Out of interest and without wishing to go too far off topic, how do you find the camera? It’d be great to replace an ageing Samsung with something that can be repaired.
from my point of view, you’ve nailed it here. There’s a deep conflict between making stuff slimmer, sleeker etc (leading to glued-together phones, tablets etc) & repairs even by your above-average joe.
Which stuff do people want? or could they choose either - actually, looks like they can in many cases.
1 Like
I just consider the following idea (based upon the kinds of security blogs I read): it’s because iPhones have replaced the old secure platform or choice - Blackberry. There’s a sufficiently large high-profile, high-security Apple community to see trojaned components like cameras become a possibility in targeted supply-chain attacks.
the follow-on from this - parts for the masses - is pure gravy for any corp.
absolutely - Blackberry refurbs are still a device of choice amongst certain non-nation state networks : )
1 Like
I know there’s a desire for these things, however i don’t think there are enough to give scale of industry.
The phone doesn’t, every single cloud service does. The difference here is that they aren’t being provided the hashes by the center for missing ans exploited children but by the government directly, which is… sus.
Good enough for me, but not great TBH. It struggles to focus on things very close up, and isn’t great in low light. If we want nice photos we always use my wife’s iPhone 
I think using a Fairphone can be a bit like being one or two generations behind the latest phone tech, at least for the camera. But that’s good enough for me, and outweighed by the benefits (more repairable than most; ethically sourced materials; stock Android with no uninstallable apps forced on you by the network operator or manufacturer; still gets all latest Android updates soon after Google releases them; can replace the OS if you want; not locked to a specific network…).
Edit: oh, I’ve just remembered that they actually released an upgrade for the camera module:
I don’t have that, so I don’t know how much better it is. But it’s a benefit of the modular design that they can upgrade parts after release, and give users the option of upgrading.
2 Likes
That would generally be good enough for me too ; thanks for the information.
1 Like
Companies which do this should have a kind of “green audit”, similar to how charities have to prove they are using their resources the way they said they would.
If your business makes something which you deem should/could only be repaired by the company, then you must make the processes and paper trail public (in the sense of government oversight). The report should prove (every year) that the company has not externalised the cost of manufacture or repair or recycling. They should own every part of every problem their system creates (including organising shipping the item back to the mothership).
Of course, companies will factor the cost of this into the cost of the product, but that’s as it should be. Those products which are too costly to make for the desired profit margin just wont get made.
2 Likes
As someone whose job it is to deal with these kind of problems, no.
It may absolutely be an issue at population scale, but there are other technical choices they could make that would largely mitigate that, if they wanted to. It is not an issue for organizations trying to run secure teams with any meaningful amount of threat intelligence/funding.
That’s a delightful excuse for them to force people into a faster upgrade cycle, though. Glad the FTC is finally telling them to stuff it.
1 Like
At least part of the purpose is to stop/deter phone theft. Phones that are serial number locked down to a component level can’t even be broken up for parts. I’m pretty chill with that tbh.
Again, there are other, better ways to solve this problem.
2 Likes
i’m not that skilled with a soldering iron but was able to repair 95% of headphones, which means replacing the cable, this is what breaks most of the time.
i will probably never buy sennheiser headphones again. i had about 5 of them, i was able to repair exactly none of them.
they use a special kind of cable, which just melts when i try to solder something to them. this is inside the cable itself as well as in the place where the cable connects.
i’m sure this is by design.
Nonsense, it’s because allowing easy repairs would hurt their bottom line. That’s what this is all about, nothing more nothing less. It’s classic planned obsolescence.
Honestly there is no reason other than planned obsolescence for phones not to last a decade or more of use. Computers are more than capable of it, gaming consoles especially. You don’t even need to repair most of them, they just work. The fact that the smart device generation of consumer electronics doesn’t is a conscious choice by Apple and Google.
Classic examples of planned obsolescence: using digital locks or copyrighted software, using incompatible screws or gluing components together, or by refusing to share their repair manuals with private repair shops.
Sound familiar? This is basically every smartphone, tablet and now increasingly also laptop.
3 Likes
Laptops are still designed to be field repaired, i don’t think that is vastly different today than any other year beyond the general frustration of dealing with layers of components to remove. The screws are not proprietary, and iFixit guides step in if a service manual is not immediately availability. I don’t see the Dells or HPs going there just yet.
