>not to pick on you but it’s baffling the way some people clothe themselves in right to repair and then bust out some shit like this. this is absolutely insane from an e-waste and frankly just regular-waste perspective.
It's a lithium recycle bucket at my local library. I'll admit, I don't really know what the service is that they use, but I do assume that those batteries are getting turned into new batteries somewhere. They could end up landfilled though, your guess is as good as mine. I'm not really sure why you thought "recycle bucket" meant "where the aluminum cans go"...
>buying shitty non-oem batteries is a major part of why you churn batteries so much.
Funny enough, the OEM batteries are LION, and the replacements are LIPO, so, the replacements actually have a fair bit more capacity than the originals, at like half the cost. I've only replaced 3 of them in 5 years, and I bought 10 when I bought the phone. I do have a couple I have sharpie'd red because they are down on capacity but still usable, but they still get me a full day without any drama. That's my benchmark for replacement, if it doesn't make it a day, into the bucket it goes, and back to amazon for a new one.
Something you're missing though is, I can get aftermarket batteries for my phone, and, I have at least 3 different designs in my possession, so, there's good competition in that space. It's china-based competition, but, it seems to have yielded good results here.
Do understand that, I'm likely keeping this phone 2-3x as long as most people keep their phones, basically until an app I use stops working because the android version I have is too old. So maybe I go through a few batteries, but, I'd end up doing that regardless. What I don't go through is any of the other components, so far less waste there. Not why I do it, but, a nice side effect nonetheless.
>There really, really ought to be a real attempt to account and attribute some of these total lifecycles
I couldn't agree more honestly. I think the 2-3 year phone churn is absolutely abhorrent for many reasons. I also think $1000+ phones are equally abhorrent given their lifecycle, and how features continue to be stripped out of phones and sold as features. Sure, consumers are of middling intelligence (objectively), that doesn't mean companies aren't also a little evil. I also don't think that the current incentive structure is going to allow for any of that to change, no matter how well presented any argument to the contrary is. You effectively have zero competition in the phone space, because they've made it intentionally difficult to switch between flavors of phone. That alone should be a multi-billion dollar antitrust lawsuit against anyone who does it.
Then you can go after things like glued-in screens and soldered/glued in batteries and charging ports that are PCB mounted to the mainboard. Get rid of those things and you probably wind up with something that'll last a very, very long time. You also probably get rid of incremental tech improvements altogether because they won't be worth the R&D dollars. Hard to tell what the unintended consequences of that would be.
It's a lithium recycle bucket at my local library. I'll admit, I don't really know what the service is that they use, but I do assume that those batteries are getting turned into new batteries somewhere. They could end up landfilled though, your guess is as good as mine. I'm not really sure why you thought "recycle bucket" meant "where the aluminum cans go"...
>buying shitty non-oem batteries is a major part of why you churn batteries so much.
Funny enough, the OEM batteries are LION, and the replacements are LIPO, so, the replacements actually have a fair bit more capacity than the originals, at like half the cost. I've only replaced 3 of them in 5 years, and I bought 10 when I bought the phone. I do have a couple I have sharpie'd red because they are down on capacity but still usable, but they still get me a full day without any drama. That's my benchmark for replacement, if it doesn't make it a day, into the bucket it goes, and back to amazon for a new one.
Something you're missing though is, I can get aftermarket batteries for my phone, and, I have at least 3 different designs in my possession, so, there's good competition in that space. It's china-based competition, but, it seems to have yielded good results here.
Do understand that, I'm likely keeping this phone 2-3x as long as most people keep their phones, basically until an app I use stops working because the android version I have is too old. So maybe I go through a few batteries, but, I'd end up doing that regardless. What I don't go through is any of the other components, so far less waste there. Not why I do it, but, a nice side effect nonetheless.
>There really, really ought to be a real attempt to account and attribute some of these total lifecycles
I couldn't agree more honestly. I think the 2-3 year phone churn is absolutely abhorrent for many reasons. I also think $1000+ phones are equally abhorrent given their lifecycle, and how features continue to be stripped out of phones and sold as features. Sure, consumers are of middling intelligence (objectively), that doesn't mean companies aren't also a little evil. I also don't think that the current incentive structure is going to allow for any of that to change, no matter how well presented any argument to the contrary is. You effectively have zero competition in the phone space, because they've made it intentionally difficult to switch between flavors of phone. That alone should be a multi-billion dollar antitrust lawsuit against anyone who does it. Then you can go after things like glued-in screens and soldered/glued in batteries and charging ports that are PCB mounted to the mainboard. Get rid of those things and you probably wind up with something that'll last a very, very long time. You also probably get rid of incremental tech improvements altogether because they won't be worth the R&D dollars. Hard to tell what the unintended consequences of that would be.