your pride" means giving up the pride.

> Man, the cult-like aspect of Apple is such a turn off...

It does not sound like this was intentionally ironic, but it works.

> Is English not your first language? "Swallow your pride" means giving up the pride.

To me, it read like GP is criticising as cult-like the very suggestion of pride being the motivation behind buying or not buying a particular phone.

Exactly correct, hence the "it's just a phone". English is my fourth language and I speak/understand it just fine, thanks.

Apple was for a looong time known to not honor Norwegian consumer protection laws. They've gotten better, but they've been worst in class here for a decade. Edit: two decades. Found this article from 2006 about how they refused to repair ipods after a year, even shops selling Apple stuff used to have problems because they had to fix things at a loss themselves https://www.vg.no/forbruker/teknologi/i/8300w/apple-og-forbr...

I actually believe that's why Apple adoption was fairly slow compared to the hype I was reading about in other countries. No official Apple stores, and most electronic chains didn't want to touch them.

Yeah with AppleCare+ both of these people would have walked out with a working phone.

How is paying extra a solution to the problem of having to pay to get their phone fixed? Insurances exists for other brands as well (or through the store you buy from).

AppleCare is just seamless and works well though.

In terms of warranty I’ve walked into Apple stores and had stuff just replaced our fixed in store once they look up the SN

Top consumerism right here: being proud of a purchase.

I don't know who started this, I only remember that one could be proud of an achievement or of making something. Being proud of purchasing something; it just sounds as impossible as drinking space shuttles.

Nobody was talking about "being proud of purchasing something". What you replied to was an allusion to some people being proud of refusing to buy an Apple product.

The phrase "swallow your pride" is literally a call to abandon pride as a motivating factor.

I never mentioned Apple. Sure, proud of _not_ purchasing is another level of this, and then _accusing_ someone of being proud to (not) purchase rounds the circle I guess.

It's amazing.

I never said that you mentioned Apple.

You Android users know what I mean

Apple phones are too large. Not sure what I'll do when my 12 mini reaches eol, I guess an SE but feels like a step back.

Apple does plenty of anti-consumer stuff too. My last Apple product is my ipod nano. I swore off them after they shipped a firmware update specifically closing the loophole that allowed me to manage the song library without itunes. I have a whole separate rant about itunes. I replaced it with a sandisk player for a third of the price. Surprisingly, it worked much more smoothly, had fewer annoyances, and had an FM radio.

You swore to never buy Samsung. I swore to never buy a pixel again. My gf swore to never buy an apple again.

I'm using a Motorola to type this and I wonder when it'll let me down in unforseen ways.

I've bought nothing but mid-range Nokias and Motorolas for the past 10 years or so and they've been great. Always stock or near stock android and security updates for 3+ years.

I have a habit of doing stupid things with my phones (mostly accidentally submerging them in seawater) and haven't attempted fixing them after that though.

I've been using LineageOS for years, and recently got a Motorola G 5G 2024 as a temporary phone while I addressed some issues with my main phone. I was blown away by the amount of custom bloatware on the thing. It nagged me at least 30 times about various features it wanted to introduce me to. If that's "near stock", then I'm staying away.

That's a shame to hear. Can that be right?

I diverted recently, but I used budget Moto G's for a decade and couldn't have been happier with the stock OS.

Maybe they finally succombed in 2024.

I think it was whenever they stopped giving the Moto G series numbers (G5, G7, etc), and just started making them "Moto G (Year)". Official LineageOS support has gotten worse since then, but I don't know if it's because they can't find maintainers or what.

I’m concerned that you’ll soon run out of otherwise reputable phone manufacturers.

I sport an iPhone, but sometimes I think it’s a shame Microsoft so deeply lost focus on and then abandoned mobile.

>I swore to never buy a pixel again.

The only reason I can think of to buy pixels is to run GrapheneOS. From that perspective, I am somewhat difficult to disappoint.

I mean, it's a phone, and it's not samsung. That's a reason, right? Why not buy a pixel?

The 4xl had a totally faulty battery ribbon. I had to replace the battery yearly, which was semi ok because of cheap Amazon parts. Then eventually the motherboard freaked out and it just died. But I guess at least it lasted 3.5 years.

Just buy an Ulefone or Doogee for $200, shock, water and kid-proof.

If it breaks two years later, well it was just $8/mo.

An update bricked my Ulephone after 3 months. Not going there again.

My next phone will be a Fairphone.

I've had Fairphone 3 for a few years. The camera isn't fancy but I don't care. The original battery died at some point. Replacing it was very easy; no tool needed. Just like it was in the '90s with most phones. The repairability promise is kept, IMO. The only issue I had with this phone is that after some system update the fingerprint sensor was regarded as not meeting some security level and stopped being usable by sensitive apps (banking).

FYI the fingerprint sensor problem has since been fixed and I can now use it again without trouble for banking apps and the like. (Although I'm on a Fairphone 3+) Still holding up fairly well in 2024, even if it's a bit slow at times.

Writing this from my Nothing Phone.

The list of companies I wouldn't trust ever again is just to long. My Xiaomi was literally bricked trough an official update.

I hated my 2021 Edge+ with such a burning fury that I'm typing this on my old OnePlus 9 (with LineageOS, which I couldn't do on the moto). I can't remember all the reasons (there were many), but stability was one of them.

The OnePlus 9 is supposedly the last good phone from them, so I'm thinking of using my wife's Pixel with a re-locked ROM once she upgrades. Pixels, for all their flaws, have historically been the most consistent for me (apart from OnePlus).

I'm on a OnePlus 11 (upgraded from a OnePlus 6T) and it's great. My only issue is that there's a small selection of cases for it, especially if you want one that's magsafe compatible.

Wait, what do you mean magsafe? I have a oneplus 11 5g and I didn't even think this phone had wireless charging.

I purchased an olixar wireless adapter and an olixar sentinel case, they work well but the adapter takes up my USB C so I always have to remove the case, unplug, and put it back on.

Magsafe is used for things other than wireless charging. Tons of accessories that mount to the magsafe "ring"

Soon we will all be making our own phones from raspberries pi or other single board computers and hacked together parts (cell network dongles and whatnot). They will break more often but at least we will only have to ban one component manufacturer at a time.

Although my current phone is an iPhone (a 12 mini) I had used Motorola "Moto G" phones prior to that and never had any issues when them other than Android updates eventually ending despite the phone being physically in working order.

The iPhone was a gift, and I still prefer the Android UX but so far it's had no issues either.

I'll probably go back to Android next time I need a phone; all the iPhones except the SE are too big for my taste. But it's hard to find a small Android phone from a reputable manufacturer as well.

> other than Android updates eventually ending despite the phone being physically in working order.

That is when you put LineageOS [1] on the phone and never look back. A clean Android experience with OTA updates - I still get these on a Samsung SIIIneo from 2014 - so I'd suggest pulling that 'old' phone out of the drawer and giving it a try as you have nothing to loose.

[1] https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#motorola

Motorola has been a good long-term value for me, but in 2 out of 3 the charging port has gone bad or close to bad eventually. If spending $500 a year on phones didn't morally offend me I'd just buy Apple or Samsung and dispose of them when they go bad.

I have a Samsung TV that is now more than 15 years old. And it still works ok.

11.5 years for me. Their products are generally solid, but I'm not surprised their service policies are crap. Whose policies aren't consumer-unfriendly crap these days?

Tip: use magnetic ports/cables on your USB devices. Moved to these after that happened to me years ago and love them - quick and easy to connect/disconnect, and less worry about tripping over the charge cord flinging the device across the room.

The only disadvantage is I haven't found any that support high amp/watt charging.

There's a good reason they don't support high amp/watt charging.

https://old.reddit.com/r/UsbCHardware/comments/motlhn/magnet...

Wasn't there an issue that with magnetic cables the ground pins aren't the first pins connected / disconnected?

(Edit -- autoexec had the same memory of the same thread as I did)

I'm thankful for the New Jersey division of consumer affairs that sued Samsung for faulty home appliances. I'll never buy Samsung anything except nvme drives.

Their SSDs have suffered from prominent firmware bugs.

Samsung love to kill their brand.

Bought a Samsung washing machine. Completely died in 2 months. Their third party repairer wrote it off and said it’d be a month wait for a new one. Several frustrating phone calls and 3 months later no washing machine. Retailer bounced me back to the repairer.

So fuck them all. Chargeback. I will never buy Samsung again.

Edit: also three colleagues bought iPhone 15 Pro phones this time round after Samsung last time. Don’t know what happened there but you don’t make a switch like that unless you dislike what you had that bad.

The iPhone 15 Pro is nice though.

100% agree. Bought one myself!

If you want a high quality washing machine get a speed queen https://speedqueen.com/speed-queen-difference/

Thank you for taking the time to drop this link. I had exactly the question I think you anticipated: "Where can I get a really well-made washer and dryer?"

Or Miele if you're in Europe

I heard about Miele dropping the ball lately, but mine (9 y o Miele W 3371 Edition 111) never needed anything replaced/fixed so far. I can recommend.

The trade-off is that the speed queen is pretty inefficient and does a mediocre job of actually getting clothes clean. But it'll last forever.

They have a model with a normal powered agitator.

>Edit: also three colleagues bought iPhone 15 Pro phones this time round after Samsung last time. Don’t know what happened there but you don’t make a switch like that unless you dislike what you had that bad.

Samsung got rid of all the things that made their devices different (micro sd card, headphone jack, MST, IR blaster, etc) and then changed the design of the phone to look more like an iPhone. Software also has been moving that direction. There's nothing special or unique with main Samsung flagship phones anymore (with exception of s-pen and folding phones). So by jumping to Apple you aren't losing much in terms of hardware if anything.

On the other hand iPhone have been adding more customization features things like widgets on the home screen and allowing to change the defaults to make it more like Android.

> Samsung got rid of all the things that made their devices different (micro sd card, headphone jack, MST, IR blaster, etc) and then changed the design of the phone to look more like an iPhone. Software also has been moving that direction. There's nothing special or unique with main Samsung flagship phones anymore (with exception of s-pen and folding phones).

True - there are tons of options with Android.

> So by jumping to Apple you aren't losing much in terms of hardware if anything.

I think you are net gaining in terms of hardware quality.

> On the other hand iPhone have been adding more customization features things like widgets on the home screen and allowing to change the defaults to make it more like Android.

Not nearly enough; e.g. I use Syncthing to manage/sync data across devices in my home and have customized it exactly how I want it and I don't need to pay iCloud tax every month - no such luck with Apple. But beyond customization, the main issue is lock-in about which they are (understandably) doing nothing. If you use a idevice and have buyer's remorse, tough luck getting stuff out to a non-Apple ecosystem without friction.

What are you doing that requires you use iCloud in lieu of FOSS/self hosted options?

For photos, check out PhotoSync. It supports a one time purchase and is phenomenal for its use case. Fairly powerful; not something to use without reviewing every single setting first.

You guessed it right, its Photos and Videos. Thanks for suggesting PhotoSync, will check it out.

Probably a bit more than you want to deal with, but I use Samsung phones and my wife likes her iPhone. We have Nextcloud set up, and both phones auto upload all pictures to the cloud (in the basement).

Hope you have an offsite copy somewhere.

I have been meaning to explore nextcloud. What client do you use for Android and iPhone?

The only issue is the other Android options are pretty mediocre, so it's Samsung or the "others"

I swear there has to be a conspiracy driving everything to the iPhone-featureless-hardware + *Cloud*-all-the-things + nickel-and-dime paradigm. It can't be that customers are really this... helpless.

Well, if all the new models are made out of shit, when your old phone goes and you need a new one you have to buy a shit phone. Your purchase then goes into a graph in a presentation that shows that people really love holding shit, because why wouldn't they be buying it? Meanwhile, almost all competition for non shit products has been completely reduced and everyone except the execs hates almost every product that exists. Presentation giver gets a bonus

We had a Samsung washing machine that failed (leak killed control board, something that isn't uncommon with that model) and we were a few months out of warranty. They said the warranty period wasn't a problem and offered a hefty discount on other Samsung products as well, including a TV we were already considering. Control board got replaced and the machine is back in action.

Arguable whether something obvious like a washing machine being able to leak and kill a critical bit of internal hardware is good enough though...

Prices on repair parts is the issue IMHO. I have a $1000 Samsung Washing machine. Had a similar issue with the control board dying. If I had to replace it myself, that circuit board is a $400 part. Without labour. You can't return it if it doesn't fix the problem. I just cannot see how it can cost $400 to supply a board that is part of a $1,000 washing machine including retailer margin. Once you add in $100-200 to have someone actually fit the part... it's just silly.

So the whole thing gets binned. Because for twice the price you get a new everything with 4-5 years warranty. Car spare parts also have this issue. It gets even weirder, every dealer for Mitsubishi Australia sells spare parts for literally 5x the price of the same OEM Mitsubishi part but ordered from Amayama. This held true for a stack of parts I checked from a $0.30 washer to a $120 shift fork to go inside a gearbox. More recently I looked at the ABS Control Module and it was only 2x but that's a $2,000 part. $2,000 OEM from Amayama, $4,000 from a dealer.

I get that there is some overhead in warehousing spare parts for years, but still. There is clear profiteering and something needs to be done if we're going to be remotely sustainable long term.

Never mind that we've been building modern washing machines and dishwashers for 20+ years and yet every model from every manufacturer uses a different unique part, made from scratch, which managed to make the same mistake 100 other versions of that part have made and fixed causing them to often fail.

I'm ranting, oops...

I hear you. I looked at fixing the machine myself and we considered just replacing it when we thought the warranty was too far gone, but it seriously irks me to throw out an entire machine. It feels incredibly wasteful.

