Guest essay by Eric Worrall
In an act of near Soviet level micromanagement, new British rules will require mobile devices to be fastened together with removable fasteners like nuts and bolts rather than press fit.
Climate change: New rules could spell end of ‘throwaway culture’
By Roger Harrabin BBC environment analyst
New rules could spell the death of a “throwaway” culture in which products are bought, used briefly, then binned.
The regulations will apply to a range of everyday items such as mobile phones, textiles, electronics, batteries, construction and packaging.
They will ensure products are designed and manufactured so they last – and so they’re repairable if they go wrong.
It should mean that your phone lasts longer and proves easier to fix.
That may be especially true if the display or the battery needs changing.
It’s part of a worldwide movement called the Right to Repair, which has spawned citizens’ repair workshops in several UK cities.
The plan is being presented by the European Commission. It’s likely to create standards for the UK, too – even after Brexit.
That’s because it probably won’t be worthwhile for manufacturers to make lower-grade models that can only be sold in Britain.
Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51825089
Why do I have a problem with rules requiring devices to be consumer accessible?
The reason is, it is already possible to make consumer accessible devices. There is a vast array of modular components for mobile phones, displays, small computers available online, along with instructions for how to use them, which can readily be wired together to make any kind of mobile device you can imagine.
Why hasn’t someone started taking these modules and used them to assemble consumer accessible mobile phones?
As someone who has built a phone out of consumer accessible modules, I feel qualified to answer this question.
What you end up with if you try this is a 90s style brick phone – just like the old days, when mobile phones actually were held together with nuts and bolts, and the individual electronic components were large enough to see without the aid of a microscope. All those nice removable fasteners and pluggable components take space, adding bulk and weight to the final product.
Not an issue if you are building an experimental device or a device with bespoke capabilities not available in mainstream consumer mobile phones. A big issue if you like the convenience of owning a mobile device which fits neatly in your pocket.
The people pushing these new consumer accessibility rules want you to believe they are trying to help you, and trying to help the environment. But they are actually attempting to “fix” a problem which doesn’t exist, micromanaging what consumers are allowed to own, attacking rather than promoting consumer choice.
Update (EW): Demo of someone building a DIY phone using components purchased in a Chinese electronic wet market. The Chinese government did not force component manufacturers to create a marketplace which sells the required parts, people started selling components of their own free will because there was genuine demand. The parts required to build a DIY phone are available online.
It is not always helpful that serviceable parts easy accessible.
The reason being that the print boards inside are basically holding/interfacing one or more VLSI circuits. You have to replace the whole board, which is nearly the whole phone, or you would need very expensive and dedicated test equipment to diagnose which VLSI circuit is broken, unsolder it and resolder a new.
A broken glass can, on most phones, be replaced using cheap kits, even though nuts and bolts are not used. Alternatively, buy a solid phone with thick durable glass,rubber protection and water proof.
The real issue her is that people have gone from POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) to advanced micro computers, which incidentally can also be used as phones.
My first “mobile” phone (NMT system) of 1981 in Denmark costed around $5000 and put 10kg on the scale. It was really good quality and could have lasted decades, but as usual new development made it obsolete.
The Greens will solve this issue for us, as they close our power stations, puts the oil business out of business, bring the elite back to their castles and have the common people work the land.
This will bring the revival of The Pony Express. – Interesting time!
Global phone sales are about 500+ million pa. UK sales about 20 M pa. The big players like Apple and Samsung will probably just abandon the market and wait out the government. Nokia and inferior Chinese products will comply trying to grab volume but the public will demand their preferred brands and the government will cave in.
Didn’t this movement start in Germany over a decade ago, under the name Design for Disassembly? It was focused on enabling car bumpers, for instance, to be easily removed for recycling. That sort of motive sounds like a worthy one, and not something that has much of a downside.
Sorry Eric, you are wrong. We desperately need right to repair laws. Some companies go above and beyond to make their products unrepairable. John Deere and Apple are some of the worst offenders. If your John Deere tractor breaks, it will not work again until a John Deere employee resets it with a computer even if you correctly fixed it. If you replace the battery in your iPhone 11, it will say service battery even if you put in an unused one from a different iPhone. Apple laptops had a butterfly keyboard that was prone to failure and riveted to the computer case. And I could go on.
