
New Hampshire Lawmaker Kills Repair Bill Because 'Cellphones Are Throwaways' - el_duderino
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kp8j/lawmaker-kills-repair-bill-because-cellphones-are-throwaways
======
jimmies
I submitted this video link by Louis Rossmann days ago but it was
unfortunately mis-classified by HN as spam (and they did clear this up
personally with me so don't worry).

[https://youtu.be/Bt2KDtDt940](https://youtu.be/Bt2KDtDt940)

He made a clear concise point in 3 minutes why the right to repair is
important. Now the good thing is that it doesn't matter how many states the
bill has been shot down. As long as one state or one country has it, it will
open the Pandora's box.

~~~
rasz
Its not spam, its clickbait.

Real full house hearing video is here
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHpXJzjin7k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHpXJzjin7k)
Over two hours of arguments from both sides - private advocates and $1K an
hour PR shills (easy to spot who is who).

------
domador
This sounds in part like a classic case of wealthy, indifferent elected
politicians being out of touch with the "riff-raff" they purportedly represent
and act in the best interests off. (This "riff-raff" would include people who
want to repair phones due to cost-effectiveness, responsibility with natural
resources, and/or a desire to tinker. Also, because they have less throwaway
money than these entitled, bought-by-corporate-lobbyists politicians.)

On a related note... come on, phone manufacturers! That's enough with sealed
phones and a lack of microSD card slots for added storage.

Also, come on, app programmers! Let users store data in a microSD card,
instead of in limited, expensive built-in storage! If you can't find the data
when the card is removed, just deal with it! (I'm looking at you WhatsApp,
given your insistence on storing photos and videos on internal memory.)

~~~
chooseaname
> That's enough with sealed phones...

People want IP ratings. What same people don't understand is that most phone
makers tell you it is not permanent. And same people also don't understand
that IP ratings are not ratings of waterproof-ness (which, by definition,
would _not_ need a rating).

~~~
catalogia
I don't see why being water resistant needs to be mutually exclusive with
replaceable batteries and sd cards. My S5 has survived being dropped in water,
and it has both a replaceable battery and sd card. Maybe other phones can go
deeper and longer, but I'm not scuba diving with the damn thing. When I drop
it in water, I fish it out right away...

~~~
JohnFen
> I don't see why being water resistant needs to be mutually exclusive with
> replaceable batteries and sd cards.

They aren't mutually exclusive at all. You can even have a real headphone jack
and maintain a high degree of waterproofing.

I think eliminating the ability for people to replace batteries and use SD
cards has more to do with saving manufacturing costs and encouraging people to
replace their phones more frequently.

------
astockwell
The attitude of complex, manufactured things that require extensive mining and
refining infrastructure and include uncommon elements (literally, molecular
elements) being single-use is awful. We need to hold ourselves to a higher
standard.

~~~
TooCreative
Aren't humans single-use too?

~~~
an_ko
Yeah, but humans are easy to recycle, and made of renewable resources.

------
grawprog
The attitude that even cheap phones are throwaways is troubling to me. Not
just because throwing away $200-300 seems reasonable to people here that
average people can afford to do this regularly, but mostly because every phone
cheap or not, takes resources to produce, many of which are non renewable,
resources to ship and distribute and sure they're recyclable, but I'd be
willing to be not a lot of people put the effort in to actually recycle them.

Continuing to produce new phone after new phone with only slight improvements
between each new model with the expectation that people will just buy a new
one rather than upgrade parts or repair old ones is just completely and
utterly wasteful from an environmental stand point.

~~~
xwdv
The environment isn’t being wasted, it’s being spent. The only way to stop
waste is to reach the point where you make a phone so good you don’t need a
new phone for a very long time. We may be reaching that point soon within the
next decade. That will require constant progress year after year.

~~~
neuralRiot
> The only way to stop waste is to reach the point where you make a phone so
> good you don’t need a new phone for a very long time. We may be reaching
> that point soon within the next decade.