We must shop the same brands. I scratched a rear removable interior panel of a Pajero (fridge rubbing against it for 3,000km of corrugated road) and asked for a replacement price out of interest when I was in for a dealer service. $350 or so for what is a single piece of moulded plastic. Unique to the vehicle, but not otherwise complicated.

I like your idea of trying to standardise at least some components across various brands of a product (like is done with USB standards). It shits me that everything is optimised for cost and profit rather than for consumers and the broader environment.

I've always been wary of import white goods after hearing the horror stories about Samsung's and LG's, and comparing that with my experience with domestic ones where parts are cheap and largely shared across brands; then again, with most of them being owned by Maytag/Whirlpool, it's not like there are many companies either.

Incidentally, for car parts, the Big Three had a lot of parts interchangeability at the height of the automotive era, many of which are still available today in the aftermarket, but it seems that for newer models they have also started becoming more closed and proprietary.

Basically no one makes white goods locally in Australia, so :)

I had a failure in a bosch dish washer which probably would have been control board replacement and $$$$ if I had it fixed. But I happened to look up the issue on the internet and learned that it was a common problem - a bad solder connection on a particular pin on a relay on the control board.

Re-soldered it, and it has been fine for a couple of years.

This is why it’s a good idea to buy the most common model of anything, or whatever enthusiasts buy.

My family has kinda done the same by having a Toyota Corolla and an older bmw 3 series (without the turbo and 4wd thankfully). Also got the base model Bosch dishwasher.

At least if you can’t repair it or part it out yourself, there ends up being some efficient network of buyers that can fix it or at least harvest the remaining good parts.

At least you didn't have to replace all your hardwood flooring like my neighbour 2 days after his shiny new Samsung washer and dryer were installed.

Samsung's constant chasing of Apple has removed most of the reasons I would buy a Samsung phone.

For me it was:

- adding sponsored links (amazon I think) in an OS upgrade on my flagship phone

- camera (and other apps but with camera it is most annoying) sometimes taking way to long to open, as if there was one or more network calls involved

- general lagging

- software updates stopped after less than two years

Went to a cheap iPhone and it was way smoother. I understand Android and Samsung has improved, but why switch back? My entire family is on iPhone now and my only problem is someone thought it was a good idea to put a random limit on 6 persons in a family group. (BTW, Android had the same problem last I checked. So much for diverse teams.)

It also kills me that Google has a more open security hardware platform. There's reasons GrapheneOS is Pixel-only.

Had a similar problem with a Samsung washing machine here in the UK, one of the more expensive models too. After just a few months, it developed problems.

I had to spend hours on the phone to their support people, who would tell me to reset it, switch it off and on again, wait a few days and try again etc - just... useless. I practically had to bed them to send someone round. Eventually they agreed, and a local repair guy came round - he spent a few minutes looking at it, declared it a write-off, and told me he advises all his customers to avoid Samsung!

To be fair, the Samsung that makes appliances has very little connection to the Samsung that makes phones or TVs, aside from the name.

But I otherwise agree. My Samsung washer & dryer will be the last Samsung appliances I ever own.

My last Samsung phone had an annoying habit of hanging up as soon as the proximity sensor decided the phone wasn't up against your face. Turns out that was somewhat common. They did replace the phone, but shortly thereafter I abandoned my Android allegiance and went with iPhone so I wouldn't have to tinker with a device I use as an appliance.

Why would hanging up based on the proximity sensor be a thing? That'd make using the keypad for phone menus nearly impossible, unless you put the phone in speakerphone pre-emptively.

Long ago I had a no-name/generic Android where the screen needed replacement. I got a replacement of a different colour from Ali and ended up with a more unique two-coloured device.

That said, I wonder if in your Samsung case they actually made design changes such that the colour isn't the only thing different about them.

Did you try small claims court? That should work.

Samsung is the perfect example (and failure?) that advertising and lobbying works. They have the worst product I've ever tried and always come with an annoying catch (ie: computer screen with special adapter). But they are huge (and growing). They advertise aggressively and they integrate themselves with local suppliers like nobody else.

Worse product? What other android phones do you mean? Sony? I used to buy Sony long time ago and I did like it, but around the time of Galaxy S8 I switched when my Xperia 3 unglued by itself in my pocket. None of my Samsung phones experienced any such failures. All were cheaper than equivalent Sony products.

And I wasn't very gentle with them. All my phones have huge gauges in their metal casings after years of use and I replaced them only after I broke the screen after few years.

Also, I've been using the hardware to it's limit with gaming, GearVR and own apps (running RealESRGAN directly on a Samsung s8 for example).

So hardware wise I'm very happy with Samsung(except part availability). Software - wise the preloaded apps are not bad. I've never used Bixby, but I do use the gallery and the video editor all the time(including slomo and super slomo) . Whenever I use a different android phone I miss these and more feature.

Also I have lots of sideloaded apps from the net and others such as a full blown Linux OS app running real python scripts etc.Once upon a time I tried apple. All the limitations made me dislike it a lot.

So what else is there better than samsung in android? Google? I never tried their phones because of the prices.

Worse than iPhone and Pixel I guess. Yeah they cost more, but it's like a Honda vs a Hyundai, you get what you pay for.

Rocking Galaxy S20 for last 4 years.

Once lens fogged up after a beach trip. The device was out of warranty. Service center swapped the back plate with a new one for equivalent of ~$10.

There are a lot of valid cricotisms, but claiming Samsung products are 'the worse' is just....

To much.

As if the colour mattered at all! The phones are so slippery and fragile, one is pretty much forced to wrap them permanently in a case.

I'm going to buy a case for any phone regardless of how many gorilla's they promise are in the phone.

I had a Galaxy with the curved glass on the side of the screen. It did absolutely nothing useful for me at all, and then, surprise, ended up getting cracked on the curved edge.

I've recently repaired a similar Samsung phone (a galaxy S9+ edge if I remember correctly).

It has been extremely difficult to source a replacement screen. I first procured some from China from sellers that promised exact same tech. Although their screen looked when displaying stationary images it fell apart during such simple tasks as scrolling a Web page quickly (it became blurry). Considering that the phone was being repaired to use GearVR this was unacceptable (blurry screen every time you move your head).

Then I finally found a non-burned-out old screen. I fitted that and it works fine, but it puts artificial limit on the lifetime of these phones. They are really nice devices that are destined to a landfill, because they don't want to sell few screens.

Tbh even Apple had the idiotic idea of curved screens on some models.

I'm still rocking an iphone XS with a majorly cracked screen. I haven't dropped it more than any other iphone i've had, but it's the only one I owned where the glass isn't protected by that straight metal edge. So ... crack crack crack.

At least Apple seems to have given up on it.

I liked my first Galaxy but within a month the phone developed purple vertical lines down the screen. Nowhere local could repair it. Samsung told me to mail it to somewhere in Texas and I’d get it back in 6-8 weeks. When I asked if they offered any faster replacement service even for a fee, they told me no and suggested should’ve bought the insurance from my carrier.

Never bought a Samsung again.

If you want to go to some shop somewhere and have some arbitrary part grafted on to your phone, you can do that now. There was an electronics engineer a while back who had a standard audio jack installed in his phone. There's nothing Apple can do o stop you, it's your phone.

What you can't do is do that and expect the original manufacturer to still honour their warranty, and I think that makes perfect sense. The proper remedy for your partner's situation is to get a full refund, or a replacement of the phone.

> What you can't do is do that and expect the original manufacturer to still honour their warranty

One would suggest that if it is required that you use OEM parts to maintain your warranty status, then it is likewise reasonable to say the OEM is required to provide those parts with reasonable lead times.

Contracts with customers these days seem to be written entirely, completely for the benefit of the corporation, and that's bullshit. Contracts should be bidirectional agreements on how business should be conducted between entities, not simply a list of how a vendor gets to legally fuck you over. And we should be enshrining that fact in law.

If a company says "you can only buy replacement parts from us" then those parts should be damn well available to buy when needed, or the clause should be nullified. If you must get your product serviced by them then service should be available, affordable, and reasonably quick turnaround, and if it isn't, then that clause should be nullified.

Consumers should, as a matter of both ethics and law, not be put between a rock and a hard place simply because the company they're doing business with can't be fucked to uphold their end of the agreements.

>One would suggest that if it is required that you use OEM parts to maintain your warranty status, then it is likewise reasonable to say the OEM is required to provide those parts with reasonable lead times.

I completely agree, and as I said, there should be recourse if they don't such as refund or replacement.

>And we should be enshrining that fact in law.

I'm a Brit and I think our protections here are better that the US, but sure. I suppose it varies by state over there too. I'm not in any way arguing there shouldn't be protections, I think there should be at least the protections I suggested, but maintaining warranty with third party parts of completely unknown quality or compatibility is a non-starter.

As a hardware engineer:

Right to repair is a nice idea and it's heart is in the right place, but won't ever work for something like a consumer phone. Further, IMO, it's really just a band aid for the US's extremely poor consumer protections which manufacturers are hell bent on exporting to the rest of the world.

The most effective way to approach this problem is known and proven: mandate long (I think 5 years is fair) 100% repair/replace/refund waranty periods with no cost to the consumer (including shipping).

Then the manufacturer themselves will figure out the details on how to meet that. And don't worry they are perfectly capable of it because it's what they do RIGHT NOW.

The hardware will become more reliable or it'll be repairable or they'll just refund you or a combination of those.

Batteries just need a requirement such as minimum 80% of capacity at 5 years. Overnight they'll become replacable/over-provisioned/better chemistry/better thermals or again a combination of those.

I've never had "repairability" raised to me as an engineer. It's a nebulous thing nobody understands or cares about and can be just paid lip service to or effectively ignored. But waranty IS something bean-counters and managers understand. It's: "this thing must work for X time or it costs us money" with the added threat of "lawyers might get involved".

It's not perfect, but still far more effective and practical than "right to repair".

Maybe adding a fat tax (say, 50% sales tax of endpoint product sale price) on fundamentally unrepairable products. This is a spectrum: if a company could glue a phone and get a thin sleek sexy glass brick OR it could use some small screws and it won't be quite as slender/sexy... Going with the former on average with every a/b choice in design should trigger the tax and effectively kill your product vs more compliant competitors.

I've been wanting to see this applied to anything with a universal machine, where it was made to prevent the owner from modifying software/firmware/microcode. As a customer, I want Stallmanism enshrined in law dealing with both computing and product design.

couldn't agree more.

'right to repair' alone will only allow for more externalities when shipping a product. mandating a better product will bring repairability with it, because only then will it also be in the manufacturers interest.

> Right to repair is a nice idea and it's heart is in the right place, but won't ever work for something like a consumer phone.

Why not? Every major phone manufacturer uses numerous techniques to make devices unrepairable and yet people still find ways to fix them. I'm not a hardware engineer, but I have fixed multiple devices, and I have no special skills or equipment besides standard ifixit toolkits. The only hindrances are introduced by manufacturers themselves. Replacing or refunding devices doesn't reduce e-waste, on the contrary.

I can't get behind what you're saying but I am curious to hear your take. Why do you think right to repair "won't ever work"?

Because you generate, at best, an adversarial situation. The self-repair users are in it mostly for being cheap (or thinking it’s cheaper) and are (largely) unable to do a better-than-trained-technician job of a (probably) complicated job. Both are an annoyance to the producer. And not one where they risk a lot for (this only affects a minority of purchases)

On the other hand, mandating long warranty times puts the Producer vs the state. Which is a much harder situation to decide “I’ll just ignore that”.

And if you say; that right to repair is also a state decision… it’s only kinda. Because what right-to-repair means (or is thought to mean) differs _widely_. But the nice thing about the warranty thing would be that it would create a large incentive to make it cheaper to repair things. Which probably ends up with the same situation (ie experts, or self-perceived experts, being able to help themselves)

> unable to do a better-than-trained-technician job of a (probably) complicated job

Isn't this because manufacturers are actively hindering repair shops? It's both the result and the cause of the manufacturers' strategy. No schematics, devices built without taking repairability in mind and very expensive parts or parts that come with caveats.

Making longer warranties is always welcome but it won't help as much, because the vast majority of repairs aren't covered under warranty. I'm guessing that most repairs are due to user error than manufacturing defects thus not covered under warranty.

> Because you generate, at best, an adversarial situation.

This shouldn't be the case. Reducing e-waste and thus doing everything possible for sustainability should be the priority here. I've found myself many times in a situation where a perfectly working device was damaged, or just stopped receiving software updates and had to be decommissioned because of security concerns, and this is not only limited to phones.

> I can't get behind what you're saying but I am curious to hear your take. Why do you think right to repair "won't ever work"?

hnaccount_rng has already raised good points. I will add to them:

1) Working in product compliance I have learned: The simpler the rules, the harder it is to avoid them/weasel them. "Right to repair" rules will ALWAYS be more complicated than a simple "good" warranty. You are essentially legislating how to design products which has an infinite solution space. AND what do you legislate? "It has to be repairable". What is that?

- What skill level of the technician is required? What is the maximum time that they are allowed to spend to deem it "repairable"? (given enough time and skill you can repair almost anything). How we do verify that? Do they need a certification now? Who sets the requirements for that? Who does the testing? Or should the consumer be able to fix it? What tools are allowed or not allowed? Are custom tools allowed? Do I now have to manufacture them and sell those? (cause we use lots of bespoke tools). Now I have to inventory those items, that's going to cost.