It has nothing to do with the environment, that is just a bonus. It has everything to do not needing the permission of a company to do what I want with my own purchased product. We bought the product, we did not buy the right to use the product. I have a measure of pride when I fix my own stuff. It is getting harder and harder to do that because that hurts the company’s profit. Furthermore, independent repair shops often do a better and cheaper job that the manufacturer. Right to repair prevents a company from screwing the consumer.
I will leave this video that proves how important right to repair and independent repair shops are.
Well said!
+++++++ many many;-))) exactly!!!
I paid for it
I own it
no one should say I cannot repair it IF I want to.
Exactly what I said in the very first post here. Eric is missing the point. we ELECT the govt. I expect it to do sensible things on my behalf, because I don’t have the power. Making things repairable does not mean we end up with Trabants in our pockets.
I couldn’t agree more, the sheer waste caused by planned obsolescence has to be stopped.
The corporate greed generated by life limited products, the “bricking” of older devices, either by sending updates that diminish their functionality or the refusal to provide support must be stopped.
The deliberate policy that many companies adopt to force consumers to repeatedly buy the same product time and time again due to the designed in weak component or a product that is designed not to be repairable and the restrictions on spares, is, in reality, a criminal waste of resources.
Manufacturers do not have the right to decide when something you have purchased from them becomes end of life.
This process of moving resources from the quarries to landfill at the fastest rate possible, must come to an end for the sake of future generations.
Don’t buy their products. Seriously, my point is DIY is an option, I proved it by building my own phone. If I wanted to spend a few weeks I could have made it compact and given it a nice case.
But most people including myself usually don’t choose DIY, because cheap and nasty throwaway is the better option – they don’t have a few weeks to spare.
What are you going on about! If a buy a product how am I going to find out if it is repairable ? I suppose you would suggest tear downs on youtube but this is not always possible.
as has been said I purchased the product I own it. I did not purchase only usage rights. Why do you want apple to dictate my ability to repair or continue to use the product. surely you are not suggesting a dictatorship run by big business?
Apple are the worst offenders IMO.
I am sick of discarding small household appliances for what is probably a minor electrical fault: I can’t get in to take a look and it’s always cheaper to buy new than pay an electrician.
I don’t know about making things compulsory but the idea is sound.
As an audiophile with an affinity for that “tube sound” … I look forward to the day when I can deconstruct my iPod to be powered by KT88 tubes!! Oh wait! There are already DA (digital to analog) converters that do the trick. Yeahhhhhh … but they don’t have glowing tubes!!!
There is nothing like a valve amp. It is said that if you can find an original, good condition/working, Vox AC30 amp, from the 60’s/70’s you have struck gold in the amplifier world.
Most people replace electronic items like phones not because they are non-functional, but because (in their minds) it is functionally obsolete. It doesn’t have a high enough resolution screen, or not enough memory, or it’s too slow for certain applications (usually games), or the camera isn’t good enough. Forcing these things to serviceable by the consumer won’t change that, it will only make them more expensive. The vast majority of consumers aren’t qualified or interested in servicing their devices anyway.
Why cant we easily replace a battery in a cell phone? some say this is for law enforcement, so they can track phones even when powered off. Another possibility is simply to make the phones stronger as they have gotten thinner.
A cell phone us basically a beam. A beam that is bolted together us typically not as stiff as a beam that is glued together. And you want a cell phone that is stiff to resist breakage.
Everything is done the way it is with these devices for very specific reasons.
Rarely has a more engineered device ever existed, perhaps ever in the history of the entire Universe.
You can buy a phone with a removable battery.
And you can take apart a phone with a sealed case…you just have to know how.
What you cannot have is the right to make other people or some company do everything, or anything, they way you want.
You cannot get the best of what their engineers can design but also tell them what to do.
If you do that, what you get is the best of what you can design.
If there is one brand that is made in a way you hate…buy another brand.