Do you seriously think manufacturers would ever do that?

~~~
t-h-e-chief
Hehehe They tried that with light bulbs in the US. The electric companies
colluded to crush it and it became the start of planned obsolescence. I think
Eastern Germany under Soviet rule made an amazingly cheap and efficient light
bulb, but it didn't survive the fall of the Berlin wall - not enough money in
it.

------
isostatic
> Cellphones Are Throwaways

That's the point - they shouldn't be. The cost of a cellphone does not cover
the cost to the planet of producing that cellphone.

------
xoa
I wish all the energy being thrown at "repair" laws would instead go into
better warranty laws, which I think is the real underlying issue of which
"repairability" is only a symptom. An easy to repair device still leaves the
consumer paying money, and often ridiculously early (within a year or two even
for top end gear). When people spend $500-1k for a smartphone say, I think
there is the general expectation it'll work for at least a good 4-5 years
under normal usage, and that most people do in fact experience that. But a
percentage don't, and then have to take on the entire cost, or else everyone
has to overpay heavily through "extended warranties" which are big profit
centers that have no clear pricing, are hidden from the sticker price, and
create perverse incentives.

So basically it's a classic externality problem. Instead the law should simply
make sure that "how long a device lasts" matches reasonable expectation. There
are many ways to do this, such as saying everything is 6 months minimum for
the first $50 and then another month per $15-20 up to a maximum of 5 years,
and mandating repair/replace will happen within 2 weeks. The specifics could
be hashed out, but the goal should be to makes sure that for the price
consumers see advertised they are promised it will than work for a knowable
reasonable lifespan for zero extra cost. "Extended/enhanced warranties" should
only exist for special commercial/professional use cases, like extreme support
periods, specific fast SLA, or advanced RMAs. By law though all standard use
should be covered.

Then manufacturers can figure out the right mix of strategies to meet those
goals. Repairability might be part of that, because they could satisfy their
obligations more cheaply. But it's not the only way or the necessarily right
way in all cases, like sometimes additional QA or better design upfront
(reducing failure rate even if each individual failure or more expensive)
would be more important. Or just having large enough margins to eat the cost
if they can add enough value in other ways. It's a bad idea to have government
mandate the _method_ , what government should do is mandate the _goal_ and the
goal should be that products last, at zero additional cost. That way
everything can be compared with no digging.

~~~
heavyset_go
I want to repair and modify the hardware that I own whether or not I have a
warranty.

~~~
xoa
And I _don 't_ want anyone to be able to "repair" or modify certain classes of
hardware that I own (though I do want to be able to have root keys for the
software side). I don't see why hackability shouldn't be a feature that people
can pay for. I can see a solid argument I could get behind for a very minimal
requirement that you may request a device-specific bypass for any
cryptographic restrictions. Ie., Apple entangles aspects of the hardware for
security, but I'd be fine with requiring them to offer owners at time of
purchase the choice to have a root hardware signing key for that device only
themselves or not.

But I would strongly oppose anything further than that, such as changes to the
physical hardware itself. "It works for the expected lifetime" should be
required, but features within that should be up to creators and customers.

~~~
snagglegaggle
This doesn't need manufacturer intervention... look at secure boot as it is on
x86. You have the option of enrolling your own keys, or not doing it, and can
lock down the BIOS. If using a TPM then you get okay assurance that the OS has
not been tampered with.

Sure, there are exploits for these things, just as there are exploits for iOS.

------
jdlyga
They WERE throaways for the first 10 years of smartphones. Every iPhone or
Android release brought so many new improvements that last year's phone looked
ancient.

Nowadays, we've finally hit diminishing returns and a 2 year old iPhone X is
still about the same as an iPhone 11 Pro. It's become more like buying
laptops. Therefore, we really need a way to repair these things.

~~~
SoylentOrange
I strongly disagree. I think it would be hard to articulate why an iPhone 6s
(released in 2014) which is the phone my partner has, is not usable today.

Many of my friends have phones that are currently 2-3 years old, and they work
just fine.

I assume this has to do with relative income: either $1000 per year is a lot
of money for you, or it’s not.

~~~
cardiffspaceman
I see jdlyga's point as, iPhone 2 made iPhone 1 a throwaway, and from then on
to arguably iPhone 6 where maybe phones were more alike than different on
critical metrics.