- Are mechanical jigs (which are ubiquitous and very expensive and normally bespoke for manufacturing or repairs) allowed? How complicated can they be? Say they are allowed, how does the technician use it? Do I now have to manufacturer it and make is saleable? How much can it cost? (they can easily cost tens of thousands). Can I just lend said jig? For how long? Who insures it when it is in transit? How many jigs must I have in circulation at any time so that repairs are conducted fast enough?

- Can I not use glue anymore? Or only certain types? Say you legislate types that are easy to remove or desolve, ok well their mechanical properties suck and the device will be crappier now.

- How long does this need to be repairable? The reality these days is that a lot of PCBs are cheaper and/or easier to just scrap and replace ... so do I now have to keep repair stock? How much? For how long? What if I run out? Am I now obligated to spin up a 1 million dollar production line to make a few very uneconomic spares?

I could go on ALL day. How do you legislate all of that? Cause the parts that don't now have to go through the courts. Now it's just a big steaming mess that doesn't work AND it's complicated AND you have many smart engineers, who just want to get paid and go home and smart lawyers to circumvent it.

2) I know this might be very unpopular to say on HN, but the reality is that MOST (not all) of what companies do that makes things "unrepairable" is mainly because it's a) cheaper or b) securing the supply chain against counterfeiters because counterfeits devalue your brand and also you don't want to be on the hook for repairing really good counterfeits (and I have personally experienced the latter).

3) The "good warranty" solution is utilising an internal manufacturer calculus that already exists. Right now it is "tuned" to if US market => it only has to last a year + 1 day. Then "not our problem". In a "hand wavy based on experienced way" it's easier to get change by just shifting the goal posts (longer warranty).

4) I applaud you on fixing the items yourself but while it was fine for you, the quality probably wouldn't have passed on my production line. I have also observed many of those little phone repair shops do work and every single one I would have booted off my line. I am yet to see a single one of them use proper ESD protection (in any modern factory you are not even allowed inside without ESD gear). Sure they fixed it for you, but some other customers phone is now a walking wounded. I guarantee it.

I found this article very illustrative about just how clueless, many people, even "right to repair" proponents are about the systems that they are trying to regulate: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/21/23079058/apple-self-servi... Yes, that jig Apple supplied, that's what it takes these days. Modern production and repair lines are soooo tuned for efficiency it's insane. That tuning introduces complexity which then goes through the roof for repairing stuff outside of said line. It's why often it's cheaper and quicker to throw parts out and replace it. We've gotten THAT good.

Finally, I actually think it is actually rather insulting how many people believe that fixing something like a phone PROPERLY is "not that hard" and "any tech can do it". I see these comments as demeaning and insulting to the experienced people working on these production and repair lines who are often underpaid and treated very poorly.

5) Right to repair will not solve e-waste. My opinion is it won't make much of a dent. E-waste is a separate issue that absolutely also needs to be tackled by compulsory recycling. And actually, in the case of phones and many other consumer electronics, making them "repairable" can mean more resources being used. People (especially on HN) bemoan glue being used. Modern glues are great. They're used because they speed up assembly, are fairly easy to apply and make stuff thinner and mechanically simpler. Say you ban glue as a part of Right to repair legislation, I guarantee the screws and extra plastic you need instead use more material and have more embodied energy. You've actually now increased the amount of e-waste.

Finally, I think fundamentally, rather than being repairable, I think most people just want these devices to last longer (so again just force that through long warranties). And it can be done. I have personally worked on products with a 10 year "official" warranty and a "quiet internal" 20 year one. It wasn't an exotic product or industry either. In my opinion, repairing a thing is the ambulance at the bottom of the hill, it should not have broken in the first place. Why mandate the ambulance in all cases when you can mandate the minimisation of pushing stuff off the cliff instead?

Thank you for taking the time to write all this, it's very informative. It sounds messy, but then again I can't help but feel that every single point you mentioned is quite complex because we managed to reach a point in time where a device designed with repairability first, seems such a farcical concept.

We might have become really precise with manufacturing, and produced beautifully thin and solid devices. But the fact that Apple needs to ship a 79-pound/36kg repair kit just to change the battery of a phone, doesn't really demostrate how clueless people are about the repair process, on the contrary it demonstrates the absurd lengths Apple is willing to go just to mock open access to tools, parts and processes.

Regarding longer warranties, that would be an excellent step, but warranties won't solve the same problems, as they will never cover user caused damage which I'm guessing is the cause for most repairs.

What if we started with the obligation of the manufacturer to provide access to reasonably priced parts along with schematics, without altering their manufacturing process? Would that be an acceptable first step towards making repairs more accessible?

> on the contrary it demonstrates the absurd lengths Apple is willing to go just to mock open access to tools, parts and processes.

Emphasis added.

I think the absurd metal gymnastics HN'ers are willing to go through to justify things they don't understand is just... I can't even.

You seem to be the naivest one here, talking the bullshit Apple feeds you, when all that's required to remove the battery is a hairdryer, some prying tools and a bit of skills.

They actually are mocking the whole thing by pretending their bizarre contraption is needed, when many have tried and showed first hand it was faster to do it the "old" way.

The fact that you don't see that makes your opinion rather unsavory. But you do you I guess.

> Thank you for taking the time to write all this, it's very informative.

No problem :) I take the issue with short life products and e-waste very seriously and have given it much thought.

> It sounds messy, but then again I can't help but feel that every single point you mentioned is quite complex because we managed to reach a point in time where a device designed with repairability first, seems such a farcical concept.

I think we are also just at a natural point in technology where it is just hard to repair some of these things. Either we eschew these new technologies completely and loose their benefits to keep repairability, or accept that a lot of it isn't just repairable and we need:

1) Strong laws to protect the consumers investment in devices

2) Properly fund research into e-waste recycling

3) Mandate e-waste recycling and support specialist waste companies to do that.

We're literally counting atoms worth of materials to cut costs, reduce sizes and increase performance.

> We might have become really precise with manufacturing, and produced beautifully thin and solid devices. But the fact that Apple needs to ship a 79-pound/36kg repair kit just to change the battery of a phone, doesn't really demostrate how clueless people are about the repair process, on the contrary it demonstrates the absurd lengths Apple is willing to go just to mock open access to tools, parts and processes.

But this is my point. I don't think Apple was being absurd. This is just want it takes these days and almost all people don't appreciate that a jig like that is what it takes. And it's not even all that complex or expensive compared to jigs I have worked on.

Even many hardware engineers don't have a full grasp. Many these days have never been on a CM floor because a lot of it is abstracted away for them. And/Or they have never really talked to the mechanical engineers making jigs etc. because of internal company siloing.

> Regarding longer warranties, that would be an excellent step, but warranties won't solve the same problems, as they will never cover user caused damage which I'm guessing is the cause for most repairs.

This is a good point and my best idea for that is that, as apart of the warranty, the consumer gets one free/cost at percentage of purchase price (maybe 30%), no questions asked repair/replace for accidental damage. Simple, it's the manufacturers problem and they'll work out that optimum point between: make it more rugged for drops vs not rugged enough for surviving being run over by a car. (We already have standards for drops, water etc. They'll just get made more robust).

> What if we started with the obligation of the manufacturer to provide access to reasonably priced parts along with schematics, without altering their manufacturing process? Would that be an acceptable first step towards making repairs more accessible?

I have a very long, 2 part post, (sorry) to a another commenter which I think addresses this.

Edits: formatting

> I could go on ALL day. How do you legislate all of that?

"Everything required to replace or repair parts of the device should be fully, clearly and publicly documented, including all discrete part numbers, tools, jigs, etc. Any parts that are manufactured only by the device's manufacturer under patent protection or trade secret must be available for purchase."

If jigs are required, they must at least fully describe the jig so that people can make their own, if required.

You can use glue as long as it can be removed without damaging the device, and the type of glue is documented and available for purchase.

Mandating a level of skill is not necessary. If a repair requires high skill, like desoldering, they can find someone to do that repair, or sell the device to someone willing to do that repair before purchasing a new device. The level of skill required to repair a device will become known, although I'm also not opposed to requiring that be declared up front.

As you said, the scope of possible designs is infinite, so there exist designs that can satisfy all of these requirements.

The whole point is to expand the lifecycle of devices and create a repair and recycling industry, rather than the existing limited lifecycle of manufacturer->consumer->ewaste.

> Finally, I actually think it is actually rather insulting how many people believe that fixing something like a phone PROPERLY is "not that hard" and "any tech can do it".

Perfect is the enemy of the good. If your phone is a brick and an improper fix makes it useful at a much lower cost than a whole new phone, that's all that matters. Sorry, but your comment just sounds super elitist. Even if only 50% of devices are successfully repaired because they're being done "improperly", that's still a 50% reduction in ewaste.

> and also you don't want to be on the hook for repairing really good counterfeits (and I have personally experienced the latter).

Then don't. I don't see why the manufacturer should be on the hook to repair a counterfeit.

> 5) Right to repair will not solve e-waste. My opinion is it won't make much of a dent.

I disagree 200%. I've repaired countless phones, TVs, computers and other devices for myself and friends and family, all without help of legislation that would ensure the availability of parts and instructions, and the right to repair would only expand this trend. Most people wouldn't do this themselves even with the right to repair, but they are almost certainly within 2 degrees of separation of someone that would.

You're also looking at this very myopically through a specific tech industry lens and ignoring one of the main motivations of the right to repair: super expensive farm equipment. John Deere has a stranglehold on farmers who tend to be very DIY, and this has been driving up their costs and sometimes even driving them out of business because they can't access service or parts at affordable prices, and they can't repair the devices themselves. Breaking this stranglehold would be huge.

PART 1/2 (I have learned HN has a max comment length):

Please don't misunderstand. I would want something love something like right-to-repair for phones to succeed. I am trying to emphasise that, from an insiders perspective, good warranties are a MUCH better way to achieve most of the same goals.

(apologies in advance for being verbose)

(Please note, I am intentionally using the voice of "the cynical manufacturer", it will sound aggressive, but it is not meant to be aggressive to the poster. I am trying to show how you CANNOT give them even an INCH and right to repair legislation for something like a phone gives too many inches.)

To answer your points:

> "Everything required to replace or repair parts of the device should be fully, clearly and publicly documented, including all discrete part numbers, tools, jigs, etc. Any parts that are manufactured only by the device's manufacturer under patent protection or trade secret must be available for purchase."

No problem:

* Here is a part number: XXX-12345678-FF. It's for a part purchased from a 2nd tier supplier in Taiwan and it's one of a kind. It is now end of life btw so you can't actually purchase it. By the letter of the law, I have met your requirement. Spirit of the law? Well maybe not. Either way, see you in court if you don't like it (and who's going to litigate? the consumer? the government?)

* Did you mean that it should still be purchasable? Well you didn't include that in your legislation but say you do somehow. Now I argue: Don't worry, there's grey market seller in Hong Kong who'll sell them to you for $100 each (original cost was $1 with MOQ 10,000 btw). I have met your requirements.

Still not what you meant I assume? Maybe we legislate: "The manufacturer has to hold enough inventory to supply parts for repairs" Sure ok. Who's paying for keeping this in inventory? Can I on-charge that to the buyer of said spare part? If not, well I guess the phone is going to cost more now because I need to recover that cost. (Bigger warehouses are not free. I also don't keep my own stock, my Contract Manufacturer (CM) in Taiwan does that for me and they'll be charging a fee). Also you didn't specify how long I have to keep this for. I think 1 year + 1 day is fair. Don't like that? See you in court again.

Maybe you now you also legislate "for the reasonable expected life of the product". What's that? I think still it's 1 year + 1 day. See you in court again if you don't like it.

Fine! let's legislate: "... for at least 3 years". Oh I'm sorry, there was an unforseen problem and we went through our inventory-for-repair much faster than expected. There's none left and nobody makes this part anymore. Nobody makes an equivalent either. What now? I hope the customer is entitled to a refund, but (again) you don't have that in your right-to-repair legislation ...

Let's torture this even more: "if for unforseen circumstances manufacturer can no longer supply spare parts, customer will be entitled to a full refund" ...

This sounds awfully like "full repair/replacement warranty of 3 years" but the route you've taken is much more tortured.

> If jigs are required, they must at least fully describe the jig so that people can make their own, if required. Sure thing. Setting aside the fact that jigs can also constitute trade secrets, here is your jig:

* Here is the CAD for the jig you need. We built it for 10k USD because of a bulk discount. Bespoke for you it will probably be 25k USD.

* You also need this air compressor to drive it 2k USD.

* You will need this PXI-e from National Instruments 10k USD.

* That PXI-e needs these two DAQ cards 5k USD each.

* I guess I need to supply the software for that too? For free? Again is that actually fair? What if it has trade secrets? But sure, let's say I have to give it to you for free...

* Well it's NI, you need a license to drive all this stuff and to use the modules we have. 5K USD per year.

So now Joe's Corner Mobile Phone repairs can happily repair your 300 USD phone. He just needs that jig which totals 57k USD BOM and 5K per year on going. But I published it all, he can build it himself. I have met your requirements.

Jigs shouldn't cost that much you say? Well they can and do (and even more). That's the reality. Are you going to ban them? Regulate them too? It's the equivalent of banning / regulating a compiler (ie absolutely absurd).

> You can use glue as long as it can be removed without damaging the device, and the type of glue is documented and available for purchase. I already addressed this in my earlier comment. The easily removable glue is crap. But sure here is the glue part number: GLU-123678-JJ Mfg: GOOD-GLUE-GUYS Btw it's made using a trade secret formula from GOOD-GLUE-GUYS. Do I have to keep it in inventory as well. Or are you going to make GOOD-GLUE-GUYs (who is based outside the US) publish their trade secret formula? We just have the same issue as above. Do I also need to supply to you the special oven for it? Or is the part number enough? (btw that oven weighs 1 ton and is 500k USD, but you got the part number).

