After my iPhone dropped into a pool last month I commandeered and wiped a Google Pixel 4a I had used as a work phone in the past. Oopsidoopsie, it went out of support last month and no longer has guaranteed security updates.
This phone was released in 2020. Mine is barely used. I was a bit WTF when I found out.
From an older article I found off Internet, Google justifying this policy:
"""
In response to an email asking Google why it stopped supporting the Pixel 3, a Googles spokesperson said, “We find that three years of security and OS updates still provides users with a great experience for their device.”
"""
Mine is still usable because you still get app updates and it's not like it stops just working but it's a bit uncomfortable to use out-of-security-updates phone. Waiting until the new iPhones get out next week.
Why can't companies support their products for a longer time. I've heard the best way to reduce e-waste is to keep using the stuff you have as long as possible.
The excuse has been driver and firmware support from the vendors. Google has extended security updates to 5 years for the newer Pixels. That's fairly decent, given that each one is only on the market for ~1 year.
Obviously the cycle has to be longer for companies that keep older phones on the market as a lower cost option.
> Google has extended security updates to 5 years for the newer Pixels. That's fairly decent, given that each one is only on the market for ~1 year.
Apple has been supporting iPhone models for 6 years without any fanfare about it. iOS 15 supported the iPhone 6S, which was 6 years old at the time. iOS 17 that just got announced will only now drop support for the iPhone 8 released in 2017, 6 years ago. At certain points 7-year old phones have received all updates.
Google's excuse about driver and firmware support does not and should not apply to the Pixel, which is a first-party device. I applaud Google for getting better here, but the linked article and the general reality of the Android ecosystem continuing to be a shitshow is really inexcusable in the face of their primary competitor doing the right thing for over a decade, quietly and competently.
> Google's excuse about driver and firmware support does not and should not apply to the Pixel, which is a first-party device.
The SoC/Modem at the heart of the (pre 6) pixels is not first party, though.
If qualcom says "yeah, we're not going to bother backporting $newIssueFix to the kernel fork we used during chip development/bring-up" then there's not a _lot_ that google can do about it unless there's a contractual agreement in place.
Apple has been using "first party" chips for their phones since the A4 processor (~ iPhone4) which is why they're able to keep compiling new OS/Kernel for their older hardware so long as the device is performant enough to actually run it.
It's not a coincidence that google has been investing _heavily_ in making most of android super composable; large chunks of the HAL and system level components can be updated even if qualcom/mediatek ... etc don't do the work to get a newer kernel working.
> there's not a _lot_ that google can do about it unless there's a contractual agreement in place.
1. They should have a contractual agreement in place.
2. Google is one of the world's largest companies and one of the largest tech companies, they're also one of Qualcomm's largest customers alongside Samsung (who is also an Android-based handset manufacturer) after Apple started making their own basebands. They have /significant/ market leverage.
It's excuses. Where there is a will, there is a way. The problem is that there isn't a will. Apple cares about device longevity and quality, Google does not. It's market segmentation in action. There is no reason anybody that can afford an iPhone should ever buy an Android device, because Google and their partner companies don't respect you as a customer. Consequently most Android devices are sold to people who can't afford an Apple device, otherwise they wouldn't submit themselves to this mistreatment.
Not really. QCM is in a position of power here. Where _else_ is samsung/google/apple going to go? This is slowly changing, but QCM modems are still in a league of their own... and they know it.
> Apple cares about device longevity and quality, Google does not. It's market segmentation in action.
This is a tenuous point at best. Apple isn't exactly rushing to make repair of their devices easy / accessible which is essential for a product to have a long life. Google doesn't have a lot of say over what other OEMs do w/r/t their hardware support.
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My whole point is that it's not a happy/meaningless coincidence that as soon as an OEM moves away from QCM for the CPU, the promised support period grows.
> This is a tenuous point at best. Apple isn't exactly rushing to make repair of their devices easy / accessible which is essential for a product to have a long life. Google doesn't have a lot of say over what other OEMs do w/r/t their hardware support.
Apple absolutely repairs their devices or replaces them for customers at reduce/no cost and recycles the components. They have an entire program for this called AppleCare. Millions of devices have been repaired by AppleCare. The only thing Apple is bad about is allowing independent third-parties to do repairs.
Google is stating here they won't even do first-party repair, nor will they supply parts for third party repair. This is not even in the same ballpark. You are making a false equivalence to try to distract from the fact that Google is uniquely bad here and has no respect for their customers.