On the other hand your point is that _current_ phones don't have much
different between them. I held on to my iPhone 5 for 6-7 years so I think I
have even better evidence for you than your resourceful friends.

------
perspective1
The actual quote is, "in the near future, cellphones are throwaways." Which is
still disagreeable, but substantially different from the manufactured quote of
"cellphones _are_ throwaways." This isn't outright _sham_ journalism, but it's
not credible journalism either.

~~~
koboll
I'm struggling to imagine how you think leaving out "in the near future"
changes the meaning of that sentence in any way.

Did I miss the part where he predicted a price crash in the smartphone
industry? If not, what are you talking about?

~~~
perspective1
> I'm struggling to imagine how you think leaving out "in the near future"
> changes the meaning of that sentence in any way.

You're really struggling to understand how a prediction about the future is
different than the state of affairs today?

~~~
koboll
Unless you can identify specific things that he thinks will be changing in the
future, yes. It sure doesn't seem like smartphones are becoming any less
valuable or more expendable.

~~~
perspective1
Obviously that's not possible because Vice doesn't give any context. Your line
of thinking has me worried-- finding context shouldn't be left as an exercise
to the reader.

------
gnode
I'm not sure the repairability of many types of electronic devices will be
able to meaningfully survive into the future. The general trend in computing
is to bring all the components together into a single module, as this improves
power efficiency, latency, and bandwidth (e.g. going from DDR memory chips to
stacked HBM chiplets connected to the processor by an interposer).
Portability, and the aesthetics of thinner / lighter devices also creates a
push towards more extensive integration. Repair increasingly means
replacement.

Maybe the legislative solution we should be pursuing is longer mandatory
warranties.

That said, in many cases a device fails due to a low value discrete component
-- a resistor; a capacitor. This repair legislation would help here.

~~~
novok
Most failures I've seen are either mechanical wear on a port, button or cable
of some sort, glass panel damage or a power supply system not being built
fully to spec because of cost cutting or stupidity. Also batteries wearing out
due to use or more rarely, ssd storage drives wearing out due to usage. There
is also 'glue & waterproofing wear' as the glue & rubber goes through multiple
heat / cooling cycles and unsets, then water damage occurs.

Those issues will never be going away on some level. The chips themselves are
usually the most reliable components, unless they are power management chips.

~~~
gnode
> Most failures I've seen are either mechanical wear on a port, button or
> cable of some sort

Eliminating ports seems to be some manufacturers' solution to this. There's no
wear if it doesn't exist.

> There is also 'glue & waterproofing wear' as the glue & rubber goes through
> multiple heat / cooling cycles and unsets, then water damage occurs.

I wonder if in the future, the glass will just be hermetically welded to the
case (glass-to-metal seal). No moving parts; no external adhesives; no
possibly of getting into the device without cutting through it.

------
mihaaly
It would be cheaper getting new lawmakers (throw them away).

It is seriously insane viewpoint in an overcommercialized consumer frenzy
environment destroying worker exploiting mass industrial insanity that the
humanity exhibit nowadays.

What's next? Get a new car if someone scratches it? Get a new home if the
window breaks? Get a new lawmaker if it says something dumb?

------
Mr_Shiba
Lobby money. Legal bribery at work

------
guelo
This article is blogspam. The original article [1] is better and shows that
the main objections were about security concerns.

[1] [https://www.nhbr.com/nh-house-panel-votes-to-nix-right-to-
re...](https://www.nhbr.com/nh-house-panel-votes-to-nix-right-to-repair-
consumer-electronics-bill/)