> Mandating a level of skill is not necessary. If a repair requires high skill, like desoldering, they can find someone to do that repair, or sell the device to someone willing to do that repair before purchasing a new device. The level of skill required to repair a device will become known, although I'm also not opposed to requiring that be declared up front. If you don't mandate skill requirements, then a manufacturer will just happily NOT make ANY adjustments to make a thing "more-repairable" whatever that means. Example that meets your legislative requirements:

You need to swap the CPU it's a 0.1mm pitch 2048 ball BGA. Here's the part number. Please note: this is a stacked design where the RAM chip (also 2048 balls) is soldered ON TOP of the physical CPU. The practical reality is that few humans on Earth, with very expensive equipment can do this. Joe's Corner Mobile Repairs is not one of them. The reality in manufacturing is that this faulty board would be binned because cost+time+risk means it's not worth it. If it was mega expensive then a fix maybe attempted, either using a very highly skilled technician and an xray afterwards to verify OR the tech removes the part and you run it through the 1-10million USD SMT line with a special program and IF you are very confident in your process engineering you might decide you don't need to xray it. All that said, I have met your requirements as stated in your proposed legislation, but it is of no practical use to you. Perhaps we just swap the whole motherboard? Well you didn't legislate that. Say you do somehow (skill requirements perhaps?), now it's 50% of the cost of a new device because the reality is that that's where most of the cost is. Put on top of that labour at a FAIR price to Joe in his corner repair store in the US and it's just not worth it now. A consumer will just buy a new device (without being compensated by the manufacturer).

Edits: Formatting

PART 2/2:

> Perfect is the enemy of the good. If your phone is a brick and an improper fix makes it useful at a much lower cost than a whole new phone, that's all that matters. Sorry, but your comment just sounds super elitist. Even if only 50% of devices are successfully repaired because they're being done "improperly", that's still a 50% reduction in ewaste.

This is nothing to do with perfect. This is serviced to an acceptable standard. I don't mean to sound elitist, but I make no apology for defending my workers who are like highly trained mechanics that will properly assemble / repair your car. Joe's corner mechanic using cooking oil in your car engine rather than 20-5W is not an acceptable repair IMO. But if cooking oil gets you 50% success in repair and you're happy with that, well all power to you. I don't think most regular people would agree though.

> Then don't. I don't see why the manufacturer should be on the hook to repair a counterfeit.

I should have explained more: These counterfeits in particular (and many of them for modern products) are sooo good WE couldn't tell that they were counterfeit initially. It manifested as a % increase in the number of failures in the field. We thought it was a genuine QA issue and wasted 100s of hours of engineer and QA time and easily tens of thousands of dollars trying to figure this out.

We eventually developed a special jig to tell the difference to deny warranty claims. But issues like this is why manufacturers are and will continue to go hard on protecting their supply chains which normally also means the device is harder to repair especially for an outside party to repair.

Btw, The open documentation of everything for right-to-repair, while laudable, it is something for a fantasy world. Companies will fight tooth and nail to stop that information getting out and the politicians will oblige them. Also, you just gave the counterfeiters the keys to the kingdom for making fakes and fake repair parts. You're not going to "legislate them away" because they're not in the US or any country with decent courts, laws and IP protection.

Closer to home, I am trying to develop my own hardware products. I am a one person team. Now you are going to force me to publish a big chunk of my IP? You've just killed me by counterfeit and giving the keys to the big companies who will squish me. You think I have the money to litigate against a big company? It just means I won't bother. You've just entrenched the big companies even more. Fighting both of these issues requires barriers like lasering off part numbers, spare parts with encryption keys etc. because the problem is THAT big. No it's not a perfect barrier, but just like parking your car in a bad neighbourhood: park next to a better car and have a steering lock so that when the thief comes a long they go for the easier target. It's a stupid cat and mouse game, but it is what it is.

> I disagree 200%. I've repaired countless phones, TVs, computers and other devices for myself and friends and family, all without help of legislation that would ensure the availability of parts and instructions, and the right to repair would only expand this trend. Most people wouldn't do this themselves even with the right to repair, but they are almost certainly within 2 degrees of separation of someone that would.

Again laundable and more power to you but you are super unique and niche. Also I personally don't want your repaired-with-vegetable-oil car engine thank you. Further, you fundamentally cannot repair something for infinite time and the technology for something like a phone moves so fast that that prospect is silly. You are merely delaying the item making it into waste. It's going to end up in landfill eventually. It's MAYBE possible that you will reduce the amount getting in there, which is nice but it doesn't address the fundamental gap in our waste management of e-waste where the ONLY (IMO) proper solution is material recycling to fully close the loop. Yes it will need to subsidised (maybe in an ideal world eventually that won't be needed). But, to me, paying that subsidy is preferable to adding to our debt of biosphere destruction.

Btw, all that stock the manufacturer had to keep for repairing stuff for right-to-repair ... you know where any excess is going when it's not needed AND the accountants can write it off? Straight to landfill. To me, refunding the customer seems preferable.

So again, right-to-repair MIGHT reduce e-waste, it will certainly not eliminate it.

>You're also looking at this very myopically through a specific tech industry lens and ignoring one of the main motivations of the right to repair: super expensive farm equipment. John Deere has a stranglehold on farmers who tend to be very DIY, and this has been driving up their costs and sometimes even driving them out of business because they can't access service or parts at affordable prices, and they can't repair the devices themselves. Breaking this stranglehold would be huge. This is why I caveated my initial post with "won't ever work for something like a consumer phone". Is John Deere one of the main motivations now? That's not what I've observed in media. Maybe that's where it started, but it has grown to encompass many more devices like a mobile phone.

I have many four letter words for John Deere and it is not an industry I have worked in. But again I think a solid, compulsory, no carve outs, warranty would help immensely. Personally I think 25 years is fair for a tractor. Maybe slap in a SLA too like 1 week maximum time to repair. Do that and now you've just made all the issues, with spare part costs, reliability, distribution, inventory, a 3rd party repair network, fabrication by authorised 3rd parties etc. you've made it ALL John Deere's problem. All those managers, lawyers and bean counters will suddenly be driving the engineers and ops people in a direction that (IMO) is fair to the consumer. And don't worry they'll be just fine. They'll rejig those spreadsheets and solve the problem VERY quickly.

They will kick and scream but you've given them very little leeway AND you've given politicians and advocates an easy moral argument: "We think 25 years is fair, especially since there are tractors that are 100+ years old that STILL work just fine."

Edits: Formatting

> won't ever work for something like a consumer phone

Fairphone makes great repairable phones - I own one and couldn't be happier.

Reinforcing this. Yes, it is slightly bulkier than say a Pixel, but for that you get a phone where everything is screwed using standard parts, nothing is glued and the battery can be swapped without any tools. So building a repairable phone is perfectly possible. Yes, it has downsides, but if as a society we really want to go towards less waste, this is the way to go.

Fairphone is a great product and I have a lot of respect for them trying to do what they're doing. But the sad brutal reality is that it's a very niche in the grand scheme of things and won't change things. I equate it a bit to "The year of the Linux Desktop" happening making everything better.

We have to be honest with ourselves about this, recognise how the deck is stacked against us and respond accordingly.

Linux won though :) "the year of the Linux Desktop" is a joke that started over two decades ago to dismiss Linux and OSS as a delusion of a few nerds but now we have Android devices everywhere, every server on earth using it, supercomputers/HPC clusters, game consoles, and even on desktop it keeps growing. Those who were in the FLOSS community back in the late 90s and early 00s probably remember how most people literally laughed at you and would call you crazy just for believing that things could be different.

The idea of a phone that can have its battery easily replaced is several orders of magnitude less crazy in my opinion.

The problem with Fairphone is that the price just isn't right. I get that they don't have enough volume but they should find a way to make it viable at a competitive price otherwise it is useless.

Who cares that it is easier to repair if you can buy 2 similar phones for the same price?

The issue with other phone manufacturers is not that they are inherently hard to repair, even if some phones could use some improvements at the design stage. The issue is that even if you want to repair and have the knowledge/skills to do so, it will be very hard to source correct parts at a worthwhile price.

The big brands are knowingly killing repairability by preventing 3rd party parts in the name of "Intellectual property", parts pairing/locking (with serials/chips) and finally not offering parts at a reasonable price even when they are forced to.

The Apple repair program is a farce precisely because of that, even if you are willing to do the work, it will cost you just as much as it would in an Apple Store just because they sell the parts at a ridiculous price while making it so that you can't get a replacement elsewhere because the phone will not work or have reduced functionality if you don't get a part from them. It is disgusting predatory anti-competitive behavior and buying Fairphones won't solve much of the problem because peoples will still buy iPhone for obvious secondary reasons.

I like less and less this system where we can never aim directly for our goal (reparability in this case), but we must instead trigger some side-effect through complex legislation in order to push our corporate overlords to do what we wanted in the first place, through their greed.

That system is just called capitalism, no? The whole point is to employ greed as a (powerful) motivator to achieve desired outcomes.

I don't see how that's going to work when greed gives a motivation to do the exact opposite of what we want.

Mind, the fact that we have to push for repairability is an issue caused by greed in the first place, as logic would dictate that a good product is designed with durability in mind.

Why do you think that the factor that caused the issue is going to help us solve it?

I would think for most people the goal is some combination of spending less money on gadgets and less environmental impact from gadgets, with repairability just being a means to that end. In which case I would think the commenters proposed suggestion is more direct not less.

> with repairability just being a means to that end.

You know those "prepper" types that use "simple technology" so they can be sure they can survive the nuclear apocalypse? They eschew any and all electronics, then build everything using modern high pressure hydraulic systems with very tight machine tolerances and hoses made from materials that cannot be manufactured without an entire modern industrial supply chain? Their whole rig ends up being not only very inefficient but also does nothing to make the apocalypse more survivable.

In theory building everything with hydraulics is just a means to end of surviving the apocalypse, but deep down, you know they just liked playing with hydraulics (who doesn't--hydraulic machines are cool!) and backed their way into the justification.

The right-to-repairers remind me of those people. They got this idea in their head that repairable electronics equals some combination of eco-cred, lower-cost and fuck-the-man. You can't really reason with them because it's a religious belief. They "just know" that repairable electronics result in cheaper, less e-waste products, and no amount of evidence will ever convince them otherwise.

Their goal is not cheaper, more environmentally-friendly electronics. That's merely the justification. The actual goal is cosplaying electronics repair technician.

How do you propose we avoid the huge waste of resources and pollution caused by the lack of durability of electronics?

Or not we just need more Fairphones and less Samsung.

> The most effective way to approach this problem is known and proven: mandate long (I think 5 years is fair) 100% repair/replace/refund waranty periods with no cost to the consumer (including shipping).

FWIW, this is basically AppleCare+, but of course you pay a small monthly fee for it. Phone breaks, you take it in, they fix it within a day or two no questions asked. It would be great if we lived in the world you're describing, but in the absence of that, I'm content with a low-end iPhone + $3.99 a month insurance.

Why not both?

> I've never had "repairability" raised to me as an engineer.

What kinds of hardware do you engineer exactly? Tons of companies have repair technicians on staff. I'm sure every datacenter in the world has individuals frequently swapping faulty parts out of servers, and those servers are often designed to keep that kind of maintenance from being a chore.

It's one thing if you're talking about board level repair, but part swapping is something that end users do by themselves all the time. I've certainly swapped phone batteries before. I've helped friends replace their cracked screens.

In fairness however, for products that are being engineered for portability first there is certainly a case to be made for keeping things compact at the expense of reparability. That certainly doesn't explain away the behavior of companies that deliberately hinder repairs by blocking replacement parts, or making replacement parts impossible to obtain. That NEEDS to be illegal, and that is a big part of what right to repair is about.

> I've never had "repairability" raised to me as an engineer.

Yeah, that sounds like the real problem from the engineering side of things.

If the business types did decide it was a priority, and told you to figure it out, I'm pretty sure you would. :)

Mass market engineering (of any kind) always steers towards producing cheapest products possible as long they're still tolerably functional. In other words, the cheapest crapjob of a bugfest wins as long as its happy path still works well enough that consumers still consume, keeping the money flowing. There are no sustainable mass (large and non-specialized) markets for high-quality high-complexity products, they consistently spawn then get killed by competition from all the cheap junk.

How's the proposed 5 years 100% repair/replace/refund warranty is going to fix this core problem, rather than just generate more e-waste that's meant to get even more frequently replaced (as mandated by law, where now you're just told to fuck off) as it fails? Sure, some most glaring issues are probably going to get fixed, but the overall principle suggests that it's more likely cheap junk will get even more cheaper - cheaper to replace - than reliable, with more customer-hostile junk attached (ads to cover the costs, killing interop to sell licenses, etc), continuing the enshittification.

I strongly suspect that it'll primarily affect the money flows, not the product qualities.

Also I feel like repairing is often not the most efficient way to correct a problem with someone's phone. The "right to repair" movement was focused on one of the least inherently repairable things people own.

I would rather have a phone that lasts 1 year though, I don't want to pay extra for one that lasts 5 years. Why should it be illegal to build phones for people like me who upgrade more frequently than every 5 years (and most Americans, median is 2.5 years)?

Why five years? I have plenty of consumer electronics including phones, tablets, laptops, and computers that keep on trucking well past five years. Why should anything be turned into junk until it's absolutely necessary?

The point is, I OWN the device. It's mine. If I can find someone with the expertise to keep it running past its intended life, that should be looked at favorably. But Apple, Samsung, and many other companies are actively preventing feasible repairs based on unreasonable and arbitrary cooked-up "company policies." Attaching serial numbers to parts and making them inoperable until they're blessed by the manufacturer is a racket and everyone knows it.