> The SoC/Modem at the heart of the (pre 6) pixels is not first party, though. If qualcom says "yeah, we're not going to bother backporting $newIssueFix to the kernel fork we used during chip development/bring-up" then there's not a _lot_ that google can do about it unless there's a contractual agreement in place.
"You support it for 6 years or give us code, else we will take our million chip order to competition" should be enough
This only works if the "competition" is willing to sell to you (like Apple or Samsung won't) or is roughly on-par with Qualcomm's performance and power consumption (which MediaTek absolutely is not). Otherwise your billion dollar company gets laughed out of the room.
I don't know why there is this concerted effort to stick your head in the sand and pretend that such things cannot be the subject of a contract if the parties involved want them to be.
I severely doubt that if you offered qualcomm a trillion dollars they could not support the hardware for another 3 years. In fact it would be much less than a trillion dollars in practice.
What you're fundamentally saying is, qualcomm isn't going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts, and google is not willing to write the check to make it happen, and that's still on them.
> What you're fundamentally saying is, qualcomm isn't going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts, and google is not willing to write the check to make it happen, and that's still on them.
So QCM should just get to name their price and google should pay it?
Willful misreading of a comment is extremely impolite on this site.
I said that this wasn’t a “not available at any price” situation, it’s a matter of figuring out a cost that works.
Google (and other phone vendors) want to pay zero ($0), and the law currently allows them to externalize this cost onto their customers and society at large (e-waste going into landfills, unpatched OSs promoting malware, etc) instead. And they do.
> "You support it for 6 years or give us code, else we will take our million chip order to competition" should be enough
QCM has:
a) YEARS of RnD -> Patents on cellular tech.
b) YEARS of experience making the modems (on both ends of the link!)
compared to the other players in the space.
Where is google going to go here?
Can't do huawei because sanctions. Can't do MediaTek or Samsung because their modems are inferior in almost every way (speed, bandwith, power consumption ...).
Intel never was a serious player and I don't think they're in the space at all anymore.
> Can't do huawei because sanctions. Can't do MediaTek or Samsung because their modems are inferior in almost every way (speed, bandwith, power consumption ...).
Google has been using Samsung modems since the Pixel 6.
> Google has been using Samsung modems since the Pixel 6.
"This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
(with apologies to Douglas Adams!)
The various google/android/pixel discussion forums are _full_ of "the p6/7 is a regression compared to p4/5" threads. I can confirm that I get much more reliable connectivity with my p4 compared to my p6 and my p7 is only marginally better than the 6.
Regardless, my *whole point* is that it's not a coincidence that we start getting "extended support periods" when QCM isn't supplying the CPU. Up until ~2020 (when the p6 would have been under development) there was no serious competition in this space and that's why google and pretty much every other android device used QCM. Now that there's a second option that's even remotely close to QCM in performance, the OEMs are taking it ... and we're getting extended support as a result.
Samsung will have "won" when even QCM has to capitulate and starts offering extended support.
sadly nobody cares about the ways in which android generates its copious e-waste streams with its own planned obsolescence, the “but the e-waste!” deflections stop the moment you suggest that maybe android vendors should be legally required to provide first-party parts supply and software updates. All the communism and “it’s what’s right for the planet” vanishes in a poof of fanboy.
nobody really cares about cables generating e-waste or whatever horseshit, it was always about finding a way to use the legal system to resolve the arguments the android fans couldn’t win in the marketplace of ideas, and sticking a thumb in the eye of their fellow man.
Not to excuse Google but I think their main problem is that Qualcomm stops providing support for their chips pretty quickly which makes it much harder to run newer versions of Android that have newer kernels. Apple controls not just the OS but the chips as well so they don’t have to work around that problem.
>Google's excuse about driver and firmware support does not and should not apply to the Pixel,
Until very recently, Google did not own the SoC, so it shouldn't be surprising that Apple is better at support given their vertical integration. At Apple, if the hardware isn't working as expected for a SW team, they send an email to a manager and it gets fixed or someone gets hammered by senior management. But the relationship between Google and a chip vendor isn't so smooth; that's just the nature of organizations.
Google has made a smart choice by trying to bite off the SoC and try to be more vertical. It will make support much easier for them in the long run.