------
SamReidHughes
When people talk about non-renewable resources, the biggest of all is the
workers' time that went into engineering and manufacturing the thing. You'll
never get that back. You can always find more rare-earth atoms, at the worst
they'll be sitting in some landfill.

~~~
novok
You can also say you can always make more humans too...

------
14
This comment was typed on an iPhone 4s. It is ancient and is on its 4-5th
screen, second ear microphone and second power button. I did all the repairs
myself usually following ifixit website.

------
intpx
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_good)

------
Merrill
My phone was $7 / month during the two years that I was paying for it. That
was a small fraction of the amount that the carrier is charging me for
service. People who buy more expensive phones also tend to buy more expensive
service plans. So the phone turns out not to be the significant cost component
of cell service.

------
Isamu
What, nobody mentioned fairphone?

[https://www.fairphone.com/en/](https://www.fairphone.com/en/)

[https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-
repairability](https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability)

You can vote with your dollars.

------
inscionent
"Everything is disposable, even my constituents."

------
thorwasdfasdf
this day an age cellphones aren't getting much better from year to year. my
iphone6 from 5 years ago still works great and hope it will continue to work
great for the next 5 years. I don't want to throw away my cellphone, they're
way too expensive for that.

------
CamperBob2
Who's his opponent? Let's donate and make _him_ a throwaway.

------
blahyawnblah
This is for a state. What's the status on a bill nation wide?

------
OliverJones
There's an ALEC talking point against this right-to-repair stuff.
[https://www.alec.org/tag/right-to-repair/](https://www.alec.org/tag/right-to-
repair/)

Alec, the "American Legislative Exchange Council," is a far-right-wing
organization that feeds legislation to state legislators. Looks like this guy
picked it up.

All you New Hampshire people are welcome to come south to Massachusetts where
we've had our right-to-repair laws for years. But, horrors, you may have to
pay sales tax if you pay one of our fine repair establishments for this
service.

Or you can chuck your old phone in a roadside ditch along with your no-
deposit-no-return beer cans.

------
hitpointdrew
Sad that the "live free or die" state can't pass simple regulation that gives
consumers the freedom/right to repair.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's a contortion. You can try to repair your phone already.

Its legislation to require manufacturers to make a more expensive, repairable
device and provide instructional materials. Who's 'freedom' is that
supporting?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
From the article.

>The bill would have forced manufacturers such as Apple to share repair
manuals and parts with independent repair stores. House members didn’t kill
the bill, but sent it back to committee for a year of interim study, citing
security concerns

Doesn't seem like they were forcing the manufacturers to make easier to repair
devices to me but I also haven't read the text of the bill.

------
JohnFen
I wonder how much money Mr. Potucek got to make such a patently ridiculous
argument?

------
_rrnv
It’s hilarious that the land of the free, the kingdom of capitalism has
restrictions on right to repair while highly regulated market like the EU has
no problem with it and most of the times sides with the consumers anyway. I
won’t even mention Russia or China where you can do whatever the quack you
want with your device in any of the countless shops... Dear Americans, I think
you didn’t notice you lost your democracy and the republic to big business and
lobbyists. And don’t fool yourselves that if Democrats win it will be better.
Ironically, you really need to drain the swamp and make deep, systemic
changes. I wish you great luck.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _the kingdom of capitalism has restrictions on right to repair_

There are no such restrictions. There simply isn’t a mandate for repair.
Consumers have shown limited preference for repairability over other factors.

~~~
heavyset_go
Tell that to John Deere[1].

[1] [https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-
repa...](https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-
repair/amp#aoh=15720224124752&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&amp_tf=From%20%251%24s)

~~~
JumpCrisscross
The article is about "a big California farmers’ lobbying group" signing away
rights on behalf of its members to John Deere. No government is blocking the
right to repair, some companies are. Others aren't, but purchasers don't
prioritize their products.

There is no law in the United States that blocks or restricts rights to
repair.

~~~
_rrnv
The fact that it was possible is the problem. EU consumer laws make such
agreements void. But I guess it’s a matter of mindset. Maybe that’s why I’m
downvoted below zero :P

------
ahbyb
>The new iPhone 11 costs between $699 and $1,349. And it can be hard to find
one at the moment. Google’s Pixel 4 costs between $799 and $999.

Vice is seemingly not biased at all. (They push the point that mobiles are not
throwaways by choosing the most expensive mobiles as if they were the
standard. Most people I know just buy the cheapest Android they can find;
those are definitely throwaways)

~~~
baud147258
All publication are biased, one way or another (or in multiple different way)

~~~
99052882514569
This point is often overstated, so as to _almost_ make it seem like shameless
propaganda outlets like RT are equivalent to an actual journalism outfit with
standards. Though I'm sure that's not how you meant it.