If I can manage to keep my iPad working as a photo frame for another 40 years, how does that hurt anyone?

> Why five years? I have plenty of consumer electronics including phones, tablets, laptops, and computers that keep on trucking well past five years. Why should anything be turned into junk until it's absolutely necessary?

I picked five years half arbitrarily and half what I think is fair. Perhaps what most people think is fair is a lower or higher number.

> The point is, I OWN the device. It's mine. If I can find someone with the expertise to keep it running past its intended life, that should be looked at favorably.

Why as a company owner should I have to support the chance of you wanting to repair your device in 10 years? I have another big post in two parts where I try to illustrate that it's just not practical technologically and legally => it's why I proposed good long warranties. You just cannot give these companies an inch. Right-for-repair legislation will just be messy and give them too many inches to weasel out of it.

> But Apple, Samsung, and many other companies are actively preventing feasible repairs based on unreasonable and arbitrary cooked-up "company policies." Attaching serial numbers to parts and making them inoperable until they're blessed by the manufacturer is a racket and everyone knows it.

This will be harsh, and probably unpopular on HN, but in ALMOST all cases these steps are not put in to prevent repairability. Nobody cares about repairability. This is not some romantic fight of the big evil company screwing the little guy out of repairability. Repairability doesn't register on the radar. They don't care. These measures are taken to protect the supply chain against counterfeit parts and counterfeit products because they have a brand to protect. It's as simple as that.

> If I can manage to keep my iPad working as a photo frame for another 40 years, how does that hurt anyone?

It doesn't. I'm not sure why you think I implied it does sorry.

Edits: Spelling and formatting

And there's the down votes. I sincerely ask the downvoters to please read my other lengthy posts on this subject in this thread.

Samsung is just consistently frustrating. Their hardware for consumer electronics (not appliances) is generally pretty good in my experience, but the attitudes they take towards their customers via this planned obsolescence and software/dark pattern "shove it down your throat and you better like it" hostile crap.

I've fundamentally had to change how I work with my phone because of garbage like "just save all the clipboard history, too bad if you don't want that" and "here you'd better like a dedicated button to Bixby" and now "LOOK WE HAVE AI NOW ON YOUR PHONE" as well as being one of the most egregious in the TV data thieving.

›› "just save all the clipboard history, too bad if you don't want that"

I feel your pain. If you accept a bandaid: change the samsung keyboard to a FOSS keyboard without internet connectivity. The clipboard still exists, at least you can't see it.

A better bandaid would be tasker to flush the keyboard everytime you copy something

That's mostly what I did, yes. This is helpful advice. Password managers like Android Keepass also have non-clipboard functionality in keyboards they provide.

Do newer models not let you remap the "Bixby button" to something else? On my Note 10 I changed it to open the camera, but... it's a Note 10 from 2020, so that may have changed since.

S23 ultra here

You can totally remap it

You can use another keyboard

You have to look very hard to find the AI (the only use i have for it is delete some objects from a photo and that takes a few tries)

You can literally solve everything in a few minutes

What if I don't want to deal with these problems in the first place

Buy another phone?

Buy an iPhone and you don't have to ever wonder if you CAN change something

Yup. Don’t like siri? Go kick rocks.

You can disable Siri entirely, as far as the voice interface.

You have to enable Siri for carplay, which is really obnoxious.

Does this comment mean to say that you can change anything or that you can't? IIRC there are quite a few things locked down on an iPhone that require you to jailbreak it if you want to customize it, but I haven't been in the iPhone space for a long time now so please forgive my naivety.

Yes, that's what i meant.

"With an Android if you have a shitty "feature" usually you can just change it"

I have a samsung and everything is custom, nothing but the setting menu is Samsung at this point on my phone.

And my choice was dictated only by the hardware in the Android ecosystem (i wanted the S pen)

On an iPhone you can customize very little, the homepage alone would make me furious.

They're not problems. It's a customizable device to this extent, and you have preferences, so just change the settings. The alternative is that you cannot do anything about it.

Glad to know they didn't remove the customizable button then :) I plan on squeezing as much life out of my Note 10 as I can but I know its number will come soon enough.

Two other data points: I had the note 9, and the button wasn't customizable (you could disable the app and tweak some other things to keep the button from doing anything, but you couldn't remap it, that was new in the note 10.) And having upgraded to the S24 ultra... there's no button any more, just power + volume. (As shipped, the power button does some bixby nonsense, but it's a couple of clicks to make it do power again, and camera on double-click, like it did on all of the previous models.)

S24 doesn't have the bixby button at all.

My Note 9 screen just broke.... :(

I want a flagship with headphone jack please.

Samsung's skin for android is actually incredibly customizable (to the point you can individually pick color for each UI element separately), as well as including quite a few QoL upgrades that are missing on stock android.

But ye, you have to deal with some sub-optimal 'out-of-the-box' experience and privacy isn't really there (though let's be honest, on stock android google also look at your hands constantly)

I stopped buying Samsung phones a while ago when they made them impossible to unlock and install custom roms.

You can still remove all the Samsung crap, install your favorite launcher, and use Fdroid. This is what I do and couldn't be happier with a debloated Note.

https://github.com/0x192/universal-android-debloater

This is exactly why I have a Pixel now

My impression is this is gradually going by the wayside for all brands, and that's not just on the manufacturer support side but also the breadth of custom roms available to different brands/models. The exception is if you get a Pixel which has 'top tier' support for custom roms and then there's a sharp falloff. Past that point you're into "your mileage may vary" territory with how much feature support is retained or degraded by the rom, and if you're bothered if banking apps require a phone with play integrity or playing hide and seek to pretend it's unaltered.

This is likely just my perspective, but it seems that there's less to be gained from custom roms in recent years anyway as smartphones have matured and the rated of change has slowed. Plus there has been a trend among some brands to offer longer OS support lifecycles, of which Samsung seems to be one of the best for android.

Smartphones in my life are gradually going by the wayside at a similar rate. I don't have time for computers that fight me by design.

> My impression is this is gradually going by the wayside for all brands

That's my impression as well, and is precisely why my current smartphone will be my last smartphone.

OnePlus used to be the king for custom roms, then they just completely abandoned allowing them. Even if the community was small, I really do think the halo effect of the power users attracted to their brand was more important than they gave credit to it, which is why I think they are not doing so well anymore.

Only in the US it seems. Non-US models usually have no issue with bootloader unlocking and the custom ROM scene is usually pretty active.

It may trip an e-fuse though, causing some features to be disabled forever. But unfortunately that's the direction Android has taken over the years. Getting stuff like banking to work on a non-stock phone is getting more and more annoying, even for the most hacker-friendly phones. I have stopped with custom ROMs, too much hassle for a daily driver, smartphones are not fun anymore, they are more like appliances than general purpose computers.

I left Android for Apple precisely because I could not stop myself from playing with custom ROMs. I had too many better things to do with my life. Android was fine, but iOS is less distracting.

Side question, are Samsung Electronics and Samsung Appliances really like 2 different companies under a Samsung umbrella in SK or are they actually the same company with employees being able to be assigned / move from group to group? Same question for LG I suppose.

Samsung is a gigantic conglomerate of hundreds of companies. They also make cars, houses, entertainment, healthcare services, chemicals and of course, yes, shipbuilding.

In the occidental world, we only see a small portion of the iceberg.

So I’d say it’s pretty unlikely that employees are frequently assigned from group to group. Maybe it’s possible as a big career change but even that seems unlikely.

When I visited South Korea some years ago, I took a delightful photograph of bag of Samsung-branded kimchi.

I wonder if it would go well with some Volkswagen sausage.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_currywurst

You mean Bibigo?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol

A chaebol (UK: /ˈtʃeɪbəl, ˈtʃeɪbɒl/ CHAY-bəl, CHAY-bol, US: /ˈtʃeɪboʊl, ˈdʒɛbəl/ CHAY-bohl, JEB-əl;[3] Korean: 재벌 [tɕɛbʌɭ] ⓘ, lit. 'rich family' or 'financial clique') is a large industrial South Korean conglomerate run and controlled by an individual or family. A chaebol often consists of multiple diversified affiliates, controlled by a person or group. Several dozen large South Korean family-controlled corporate groups fall under this definition. The term first appeared in English text in 1972.

The intensity and extent of market concentration became evident as 80% of the country's GDP is derived from chaebols. The largest of the group, Samsung, exports 20% of South Korea's goods and services alone. Although no longer financially supported by the government, these firms have attained economies of scale on such a massive level that it is extremely difficult for a startup or small or medium enterprise (SME) to surmount the high barriers to entry.

Similar to LG, is that correct?

I have no clue that's why I'm asking.

Yep. It's a Chaebol.

Antitrust really isn't a thing in Asia, so horizontal and vertical integration is extremely common.

Most Asian countries based their corporate structures on Japan's Zaibatsus and Keiretsus.

LG and Samsung are separate chaebols.

Ik. OP asked if it's "similar" to LG and I explained why - because it's a Chaebol like LG, Lotte, CJ (used to be part of Samsung), Hyundai, etc.

Similar =/= Same

Ah, I misread it because it's a common misconception. My apologies!

No worries! Kinda surprised that people would assume LG and Samsung are the same company

It's common enough to be asked often enough:

https://www.quora.com/Is-LG-a-part-of-Samsung

I think people are mixing up the Hyundai/Kia situation (where the former does own a significant portion of the latter) via second-hand recall.

No, they are both competitive chaebols (a Korean form of conglomerate).

Yes with "similar" I did not mean that they were part of one entity.

I was just thinking about them being large and strongly present in many different business sectors.

So a conglomerate I guess. Thanks

Yeah, I misread it. My apologies.

Interesting, I'd never heard the word `chaebols` and instantly was reminded of the word `cabal`. Turns out, completely different etymologies.

> They also make cars

Not anymore, Samsung Motors is now a part of Renault. Samsung retains a minority share of the operation.

I was on the Samsung Bixby team as part of Samsung Electronics / Samsung Research America and we did work with the various appliance teams. I've never noticed a difference between "companies" when I was working with the teams at the Korean HQ (and some of them also visited us in the bay area as well). Not sure if the appliance teams were part of Samsung Electronics or not.

As someone that prefers Android, it really is hard to pick a new phone...

* Apple: You're getting iOS. Take it or leave it.

* Google: OK hardware (maybe that's being generous). iFixit parts available. Hopefully you can make 911 calls in an emergency [1].

* Samsung: Great hardware. Good luck getting something repaired if you need it though. OK software.

* Everyone else: You get maybe two years of security updates.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37714579

I basically seem to waffle back and forth between Pixel or Galaxy phones depending on the year.

I wanted to like iPhone bit I tried it for a 2y period and it was just too different and I ended up going back to Android.

I switched back and forth for a few generations and came to the opposite conclusion. I bought a Samsung phone because I thought it had a better camera than the matching generation of iPhones. Turned out the camera app itself was inferior and I didn’t like the processing of the photos. I also hated the duplicate Samsung/Google apps and that it forced horrific things like having a Facebook app and other carrier-installed things onto my phone.

> * Everyone else: You get maybe two years of security updates.

Fairphone attempts to deliver (also security) updates for quite a long time.

Bought a Fairphone very recently, it's a bit thick, but other than that, it's supported for a long time and repairable. And it seems to work just fine :-)

Or ditch the smartphone entirely, get some variety of robust dumbphone, and work that out in your life.

I have a Sonim XP3+, running Android 11 Go, I think, but it's just a rugged dumbphone. Waterproof, drop resistant up to some very reasonable distance, and "generally indestructible" for most reasonable and quite a few unreasonable values of that term.

It's good for calls, and texting. And the occasional hotspot use. I carry a decade old laptop for other stuff I need, and use the car's GPS if needed, though since giving up on smartphone maps some while ago, my internal navigation is way better than it used to be.

Irritatingly, US carriers all went to VoLTE at about the same time, turning quite a few perfectly good older devices into ewaste, but I'm hopeful VoLTE works for a long while, and I have a decade or so before I have to think about a cell phone again.

And, yes, I know that "I couldn't possibly do that for..." reason lists are long. Try it. If nobody resists "having a modern smartphone and being willing to install any random app someplace demands you install," that will be the future we get. I can't even scan QR codes. Life is good!

I've never met an in-car GPS navigation system that was half as good as what I get with Google or Apple Maps through CarPlay.

And these days car manufacturers are starting to charge a subscription service for it. GM is even going as far as to take CarPlay out of their new cars just to push customers to that subscription.

I honestly don't really care. I don't use it much. I'm far more likely to bring a (paper) notebook with directions, and that's been working well for me with overview maps beforehand. Yes, it's exercising mental stuff I hadn't used in a while, but it's been worth the effort and occasional "... wait, where am I?" to regain those skills, I think.

I've considered pretty hard picking up a standalone TomTom unit to have newer maps on - the car's maps are a decade old and this is at least occasionally a problem finding newer subdivisions, but I can get close to where I need to be and follow my hand-written directions the rest of the way.

New cars are... a problem. I don't want (rather, "won't buy") a "connected car" sort of thing unless I can disable the cell modem entirely before I leave the lot. I do not want a cell phone on wheels, and this is unfortunately what the automakers seem to have decided to ship, complete with "Buggy? Don't worry, we'll patch it later!"