This thread reminded me of this passage from Anathem (Neal Stephenson)
Dictionary cheat sheet:
praxis = technology
fetch = vehicle
avout = monk who knows a lot about science/praxis
theors = basically avout
maths = place where avouts live
Passage:
The next morning, the brand-new stove we had bought after leaving Samble stopped working. If Yul hadn’t joined us, we’d have spent the rest of the trip eating cold energy bars. Yul, looking quietly triumphant, produced a thunderous breakfast on his battery of roaring industrial burners. Watching his cousin work, Gnel seemed proud, if exasperated. As if to say, look at what fine people we can produce when they stop believing in our religion.
Since there was almost no traffic on the road, I took driving lessons from Yul while Cord dismantled the stove. She diagnosed the problem as a clogged orifice, attributable to gunk that had precipitated from the fuel during the cold night.
“You’re fuming,” she pointed out a while later. I realized that I
had withdrawn from the conversation. She and Yul had been talking, but I hadn’t heard a word of their conversation. “What is the problem?”
“I just can’t believe that in this day and age we are having a problem with chemical fuel,” I said.
“Sorry. We should have bought the premium brand.”
“No, it’s not that. Nothing for you to be sorry about. I’m just pointing out that this stove is four-thousand-year-old praxis.”
Cord was nonplussed. “Same goes for this fetch and everything in it,” she said.
“Hey!” Yul cried, mock-wounded.
Cord scoffed, rolled her eyes, and turned her attention back to me. “Everything except for your sphere, that is. So?”
“I guess because I live in a place with almost zero praxis, it never occurs to me to think about such things,” I said. “But at times like this, the absurdity hits me between the eyes. There’s no reason to put up with junk like this. A stove with dangerous, unreliable chemical fuel. With orifices that clog. In four thousand years we could have made a better stove.”
“Would I be able to take that stove apart and fix it?”
“You wouldn’t have to, because it would never break.”
“But I want to know if I could understand such a stove.”
“You’re the kind of person who could probably understand just about anything if you set your mind to it.”
“Nice flattery, Raz, but you keep dodging the question.”
“All right, I take your point. You’re really asking if the average person could understand the workings of such a thing…”
“I don’t know what an average person is. But look at Yul here. He built his stove himself. Didn’t you, Yul?”
Yul was uneasy that Cord had suddenly made this conversation about him. But he deferred to her. He glanced away and nodded. “Yup. Got the burners from scavengers. Welded up the frame.”
“And it worked,” Cord said.
“I know,” I said, and patted my belly.
“No, I mean the system worked!” Cord insisted.
“What system?”
She was exasperated. “The…the…”
“The non-system,” Yul said. “The lack of a system.”
“Yul knew that stoves like this were unreliable!” Cord said, nodding at the broken one. “He’d learned that from experience.”
“Oh, bitter experience, my girl!” Yul proclaimed.
“He ran into some scavengers who’d found better burner heads in a ruin up north. Haggled with them. Figured out a way to hook them up. Probably has been tinkering with them ever since.”
“Took me two years to make it run right,” Yul admitted.
“And none of that would have been possible with some kind of technology that only an avout can understand,” Cord concluded.
“Okay, okay,” I said, and let it drop there. Letting the argument play out would have been a waste of breath. We, the theors, who had retreated (or, depending on how you liked your history, been herded) into the maths at the Reconstitution, had the power to change the physical world through praxis. Up to a point, ordinary people liked the changes we made. But the more clever the praxis became, the less people understood it and the more dependent they became on us—and they didn’t like that at all.
It may make little sense to those who haven’t read the book, as Neal gives this world its own dictionary, but the crux is that people (in his post-apocalyptic world) prefer less reliable gear that can be fixed, modified, and repurposed as opposed to technologically advanced gear that can not be understood without intensive education.
6 Likes
Most computer and console owners don’t drop their computers and consoles on the floor every few weeks tho’.
A terrific book, if very long.
2 Likes
Screws work as well as glue for durability.
Indeed! It does not help that he slowly gives you the meaning of words, making the first ~100 pages a bit impenetrable.
The book was my companion of choice through this winter. Coincidentally, read in the light of a lamp that my bunny has since chewed through the power cord. I still have the lamp but it’s junk in my mind as I have no soldering skills or equipment… very easy to buy into the toss and replace culture.
1 Like