They can't claim an end of life date that's after the end of that SoC firmware contract if the SoC could have an issue that requires a fix. Plenty of hardware vendors ship updates for serious issues when they can after their published EoL date for good will reasons, but the EoL date is largely self fulfilling as corporate customers replace anything EoL to avoid risk.
When u consider the software cost the Android phones are definitely NOT cheap. A few years ago the Android phones software support were absurdly short and they are almost disposable. Some phones' updates are even dead on arrival as they are not even updated once.
It's better nowadays as Samsung is providing even longer support than Google itslef
Android vs Apple is Samuel Vines' Boots Theory of Economics played out with handheld electronics:
> "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet."
If you can afford an Apple device, there's nearly no reason why you'd submit yourself to the mistreatment of being an Android customer, consequently those who buy Android devices, especially the bottom-dollar ones that never receive a single update post-purchase are those that can't afford better in the moment. Exactly like the cheap boots vs good boots in this classic allegory.
That comparison is valid only if you had lots of suppliers and basically a single criterion, such as "feet dry" or in case of Apple "status". However, there are a lot of other reasons why you'd not want bo bend over for Apple's arrogant golden cage treatment. Main problem here is multiple instances of market failure all over the place: Qualcomm being a quasi-monopolist, made worse with patents. A phone being so complex that it cannot be made from scratch like a boot basically out of a cow. Apparently there being a place for only 2 App Ecosystems. General enshittifcation etc. etc.
Those are all a part of (but not the complete reasons) /why/ there is this segmentation in the market, but the segmentation is clear. Apple offers a superior product, treats their customers better, and is so expensive it is out of reach for many many people. Android offers a cheaper product, offers sometimes no updates at all or any assistance to customers, and is available to the masses.
Vines' theory doesn't try to analyze /why/ things are the way they are, it's an observation of the higher cost of being poor. I am simply pointing out that the allegory extends to mobile phones, apparently, because there is a higher cost to being poor when your device gets security (and other) updates for half the length of time or less, or is made with lower quality and less powerful components, so has to be replaced more often.
A base model iPhone is $800, a typical base model Android phone is around $200. That base model iPhone will get full iOS updates for 6 years, and security updates for 8 years, and is made of high quality components, and apps on the app store will generally work on that device for its entire lifespan (~8 years). That base model Android phone may never receive an update after release, but is generally guaranteed at most 1 year of updates, it is made with the cheapest components available as a low-margin device, and there are many apps on the play store that won't work on the device on the day its bought because it's not powerful enough, it will require replacement in roughly 1 year when it can no longer be updated (or more likely becomes broken, with no support). Over the same 8 year span that the iPhone base model user spends $800, the Android base model user will end up spending $1600 to maintain a phone with updates.
Of course, there are flagship Android phone models as well. But even in that case the story is worse for Android, because you'll spend $1000 on an Android phone instead of $1200 on an iPhone, and you'll get 3 years of updates and no support, vs ~8 years of updates and support. In time-adjusted dollars, the iPhone is actually cheaper than Android, but it has a higher entry cost in the general sense than the Android phone. It's matching nearly identically to the allegory, which is why I pointed that out.
The fact all modern devices, technologies, and our society in general is going to hell in a handbasket doesn't really matter in the context of what I am saying, but yes, I agree, enshittification ruins all.
Well they may have been pushing updates to those older phones, but I wonder if we can call that "support". Supposedly they were pushing updates that intentionally slowed down older models to encourage people to upgrade[1]. Let's not pretend they were just doing good to do good.
> Google has extended security updates to 5 years for the newer Pixels.
It's not really 5 years. For example, if you buy a Pixel 6a today, a product that is not yet discontinued, you'll get less than 4 years support.
Unless you accept Google's misleading framing of "from when the product was first sold", rather than the more reasonable "from when a consumer bought it, unless they bought it after it was discontinued".
"When the product was first sold" is a meaningless date to a consumer who chooses to buy a product and this framing needs to die.
I got a 4A recently (2 yrs ago now?) since it is supported by grapheneOS. My previous phone lasted 13 years, I intend to use this almost as long, or until there is a major hardware failure(failure with mainboard - not battery or screen or fixable issue). Next one might be a pinephone or fairphone if it is any good by then.
> I've heard the best way to reduce e-waste is to keep using the stuff you have as long as possible.
Of course. It's always been "reduce, reuse, repair" before "recycle". But there's a reason corpos want you to focus on the least efficient way to reduce waste and ignore the others.