I'm probably good for about a decade on the current fleet before this becomes a pressing issue, and at that point, hopefully either the absurdity will have subsided, or I'll just do my own work on older vehicles or an EV conversion on some classic chassis. Toyota, at least, seems to have a path for "Seriously, turn off the cell modem..." and a few other cars have a fuse you can pull to kill the cell modem and a few other things. I don't mind if I kill Bluetooth, as long as there's an aux-in I can hook something up to (even if that's a little standalone BT receiver as I have in the car now).

So what do you do when your plans change mid-trip, and you need to go somewhere else you've never been to and didn't know to look up directions for ahead of time?

> And, yes, I know that "I couldn't possibly do that for..." reason lists are long. Try it.

I've tried it for a burner phone for international travel, and it turns out that even though I'm a very light user of phone messaging, I find T9 texting exceptionally unpleasant to use. (I never used T9 in its heyday, and find smartphone virtual keyboards unpleasant in the best of cases.) I already do 99% of my messaging at my PC, but sometimes need to message someone on the go.

Now I've just been using my previous primary phone for international travel.

Though I'd probably be okay with a dumb phone with a slider keyboard.

Xiaomi claims five years of security updates for upper range models that came out last year. Specifically I am thinking about Xiaomi 13T which a couple of my friends use. Their newer phones no longer allow unlocking the bootloader, though.

I've been using a five year old hand-me-down 9T and it was recently updated to Android 14 with security patch from May this year. (Thanks to Lineage, of course — the official support ended in 2021).

Xiaomi ran an obvious wiretap on the phone's network activity when I last looked [start of 2022].

Google:

/storage/emulated/0/MIUI/debug_log/common/tcpdump

I'm stuck on Pixels because of GrapheneOS. Storage/contact scopes, sensors permission, network permission, hardening, auto-reboot, scrambled PIN entry... everything about GrapheneOS screams "WE LOVE AND RESPECT YOU, DEAR USER! GOD SPEED ON YOUR VOYAGE!"

The OEM Android images out there just scream "GIMMIE GIMMIE GIMMIE!" to me like they see my data and wallet as natural resources to pump and mine!

I switched from Samsung Galaxy (first S, then S3) to OnePlus years back, and I've been a happy camper.

I currently have an OnePlus 9, I've heard no so good (compared to previous) reviews of their newer models, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there. My current phone has been running great for multiple years, minimal bloatware, would recommend.

I have a recent OnePlus and it's been excellent. I like it even more than the older ones I had, which is directionally quite different than my experience with Apple and Samsung.

Yeah, I'm honestly afraid to buy a new phone with all the horror stories. I still have my OnePlus 6T, Oxygen is fine but it seems like the ROM scene isn't what it use to be.

I have the 10 pro and although the camera is definitely an improvement over the 5 I used to own, the overall performance is about the same. I still have my 5, and use it a lot for POS stuff and it's great still. I even have a OnePlus 1 around and it still works decently although it struggles a little with some apps. That's a TEN year old phone.

I bought a Motorola G73 5G a few months ago, paid $160 for the 256GB variant including 25% VAT.

Compared to my primary phone, Samsung S21, it's a ridiculous amount of phone for the money.

But I find the default Google apps to be quite limited compared to Samsungs offerings. Google's calculator app has no unit conversion and a very bare-bones "scientific" mode. Google's file app has no way to search for files containing special characters, while Samsung's can do that just fine by using \ to escape the character.

I don't have a SIM in the Motorola as I just use it around the house, other is "work phone", so haven't tested the phone and messaging parts yet, but I recall Samsung were better there too several years ago when my SO had a Sony or something phone.

But yeah, seriously considering getting something else next time around.

> Google's calculator app has no unit conversion and a very bare-bones "scientific" mode.

Surely there are untold many suitable calculator apps on Google Play or F-Droid?

But to find one which doesn't suck and has no ads? Possible, but I'd have to spend time on such a trivial thing.

This one

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.nickfine...

Exactly the same. I had to install a script which overwrites my clipboard completely twice a day. I just hate having all the stuff I copied there forever...

And I went ahead and deleted any unwanted apps via adb, at least that was smoother than I expected.

After that the phone is actually nicely usable.

> I had to install a script which overwrites my clipboard completely twice a day.

Would you have any tips you could share on how to do that?

Sure, I use "Macro Droid" and I have a single macro with 12h interval (trigger).

The macro is set as follows:

1. Repeat 35 times

2. Fill Clipboard with [second][system_time]

3. Wait 1 second

4. End loop

Let me know if that helps!

Making the power button a dedicated physical hotkey for Bixby is one of the most egregious things I've ever seen on a phone.

For people that don’t know about the TV data thing:

Samsung openly admits to taking screenshots of whatever is being displayed on your TV at regular intervals, collecting this to their data centres, and selling this to advertisers.

NEVER use any Samsung consumer electronics device for working with sensitive data such as using a TV as a monitor!

Vizio did this too.

I have a total ban on Samsung products due to what you describe plus their complete disregard for user privacy. They are labeled as user hostile the same way Windows is. It will take them years of flawless behavior to convince me to change my mind.

You can change that buttons behavior.

Not that it's a good feature, just an FYI

There are several way different groups are viewing right to repair

Consumer: right to repair means fixing my broken display will be a DIY job for $50? Sweet!

Repair shop: right to repair means I can source a display from lowest bidder, charge $150 for broken screen, and make $120 in profit? Let’s go!

Apple: right to repair means you must buy $275 display module to fix a broken display. So we can keep some nice nice profit.

Samsung seems to be there with Apple. Looking at the price of display module I am worried iFixit is also there with Apple. And iFixit and Samsung couldn’t find a good split on who gets to keep the profits.

It is crazy that an iPhone display module from iFixit appears to cost more than Apple 1st party repair.

Based on the post, the high price of parts from iFixit was Samsung's fault.

And to be fair high end samsung phones have the best display in the market, period.

I would really dubt thwt they sell the best stuff to Apple (possible but...)

Apple only uses old cheap technology. They resisted putting OLEDs in the iPhone for many years.

The high price is probably just reality. Samsung's display assemblies have always been expensive. I've seen the real inventory values back in the Note 6 era, and the component cost at repair time. Repair services were probably getting a few dollars from their markup. I'm not even sure the the consumer facing part of their repair operations was profitable. It seemed like most of the focus was on bulk refurbishment where they rebuilt hundreds of $model at once.

Building a 500ppi 120Hz AMOLED display with a hole punched in it, and bonded perfectly to fancy glass is just expensive.

i think the point is that you start with repairability from the start, otherwise you are just reverse engineering how to take it apart.

I'm skeptical that you could design a repairability-first phone without introducing more ways for it to break in the first place.

I realize that I'm a non-central example of a phone customer, but I'd be more than willing to give up thinness for more repairability, and I loathe hole punch/cutout screens, so I would actively pay more money to get the simpler rectangular screen, which would presumably come with ease of repair benefits (assuming that were an option. Unfortunately, it appears that almost no one except Sony still makes rectangle displays for phones anymore).

It's absoultely true that making a phone more repairable comes with tradeoffs. Thinness being the most obvious one, but It's also likely true that a truly repairable phone would be more expensive.

I do not think that performance, reliability, or longevity are necessary tradeoffs though.

In a moment of reflection, transpose that idea to cars or planes. Commercial aircraft fly for 30 years or more, (with some flying since WW2) because they are repairable, not despite the fact that they are repairable.

The case could also be made for consumer white goods.

Let's not confuse enshitification with reliability.

Nobody wants a phone with the utilization rate or maintenance cost proportional to a commercial airliner.

They do not "fly for 30 years": they fly for a few thousand hours a year at most, amidst hundreds of man-hours of maintenance. A high level of repairability is a requirement for them to even operate for their intended purpose.

Phones are not aircraft. (Or cars, etc.)

Let's deconstruct that take.

> They do not "fly for 30 years": they fly for a few thousand hours a year at most, amidst hundreds of man-hours of maintenance.

By 2021, N309US, a Delta Air Lines Airbus A320, had flown 89,638 hours in 31 years. That's an average of 2891 hours per year, or just short of 8 hours per day, every day, over 31 years.

The mean-time between overhaul of a CFM56 aircraft engine is 10,000 hours. Or, if you would drive at an average of 60 km/h, 600,000 kilometers. And that's for one of the most highly stressed part of an aircraft.

> Nobody wants a phone with the utilization rate or maintenance cost proportional to a commercial airliner.

So, to hit the same utilization rate as N309US, you would need to use your shiny iPhone 8 hours a day, every day of the year. Good luck with that.

> Phones are not aircraft.

Indeed. As we just discovered, they have a long, long, long way to go to come anywhere close.

Your examples confirm what I said. Your "30 year" aircraft spends 2/3rds of that time literally not functioning as an aircraft.

As for my "shiny iPhone" (I don't use an iPhone) and "Good luck" using it 8 hours a day: I don't understand the hostility or how you've arrived at the belief that 8 hours a day is a long time for a phone to operate. My unremarkable phone reports a current uptime of 180 hours. You're suggesting that being unusable for 16+ hours a day is the norm, but here on Earth, if phones routinely stopped working as phones for more than a few minutes a week people would riot.

The point is that there are different kinds of machines in the world with different constraints and demands in their designs, and different operating models for how they are used. You seem to be trying to make a better/worse argument out of things share practically nothing in common and it doesn't work at all.

iFixit parts are expensive because they offer top notch service and quality control, at least in my experience. I bought a couple of parts from them, and was always very happy. The fix kits are fantastic. Once a package was lost, they just sent it again (i ended up receiving it twice).

I've bought parts from other websites, and while they were cheaper, they were not always good quality. A battery seemed to have way less capacity than the oem part, screwdriver bits were so soft they broke on first use, etc.

It sucks that spare parts are so expensive. All those supply chain optimisations don't work if you need to keep parts stocked all over the world....

This is obviously anecdotal: I keep wanting to support iFixit and I still come back to them despite their increased cost + shipping compared to Amazon because I believe in good QC from a reputable company and I believe in their mission.

Unfortunately I have been burned twice. First iPod batteries: They seems like they are sitting around forever and are of the same quality as what you'd find on Amazon (they look the same as well).

Secondly I was super excited for their magnetic mat with marker. All the youtubers were promoting it and I snatched it up despite it seeming quite pricy for what you get. The marker failed after 1-2 uses. In both the iPod battery + marker case, they were willing to ship replacements but it takes time and is a hassle and by then the enthusiasm is gone. I walked away thinking what did I pay extra for?

Also after using their toolkits for a while, I don't consider their tools top tier quality anymore, just middle of the road and does not seem worth the price (maybe during their black friday deals it is more palatable).

I've had the same impression, unfortunately. You have to like them because of their dedication to the mission, and they've achieved a lot. But I bought a laptop battery from them that didn't last long at all, and (at least at first) their bit sets stripped themselves on first use, and the spudgers might as well have been made out of butter.

Sounds like they're well into the "cost optimisation" phase. ie. replace good quality manufactured products with inferior quality stuff

Hi Nebula8804,

Sorry to hear about these problems! We stand behind our products, and have the lowest return rate in the industry. We treat quality like a ratchet: when we identify problems, we fix them and implement processes to keep it from happening again. I'm constantly challenging the team to raise quality bar for ourselves and the products we sell.

Sometimes lightning strikes twice, and I apologize. I understand the hassle. If you give us the chance to make it right, we will.

Can you suggest some better tools? I struggle to find good tools.

> Looking at the price of display module I am worried iFixit is also there with Apple

They mentioned in the article that one of the reasons they ended the partnership with Samsung was over the high cost of repair parts.

On the subject of replacement parts cost vs total Apple 1st party repair cost, a recent video I watched by UK YouTuber "Mrwhosetheboss" did a comparison of cost, turnaround time and other aspects between three different iPhone repair options and highlighted some of the dynamics at play:

* "Phone repairs are getting ridiculous - Here's why.": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oreZytDYoEU

From my admittedly biased outside perspective, the repair process he experienced (and previous coverage by multiple other outlets about "DIY repair with official Apple tools") certainly strongly suggests that Apple is trying to do as little as possible in terms of pricing & availability to support 3rd party or DIY repairs to meet their legal/PR obligations.

So, if official 1st party parts pricing isn't competitive with total 1st party repair cost I'm going to assume it's intentionally obstinate behaviour and that the blame lies wholly at Apple's feet.

> It is crazy that an iPhone display module from iFixit appears to cost more than Apple 1st party repair.

Probably because Apple is selling it to them with a sizeable markup?

> Repair shop: right to repair means I can source a display from lowest bidder, charge $150 for broken screen, and make $120 in profit? Let’s go!

This is a pretty hostile take. A more generous take would be that repair shops can consistently source quality parts without skirting the law, allowing them to compete with manufacturers on service, turnaround time, and possibly even price.

Don't forgot the recent Samsung repairman incident where the guy cut a customers tv with a box cutter, then claimed the customer did it. Just to avoid having to fulfill the customers warranty claim:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyWlACuhqNg

Pity for them that it was all clearly captured on camera.

I don't have sound right now, why is Louis Rossmann talking 8 minutes about Tinder?

No idea. I moved on to other things when that started. :)

The Right to Repair people remind me a lot of the Free Software people. Which is to say, fundamentally correct, but struggling to get consumers to care enough to influence purchasing decisions.

I don't have the answer to this, but somehow getting consumers to factor in repairability is going to be key to creating the kind of leverage that can drive real change in the industry.

IMO phones are the area I care about repair the least. By the time the phone is 5~ years old, I’m going to want the new one anyway. Where repairs would be much more useful is general household appliances where the model 20 years ago was just as good if not better than the one today. I’m never going to want to upgrade my blender, but when the plastic parts snap, I want it to be easy to get a replacement.

With a phone from 5 years ago sure it’s feeling its age, but that number keeps going up as the functional differences between each phone generation shrinks.