Right to service is needed, I’m a small government guy but this is where I believe government does have a role in our lives. In a free wheeling capitalist system with no intervention businesses could obsolete their phones every week by turning them into a brick. Sure there could be a couple that say their phone works for a year so we have some choice but then there might not. This is why a pure capitalist system can be bad.
I haven’t read the proposed bill but it would be ridiculous to say 100% of a phone needs to be serviceable down to the component level on a board. Making it so the most common failure point is replaceable (screen, battery, etc.) would be a better way to write such a bill.
Take my work as an example. I’m supplied a phone by work, I have no choice on the phone type (iPhone), and have had 3 replaced because they were not even repairable by our local Apple store (Apple store claim not mine). I’ve lost a battery (2 years), screen (6mos) and power jack (1 yr). I’m on phone #5 in 6.5 years though one of those phone changes was because of a position change (phone stayed with the position). At $600/phone, discounting the one phone Apple has pulled $2,500 from my company for one employee. If the phone was fully repairable locally I might still be on my original phone for a few extra hundred dollars in repairs.
We did look into DIY but IT decided against doing that and it’s their call because of a few reasons. No local parts and we need a fast turn around, buying new we can have a new phone the same day or next at the latest. With DIY there’s no guarantee you wont brick the phone anyway and still need a new phone. Last of all you break the water tight seal on your phone to do any servicing, leaving it vulnerable to water penetration.
My point is you can build your own, that phone at the top of the picture took 5 minutes to build and an hour to program. Obviously not pocket ready, but it wouldn’t take a lot to put a handset, display and case on it. If your IT department was worth its salt they could easily sort this out, if you are doing a job which requires especially rugged equipment.
The point is that people should have faith that the product that they buy will last for several years and if it is an expensive product then it should be repairable.
Electric cars now come with seven or more years warranty, no phones or domestic products come with a warranty anywhere near that length of time because the manufactures KNOW it will fail as it was designed to do so.
We can design and build our own anything, even cars and aircraft. It’s very expensive to do that, and then you have to get it approved for use. That’s the really expensive bit.
There is a very simple solution for how to deal with a company that screws it’s customers: Do not buy anything from them ever again.
No one has to buy a Apple phone.
Anyone that keeps buying them and paying all that money has no logical right to be upset about something they themselves are responsible for.
Why should you or anyone else have a say in what someone who owns a company has to do or not do, make or not make?
Whining about how much money you keep giving to a company you cannot stand is just whining.
Grow up, and grow a set.
Stop whining about your own choices.
And stop telling other people what they have to do.
Darrin, you say you are a small government guy, but your own words after that show you to be a nanny state busybody control freak.
As far as I can see it gives the consumer choice, something that is missing in the throwaway society.
By 2030, the UK will look like a set for Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil.”
As someone who has seen the film … Yiiikes!!!! And mix-in a Little Clockwork Orange … double Yiiiikes!!!
Some parts already are and were a long time ago too.
Most of the comments here are about cellphones and laptops/tablets. The BIG, HUGE, problem is power drills, saws, sanders, toasters, microwave ovens, washing machines, dishwashers, etc.
I can buy a NEW battery operated drill for less than a new battery (which goes dead in under 3 years) or a having bad bearing replaced at the service shop. The price of having a Microwave (________) repaired after the extended warranty ran out are well above half the price of a new one. And that is when it can be done in the house. – (_________) fill in the name of most home appliances, TV’s etc.
There are several brands of battery power tools that actually have “countdown to death” chips in the battery modules. And yes, most products are designed to last as long as the warranty and die as soon as possible afterwards. This is really where the main issue about planned obsolescence and right to repair come into their own.
Forget climate change, this is where the real scandal is.
An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.
“Planned obsolescence” is a tremendous waste of resources. Things that are built to be repaired and renewed are simpler and cheaper to buy and use, better for the consumer, and better for the actual environment.
Unless there are good technical reasons to build disposable products, making them throwaway simply greases the bottom line for corporate executives. They’re the only ones that benefit, and then only in the short-term.
Legislating this is only one approach. How about creating common technical plans or standards for how repairable products should be built?