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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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...

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."

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

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.

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.

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.

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

It's amazing.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

To much.

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.

Never bought a Samsung again.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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)

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.

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!

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

- 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.)

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.

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!

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

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...

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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"?

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)

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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

"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.

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).

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> 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."

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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.

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.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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?

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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. :)

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Similar =/= Same

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.

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

So a conglomerate I guess. Thanks

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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

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.

* 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

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!

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

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 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!

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'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).

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.

Google:

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

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

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

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

"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.