Replacing the battery on year 3 makes a huge difference in how long you would want to keep a phone around for.

And if the maker offers a free service to replace the battery with the purchase, I'm okay with it. Would it be nice to remove the battery to keep "them" from listening? Probably, but "they" are still listening through the TV, the laptops, and that chip in the back of my mouth so, meh

TV (fixed) the laptops (fixed), and that chip in the back of my mouth so (erm...)

I still failed because some moron gifted an echo 5 to someone who refuses to let it go.

I have a Windows Phone and it’s a decade old. Very outside the norm to still use it, but phones can last a long time from a hardware perspective if they’re allowed too.

My 830’s saving grace has been the ease of changing batteries. If the battery was internal I’d have tossed it years ago.

Does it still get software updates? Not just the apps, but also the operating system. If not, you definitely should not use it anymore.

Not only because of security issues in software, but also because of possibly revoked certificates. And newer, safer, web protocols. Also strange if your bank still supports it.

Hardware might be fine when it comes to being speedy enough, but may also have issues.A digital device still working is just not good enough anymore.

It doesn’t get updates, but I’m not overly concerned. It’s running WP10 and security would be a bigger concern if any apps supported it to begin with.

I don’t bank on my phone beyond checking my balance with SMS. If I need to actually move money around I’d rather do it on my computer.

The phone is used for calling, texting, mp3s, the weather, the calendar/reminders, and very occasional maps. I do have my gmail setup via imap with is probably the biggest risk I actually take.

I’ve written half a dozen of my own programs for specific things I need, but otherwise there’s nothing installed.

I know there’s some risk but I’m well aware of it and accept it.

I just replace a OnePlus6T from 2018 with a brand new Pixel 8 and I regret it.

The 6T had the latest LineageOS and the P8 has GrapheneOS. Both have the latest Android but there's nothing on the Pixel that's better than the OnePlus.

6 years and no noticeable differences in terms of battery, performance, screen, ergonomy, etc.

I should have stuck with the old one but I was convinced things were still progressing. My bad.

To be fair the OnePlus 6T was an actual flagship of its time while the pixel 8 isn't. It's more of a midrange phone.

It launched at $549. So basically the same price after inflation. If the tier of the Pixel is lower, that's a problem not an excuse.

I'm talking about flagship HW, not price. Price can be whatever it has nothing to do with the HW.

I know. But it's all connected.

It not being a flagship gives them 2 forgiveness points for the lack of performance. But it not being a flagship also gives them 4 demerit points because they're charging as much as a flagship.

Unless the level of "flagship" is higher than it used to be, in which case it's okay that it's not a flagship, but then "not a flagship" stops being an excuse for mediocre performance.

They can't eat the "not a flagship" cake and have it too. Both interpretations are bad for them.

Have you checked recent flagship prices? Google isn't charging anywhere near that for the pixel 8. You're thinking about 2017 OnePlus prices but that ship has long sailed.

I'm not sure what you're arguing here. It sounds like you're saying that flagship tier is a higher tier than it used to be.

But in that case, Pixel 8 is one tier below flagship, so it should be on the same tier as a 2018 flagship. Especially since the price is so close. But if it met the same standard, then a model 6 years newer would be much faster, so it's failing pretty badly.

Unless you're saying I shouldn't expect performance improvements for phones that are only high tier? I don't see why that would be the case.

Or maybe you're saying that flagship tier is the same, but it got far more expensive for no benefit? That option makes Google look the worst of all, and definitely isn't a "to be fair" defense.

I just want to add that security updates do matter.

I agree with everything.

Replacing the battery on a phone would make sense if it was easy to do. But I can't get reasonable phones with a back that comes off intentionally to replace a modular battery. Which means I'm paying someone to unglue the back, replace the battery, and reglue the back. Their time costs money, so I'm thinking ~ $50 for the battery and ~ $50 for their time, plus my time to get there and back and wait, and I'm halfway to a $200 phone that's going to be way better than my 3 year old $200 phone.

I don't like how disposable everything is, but labor costs to repair are huge. I just got rid of a van because of a failed head gasket, because it's too much work to get to the not that expensive part.

I find the time it takes to swap to a new phone is significantly longer than the time it takes to get a new battery. Making a battery swap a net time save.

I really want to figure out compiling GrapheneOS for post-EOL pixels. Yeah yeah firmware insecurity, but by failing to make it available (call it CarbonOS?) the older pixels don't get the OTHER big graphene features that alternatives lack!

I'd love it if iPhone SE 2016 still got updates. I don't care about the speed, just want Voice/SMS/Music run banking and other low consumption apps.

It's still my dedicated MP3 player.

It does. But not beyond iOS 15. Most recent update: 15.8.2 a couple of months ago. Personally I'm really impressed that Apple is still supporting an 8-year-old phone and it's probably the main thing that has been tempting me to jump ship from Android for a while. (Though it seems like Android might be better on this in future.)

It's still my dedicated phone.

Works quite well mostly still.

Why not yours if you don't have very high expectations?

You'd be in the minority I think. Judging by the number of phone screen repair shops and what not I see, phone repair is one of the things that people really want. And that's just screen repairs, and not the numerous other things people generally talk about getting fixed.

On the flip side, you are the first person I know of talking about about repairing your blender, and I've never seen a blender repair shop. Larger home appliances, sure, but blenders?

I'm not saying you are wrong to prioritize these things. Just pointing out that you are an outlier.

Small appliance repair is/used to be a thing, remember TV repair shops? Vacuum repair shops I still see around occasionally.

Problem is people buy a $25 hamilton beach blender that doesn't make any financial sense to repair but makes huge amounts of sense as an initial purchase. If you buy a $500 vitamix, you can keep it running forever with new parts, but that's the same price as 20 of the cheap blender. And blender technology isn't really advancing at a huge rate compared to, say, cell phones.

> And blender technology isn't really advancing at a huge rate

That's part of it, but also the vitamix and hamilton beach really have quite different capabilities. For most peoples usage, it doesn't matter much, but the vitamix (at least the core one) show their commercial kitchen background.

The real problem is that there isn't anything much between the $25 one and the $350 one. From a technical point of view, there isn't any reason someone couldn't produce a $90 one that was robust and repairable but less powerful etc. than the vitamix. I dont' think i've ever seen one - if you do find a $90 one it's essentially the $25 one in a fancier looking shell.

The market, as they say, has spoken. In most cases you are better off going for commercial suppliers if you want longer life, repairability, etc., but often the only things on offer there are way overkill for e.g. a home kitchen.

Small appliance repair is alive and well in parts of the world where it is easy to access parts supply close to the source (i.e. you are paying roughly small batch wholesale prices).

> I dont' think i've ever seen one - if you do find a $90 one it's essentially the $25 one in a fancier looking shell.

I think this is a huge problem. If you don't know a good brand (or can't trust the brand), why risk the $350 one when you can buy 14x $25 ones for the same cost and maybe get lucky?

Take the humble toaster for example. Are there some nice, well built, repairable ones that can (possibly) make the toast of angels? Sure, I've heard good things about Dualit[1]. But I bought a generic Black and Decker toaster for $15 over 20 years ago and it continues to work just fine. I would have had to replace that toaster roughly every 3.5 years in order to get over the cost of the cheapest Dualit toaster. It's not fancy and not consistent, but it is functional, and I can more or less guarantee that walmart will be selling it or a similar item for decades. Buying a more expensive "repairable" toaster from a small brand is just a risk that doesn't make a lot of sense, even before you factor in that repair shop labor is going to be in the $40-50/hr range.

[1]: https://www.dualit.com/collections/toasters

Phone screens are pretty easy to repair though. You just drop it off at the Apple Store and they do it for you. Yes it’s expensive, but the screen is the biggest and probably the hardest to manufacture part on the phone so it’s going to be expensive.

Yeah it would be nice if Apple provided in depth repair guides and sold individual chips for cheaper repairs, but realistically I don’t think it’s going to change all that much vs other product categories.

> Yes it’s expensive, but the screen is the biggest and probably the hardest to manufacture part on the phone so it’s going to be expensive.

If it weren't glued in place and if they wouldn't tie Face ID components to the goddamn screen, it would be far less expensive. I managed to break my iPhone 12 Mini's screen in a freak incident - the protection glass is intact, but it shattered below it, right over the left Face ID illuminator.

A new display + glass would clock in at 60-100€ plus maybe half an hour of time to do the replacement - but that would break FaceID as the components are paired for whatever reason. Apple's quote is 279€. What a fucking joke!

The mainboard and FaceID sensor are paired so you can’t ‘trick’ the phone into letting you in with a dummy FaceID sensor.

That makes sense but why is this shit glued to the screen? Every other phone has the camera, proximity sensor and whatever installed in the main body or at least makes it trivial to take off from the old screen and replace in a new one.

Also... why is there any need for the FaceID sensor to be paired? It's two LEDs illuminating the face from different angles in infrared so the camera can create a depth map. None of that needs a secure connection.

It makes the phone parts next to worthless on the secondhand market, making it not worthwhile to steal the phone and sell it for parts.

Hector Martin has some nice rants about right-to-repair zealots and their lack of understanding as to why Apple made the decisions they did.

I agree with the zealots but there could be better ways - for one, make the replacement screens "unpaired" by default, maybe using a WORM to store keys, so people (or repair shops) could still repair their phones with legit replacement screens while "second hand" aka parted-out displays would still be impeded.

I can assure you that stolen iPhones absolutely aren't worthless. They are sent to various places where extremely technically sophisticated groups are still able to make at least 200$, sometimes much more, from a stolen iPhone, which isn't much less than what it used to be worth. In fact, phone thieves in many places only ever made about 50-100$ from a stolen high end phone.

Phone theft is a billion dollar industry, and as Apple tries to lock down parts, thieves adapted by forming far more efficient logistics and by centralizing value extraction from stolen phones. Apple's tactics haven't so far made a big impact to a phone thief's incentives, and I don't see it happening in the near future either.

>right-to-repair zealots

You will own nothing, and you will be happy. :^)

The complaint is that it's tied to the screen, not the mainboard.

Pairing sensor and mainboard is fine as long as I can reset it when I reset the phone.

Not sure what costs but you can get a 12 mini done for £79 in the UK (non Apple https://www.ismash.com/collections/iphone-12-mini-repairs)

> you are the first person I know of talking about about repairing your blender, and I've never seen a blender repair shop

In my town, there are several repair shops that fix small appliances such as blenders. I've never used them, because I fix my small appliances myself.

I can't stand throwing away machines that can be fixed and put back into service. It seems so utterly wasteful.

You can get 5 years of usable battery discharge/recharge out of a phone, kudos to you!

The primary reason I replaced my Pixel 4a was it going EoL for security updates. The battery did get replaced once, and it brought it back to life. I don't want a halo device, I want something that is secure, functional, repairable and cheap enough that if this portable slab of glass explodes I am not that sad. The primary reason I replaced my device with a Pixel 8 is for the 7 years of security updates.

Going from the 4a to the 8? Barely noticed a change in functionality.

I went from a galaxy s5 to s22. About 10 years in diff. The functionality for me is nearly identical. Speed the s22 is much snappier I guess. But not something I care much about. I only replaced it because the touch screen started acting up and security updates were non-existent. I was able to keep the thing going for so long precisely because I could swap out that battery easily. To replace the newer ones involves a heat gun and a suction cup. And as jerryrigeverything says 'glass is glass'.

I just replaced an iPhone X last year with a 15 that was still on the original battery. From my records, looks like I got it in early 2018, so pretty much 5 years. Admittedly for about the last year, that usable battery was largely completely depleted by the end of the day and it couldn't last through a heavy usage day without a top up. Realistically, replacing at year 4 probably would have been the smart move, I was mostly waiting to see if the 15 was going to be USB C before deciding.

I used to be like this, but I don't sell my old phones, I hand them down - and I'd love to be able to get parts for the iPhones 6,8 and XR when they go off the wagon.

> By the time the phone is 5~ years old, I’m going to want the new one anyway.

Fair enough. But there are also a fair number of people who, like myself, would be pretty irritated to have to replace their phone after only 5 years.

Especially if we’re talking about a phone that costs 800—1000+$ (as flagships are trending around)..!

Maybe a five year old phone isn’t good enough for you, but it might be for someone else. But if the screen can’t be repaired or the battery replaced, it will end up as ewaste somewhere in a poor country polluting the world’s air and soil/water.

Which is why everyone should care about the right-to-repair.

A phone that can be repaired, is worth something. For ewaste you get €0 (some recycler may get a few bucks from rare materials). For a phone that can have a second life, you might get some €100. This is one reason why people love iPhones: their value, second hand, remains rather high.

The problem is that to be able to make a purchasing decision toward repairability there must be actual choices that offer better repairability.

That doesn't seem to be the case for phones unfortunately.

How would consumers know anyways, it's pretty hard to purchase on repairability even us as experts.

> Which is to say, fundamentally correct, but struggling to get consumers to care enough to influence purchasing decisions.

You're right that customers don't care about Free software and yet it won. Free software has moved from a niche to dominating the software marketplace. The linux kernel, GNU coreutils, gcc, binutils - these are amazingly popular and keep getting ported to new platforms. And of course, Open Source software is yet more popular still.

Free Software won because almost everyone, especially businesses can benefit from it. who is going to benefit from right to repair besides consumers and small repair shops?

Everyone as well? Lower costs, better looking carbon footprint, longer lifecycles, better secondhand market, more efficient software (if you don’t assume everyone uses a new phone, you design your apps/web apps with a little more care towards performance and battery efficiency), more competition between manufacturers (because it’s not a given that you’ll sell new devices every 2–3 years)…

Designing a very small device to be DIY repairable has a cost too.