------
saagarjha
> The new iPhone 11 costs between $699 and $1,349.

Nit: iPhone 11 tops out at $849. iPhone 11 _Pro_ goes up to $1349.

------
Bostonian
If consumers value the ability to repair a device they will avoid buying non-
repairable devices. The government need not get involved.

~~~
ahbyb
Most people don't care about this because mobiles for them are, indeed,
throwaways. So, according to some, this should be written into law so we all
are forced to care.

~~~
t34543
Most people can’t afford the unplanned expense of a device should it break. If
it’s not repairable, by law, then it will be manufactured to last for a
shorter period of time, compounding the problem.

I can’t use plastic utensils in California but I can use a disposable phone.
Mind boggling.

~~~
saagarjha
> I can’t use plastic utensils in California

It’s not hard to?

------
someonehere
The only con of allowing people to fix the items they own is you don’t know
the quality of the parts you’re replacing.

You’re going to have people who think they’re getting a good deal buy from
AliExpress or Amazon, replace something like the battery, then have an
explosion or fire. Goes on the news and next thing you know
Samsung/Apple/Google get dragged through the mud because people see
“Galaxy/iPhone/Pixel burns house down!” Now the company that made the phone
has to do damage control. Reputation is everything.

If there were some sort of regulations in place to only allow replacement
parts that meet safety guidelines, it would make it safer for right to repair.
You can’t trust people to not cut corners on saving money to fix their phone.

------
ReptileMan
I think that my generation - with teen years in late 80s to early 00s got
spoiled on PC repair ability. And it shaped us about what can we expect. Same
with buy computing device, install os of your choosing. The computers were
just integrated enough so sizable modules were discreet, but they were running
on well defined slots, the crypto was not developed enough to drm components,
there were competing players in the market for different parts and repair was
99% of the time just replacing the defective part.

I doubt that many people re-soldered defective chip on a ram module.

The only way right now to ensure repairability is to legalize how phones
should be assembled and basic architecture. The same way eu did with the
charging port - although they didn't went after apple for some reason.

On the other hand moving to system on a chip makes sense the way semiconductor
have developed.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> The only way right now to ensure repairability is to legalize how phones
> should be assembled and basic architecture.

Which would prohibit further innovation and optimization.

I'd like to see smaller devices available. Many people would like phones with
smaller screens that better fit their hands, which leaves even _less_ room
behind those screens for modular components and batteries.

I'm currently looking forward to the Purism phone, because it'll serve as a
platform for Open Source innovation in small touchscreen interfaces. That
doesn't mean I have any illusions that it'll be anywhere near as nice as a
less modular phone, and I really have no interest in the modularity aspects.

I like the idea proposed elsewhere in this thread, of pushing for standards on
recycling and then letting manufacturers innovate on how precisely to meet
those standards.

~~~
Asooka
It didn't prohibit innovation and optimisation on PC. You just have a few form
factors and the motherboard has to have the appropriate dimensions. None of
the connectors on a motherboard today fit any of the hardware that was current
when the ATX standard came to be except maybe a ps/2 port and a headphone
jack. Having half a dozen standard phone sizes seems reasonable, along with
standard sockets for CPU, GPU, memory etc. At the small sizes of a cellphone
it's quite possible you'll need a special device to actually replace
components, but that would be acceptable. You should also have a standard
battery connector so you could e.g. buy a super thick case and a 6Ah battery.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> It didn't prohibit innovation and optimisation on PC

And PCs don't have their architecture determined by legislation, so that
further proves the point.

> Having half a dozen standard phone sizes seems reasonable, along with
> standard sockets for CPU, GPU, memory etc

There are a lot more possible sizes or form factors, CPU and GPU aren't
necessarily separate, and memory is typically either soldered-down chips or
built into one of the other chips depending on quantity. Separating any of
those into removable boards will necessarily make phones larger, heavier, and
otherwise suboptimal.

> You should also have a standard battery connector

Modern devices often don't use a single discrete battery; they distribute
battery cells through a device anywhere they fit and wire them together.