Probably. I don’t think it’s much more than the cost of shrinking everything down and shaving 1/2 mm off your design or engineering a whole protocol, chips, and software to pair components together and implement “features” at the OS level to disable some things if it detects new parts.

While right to repair is in part about getting consumers to care it is just as much about getting regulators to care. They can do things like force the availability of replacement parts etc.

The right to repair movement seems to have its effects in the EU, with a ‘right to repair’ directive adopted by the EU parliament. Of course it still needs to be implemented into national legislations and the devil will be in the details… it shows the impact though.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240419IP...

I don't like using the entity that brought us cookie banners as an example of how to regular tech.

regulate*

I feel alone on HN for not caring about repairability at all on phones. I use a phone for ~3 years and replace it. I'd rather have a phone that's slimmer and smaller, than repairable or user-servicable.

This isn't just about persuading consumers - it is also about passing laws to protect consumers from abusive practices. Those might include labeling and disclosure laws/regulations that give consumers the information they need to make smart purchasing decisions. For example: repairability scores, explicit declarations of support lifespans, etc.

>Which is to say, fundamentally correct, but struggling to get consumers to care enough to influence purchasing decisions.

If history is a guide, people generally take abuse from authority in stride so long as the intensity generally remains below a threshold.

Maybe it's ok that people don't care about repairable phones, and there isn't a need to force them.

Also, the closest consumers got to using free software was Android and Chromebook (i.e. not exactly free) plus using services hosted on Linux servers, cause it actually makes sense there, and GNU/Linux home desktop has still not won.

I've been 'anti' Samsung for 15 years and generally don't think of the brand. Someone recently gave me a SM-T670 tablet (View) which had lolipop on it. I don't think it ever received a significant update. Well, I tossed LineageOS on it and while it provides some improvements, notably de-ghoulgle and Samsung bloat, the ROM was last updated in 2022 and I'm pretty sure never again.

The only thing I say about Samsung positively, is that they are capable of, but not necessarily committed to, building good hardware. Unfortunately they are the epitome of planned obsolescence and however nice their products may or may not be, they prefer the shortest life possible.

Samsung sucks.

I'm on my 3rd battery on a (used) iPhone 6s. I think it is a feature that I can't get the regular updates anymore. At least now when I turn a 'feature' off it stats off since the os doesn't update and erase my settings every week. I hate apple but nothing in the android world makes me think things there are better. Why is this market so hostile to consumers?

> At least now when I turn a 'feature' off it stats off since the os doesn't update and erase my settings every week.

Which iOS settings were being reset? I've had an iPhone for over 10 years and nothing really pops out to me as being re-enabled iOS release over release.

lock-screen access to homekit is a regular offender for example

everything icloud was the top offender

> but nothing in the android world makes me think things there are better.

There is the Fairphone. And I think you can get pixel phones with .. 8 years of software updates?

Well that's disappointing from Samsung. But I'm glad iFixit actually followed through and decided it wasn't working out, rather than just declaring victory and walking away.

You've also gotta think that surely they notified Samsung before the announcement and gave them some time to try to salvage the arrangement before ending it. The fact that Samsung didn't suggests it's really not high on their priorities list, even with the expected PR backlash.

Unfortunately, I highly doubt there will be any material PR backlash.

Ask 100 Samsung owners on the street how the ifixit repair ability relationship impacts them, and 99 will ask what ifixit is, and what repairability means. The other one is too stoned to answer.

Samsung as a whole is a shit company to work with. The mobile startup I worked at a decade ago partnered with them and they were a nightmare. Literally working all hours of the day and night on projects that made little financial sense but looked good to someone's boss in SK. Their appliances are literal garbage as well. Brother's Samdung fridge no longer makes ice (and only did for like a month). My front loader washing machine broke within 5 years. The matching dryer was repaired twice in that timeframe. Fuck Samsung.

I worked for Samsung for ten years and I love the people I worked with.

However, as someone with a buy-it-for-life consumer mindset, I would never buy a Samsung product. Support and maintainability never factored into the hyper-development and release cycles of the products.

Glad I just had my Samsung repaired last week by ifixit. I replaced the screen which cost $340. Price for the repair felt a bit like extortion but I needed my phone and it was the least painful option. I could have mailed it into Samsung to have the repair done for $200 but who has that kind of flexibility?

I have a Samsung phone because it is the only brand with a stylus in its flagships, but I, too, would like to end my collaboration with them.

Samsung had existing repair partnerships. Many were run by other Koreans, and very much had the feeling of a big family run conglomerate. Of course iFixit is going to get the short end of the stick unless they're providing real value to Samsung.

For Samsung, repair services are valuable to keep carrier customers happy so that the carriers keep pushing their phones. External repair services don't have that tie in. They probably even reduce sales of new phones. iFixit's partnership just doesn't offer the same value proposition.

Then why did Samsung pretend they wanted this to happen?

Presumably someone from marketing said "we should make our phones more repairable than the competition" and after the program was announced someone from finance said "making phones repairable is too expensive and selling parts isn't making us money"

Pretend what? Samsung already had the parts infrastructure. They added another parts customer who had less to offer them in return.

I looked back at the partnership announcements, and that's really all Samsung was offering: parts and repair guides. It also happened at a time when right to repair was proving pretty popular so there's the obvious PR aspect to it.

The iFixit post just makes it sound like Samsung wasn't interested in subsidizing their repair parts, and their construction methods haven't changed much in 2 years.

> wasn't interested in subsidizing

That's a weird way to spell "wasn't interested in overcharging less".

It's not about subsidizing the repair. Samsung placed a limit of 7 official repair parts every 3 months per repair shop being supplied by ifixit. How is a phone repair shop meant to operate when they can only get 2.3 parts per month?

My last Samsung monitor was great, and it still is. The new one's screen died about a week after I got it. I had better luck returning it to the local store than dealing with Samsung support. The replacement, however, had the same issue about two weeks later. I feel like Smansung has a monitor quality control issue. I didn't even bother dealing with Samsung support. Instead, I gave up and returned it to the local store for a refund.

I had thought that phone manufacturers were coming around to the concept of repairability, so this is bad news. I've had a few Samsung phones and never had any problems. My S22 Ultra is over 3 years old now and still an excellent performer. I thought I'll have to change the battery this year - but after checking the instructions I changed my mind, crazy complicated.

I can’t wait until they end their recently announced Lenovo collaboration on the same grounds. Absolutely fucking awful vendor in the last few years. Shipping dead batteries, not even shipping anything and having little to no parts stock. And at least here the NBD service is worthless.

I had a power button fail on an S21, only a few places were willing to quote and the cost to replace was over £300, more than the phone was worth. I now use the always on screen, so I can unlock without the power button, hopefully prolonging it's life!

FWIW, I have three kids so I've had to repair a fair share of broken phones. Two kids have Galaxy A52's and one has an iPhone 7. The A52's are WAY easier to work on.

If you have ever had to try to RMA a Samsung drive you will know to never buy Samsung again.

The worst manufacturer I’ve ever dealt with by orders of magnitude - it’s not even remotely close.

besides regional support, by and large this has been a core reservation behind these initiatives for me. this goes beyond just parts design being harder to repair. fairly priced first-party components throughout the support lifecycle is yet to be achieved.

i can empathize with the supply chain challenges but unless we have regulatory pressures, none of these parties have the incentive to see things through. without any accountability, all the device support promises are only good on paper.

Thank you for standing up to Samsung. I was extremely disappointed that A. Ifixit didn't have even charging ports in stock B. If they did they would be basically the same price as having someone replace it. C. All official and licensed repair spots must replace _all_ components if they even replace one. I have a cracked screen and don't care, but it would have driven the price up to 1/3 or 1/2 the cost of the device. I would have just bought a new one.

I ended up having to get it repaired at some sketch mall shop.

> All official and licensed repair spots must replace _all_ components if they even replace one.

Didn’t apple invent this one?

> Didn’t apple invent this one?

You should learn from the best..

I want to end my collaboration with them too. What is the most open, repairable phone out there that would run my banking app?

Banking apps require absence of root access, so forget about open.

Samsung should never be trusted for anything.

My S22 is pretty great.

My S24 was returned in a week. Damn thing couldn't even handle showing the mission selection map in Warcraft Rumble. It lagged noticeably behind my finger when dragged around. The Galaxy Watch 6 I got alongside it was even worse for performance. And the clash between Samsung's ecosystem and Google's ecosystem felt terrible. I still want to try coming back to Android from Apple's ecosystem, but next time it won't be through Samsung.

Sounds like a defective unit.

"It’s with a heavy wrench that we have decided ..." Nice pun when originating from a repair shop!

Samsung official repairs are a major ripoff. They offered to repair my tablet for 3/4 the price of a new one. I said no, paid the non-refundable deposit, bought an entire logic board and did it myself. It worked out very cheap.

It’s honestly not surprising. Sometimes initiatives from well meaning employees can be given the green light because they’re low enough in the company to avoid attention but high enough to get a director’s sponsorship. But as soon as the employee begins to get Legal or someone at a VP involved and they’ll have to eat the loss on sales, it’s killed. 80% of a company’s money goes to driving “sales or savings”, the rest goes to “keeping the lights on.” Being responsive for anything that impacts sales in the negative is a huge deal for everyone in their chain of command.

My sister broke her curved Samsung screen and the replacement part alone was (last year) £150. This wasn’t even a new model, it’s an (if I remember correctly) an s21.

Ended up just buying a used iPhone for not much more.

Samsung makes terrible products anyway. Their phones are bloated with spyware to the gills, their customer service/repairs are poorly done (if at all), and their appliances are some of the least durables I know of. Their TVs are advertisers wet dreams, they are extremely intrusive.

Especially after the company a close friend used to work at was swallowed by Samsung, I’ve vowed to never ever buy anything Samsung ever again (ok except semi conductors if they’re part of another product but even then their after sales sucks for these parts). They have a terrible internal culture as well, where quality and security fight each other constantly for least priority. No thanks.

Samsung is shit. Banned in my household also.

I bought a Samsung DVD player in 2003. The day after the warranty expired, it booted to a garbage-filled, nonresponsive screen. Brick. I was foolish not to have forever written off Samsung right there and then. Eventually I learned my lesson, though.

There's a economic reason mobile phone manufacturers don't want you to repair the phone - they prefer you to buy a new one.

Ostensible collaboration to frustrate DIY R2R.

My friend's independent, non-certified cell phone and laptop repair business is suffering greatly due to the lack of availability of reasonably-priced repair parts or any repair parts, especially screen assemblies for flagship phones.

I just want to say that was very well written.

Last 2 phones were Samsung. I got sick of the stock apps being put on the phone so I finally got a pixel running grapheme os

So what's the current non-enshittified phone? Preferably at non-flagship price.

Fairphone 5. Yes it's expensive, although not quite as expensive as a flagship, but it's by far the most consumer friendly phone there is.

Sure, Samsung is bad, but not sure why iFixit pretends to be the embodiment of right to repair. In my opinion they have harmed the cause more than anything else: instead of actual repair material (like schematics or low/high level servicing manuals) they are selling half-devices. And whoever supplies those half devices is called the repairability-king of the day. Neither Nokia, nor any other of their partners are any better. Fairy dust all around, without actual repairability :(

(But I guess it works for everyone: iFixit gets sales, $BRAND gets positive PR. And the customer gets some feel good news. Not actual repairability, but almost as good, I guess)

> In my opinion they have harmed the cause more than anything else: instead of actual repair material (like schematics or low/high level servicing manuals)

Not sure I understand this take.

$BRAND's role is to sell devices. IFixit's role is to make repairs more accessible to the average Joe. Obviously for more tech-literate device owners this might not be needed, but everyone else it is.

The incentives for this dynamic are pretty confusing (understandably). $BRAND and IFixit need to work together for repairability to work, but companies don't really have a strong business incentive to do this outside of regulation.

Obviously nothing about this dynamic is perfect, but the claim that IFixit harms the push for more repairable devices just isn't correct.

  > IFixit's role is to make repairs more accessible to the average Joe.

Which is fine, if they would not pose as right-to-repair champions. They claim that selling a phone in 3 parts somehow helps R-T-R, that it's a great step forward. It is not. It doesn't change anything. The device is not any more repairable than any other device.

What they claim basically is that if you buy your TV as separate parts (remote controller, TV and TV stand instead of all of these in one box), that somehow makes the TV repairable. It does not, however.

Products are simply built in a way that true low level repairs are impractical (ie: more expensive than replacing the device), and replacing bulk components is the only viable option. iFixit advocates for better repairability that would make individual component repair processes viable.

iFixit is not really about hobbyists doing tinkering repairs. It's for consumers who want more out of their devices and business in the repair ecosystem. That is the bulk of the community and iFixit doesn't have an obligation leave room in the conversation for others.

  > Products are simply built in a way...

That's one of the most important point of the right-to-repair movement. Devices are intentionally made unrepairable. And iFixit, by supporting these devices, doesn't help anyone, but themselves. While right-to-repair doesn't exclude everyday folks, it is about the possibility to repair your devices, either DIY (if you have the skills), or by going to a professional. But as it stands today, a device only lives as long the manufacturer wants it to, and not as long as one would want to use it.

On a related note, the devices are actually repairable, if you have the know how. Have you noticed that Samsung and Apple are very happy to sell refurbished phones at discounted prices? If they would really contain 1.5 phones' worth of parts, selling them at a discount would be crazy... of course if they just change a blown cap, that brings down the extra cost to $0.0001, which doesn't sound that bad anymore.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com