It’s a great reason, but the even better reason is that multiple generations of pixels have emergency call issues that at this point they must be refusing to fix on purpose.
> Why can't companies support their products for a longer time. I've heard the best way to reduce e-waste is to keep using the stuff you have as long as possible.
Because they are not legally required to.
If law was "support it for 6 years since last sold device or open source everything including vendor drivers" then we'd get that support.
> “We find that three years of security and OS updates still provides users with a great experience for their device.”
Terrible non-answer. It's a great experience for the first three years and then the experience becomes much less great, which was the whole point of the question.
>Why can't companies support their products for a longer time.
I work for a semiconductor company on Android. The answer is simple; money. There is no revenue from the consumer market to support software updates on Android for longer than the required period and it costs money to perform this support. Android changes rapidly, and it takes reasonably skilled, hard to find people to perform software support for security sensitive systems. The work is not sexy and is thankless.
I can guarantee you if someone figures out a way to charge the user a fee for security updates, vendors and OEMs would jump on it. But Google has no such program that I am aware of and OEM's/vendors aren't in the position to market one.
It's particularly interesting because I feel like Google's biggest competition is Samsung, who now say they support phones for 4 major version updates after release. So if you had a Galaxy S20 instead you'd still be in support with, I think, one more update in the pipe.
Lots to dislike about Samsung's efforts to wring a little extra money out of their phones, but it's amusing that their platform support is better than the people who make the platform.
Try lineageos, I have two pixels from 2016 as backups just like you and they are up-to-date with the latest security patches.
I know absolutely nothing about phones/android and was able to get lineage to work in a few hours, and now it's 15 minute every couple of months to keep everything up-to-date.
My experience with Pixels has had them last about two years, plus or minus a few months. Always used a case, and the phones did not expire from direct accidents but thinks like the charging port failing (yes, I used a non-conducting tool to try to clean lint out). I loved the stock Android on my OG Pixel and Pixel 3 but the only thing worse than the phone needing replacement was it needing replacement after the extended warranty was past.
But you’ve got vendors like Sony who put key functionality of the phone behind an erasable firmware block, so if you ever unlock the boot loader your $1600 android cameraphone takes pictures like a 2010 budget POS. And they’re not the only ones who do stuff like that.
Yes, you can simply not buy Sony because of this behavior, and you can simply not buy samsung because of their spyware, and can not buy huawei or other chinese vendors. And by the time you count up all the android vendors you shouldn’t buy from the conclusion is obvious: it’s simply a better support model to just buy an Apple if you care about device longevity.
But since we all live on this same planet together, we need to do something about e-waste, and android is just fountaining devices into landfills with planned-obsolecence 1-2 year device cycles. This is something that - if you really do care about e-waste - needs to simply be outlawed. You sell the device, you support it for 5 years from the last year it's sold.
Mine is a Pixel 4a. The Google comment from the article was talking about Pixel 3. Both phones had the same 3 year support, so it applied to my case too.
It kinda got better with Pixel. I broke the screen on my 3, took it to an authorized repair store, somehow they broke motherboard. Since an authorized repair store screwed it up, they let me swap for a refurbished one. It took a couple weeks but I got a new-ish phone for free since everything was refunded.
But I think the thing to do is get the extended warranty. They'll just swap you out. Wish they were a little tougher though.
I was mugged about two months ago, and had my iPhone 12 Pro Max stolen from me [1]. Not wanting to spend $1000+ for a new iPhone, I figured I'd just get a Pixel 7 Pro since it's a bit cheaper and I never really considered myself an Apple loyalist.
Going to Android, however, meant my Apple Watch would not be terribly useful anymore, so I was left with the decision of "do I buy a Google watch, or do I just go back to one of my 'dumb watches'?"
I opted for the latter, and now I'm kind of glad I did. The watch I am wearing right now is a Casio from 2016 that still works fine, doesn't need to be recharged every day, and ironically I can get fixed by a whole bunch of places for a very cheap rate should it ever break.
Obviously it doesn't do as much as the Apple or Pixel watches do, but honestly I wasn't using most of the features in the Apple Watch anyway, and for telling time I actually think the Apple Watch kind of sucks.
Also, for those wondering, I really really hate the Pixel 7 Pro.
[1] Before anyone says anything, I have reported the phone stolen to both Apple and the NYC police, and they have all the relevant IMEI stuff so in theory it shouldn't be turning up in any kind of black market.
Costing under $100 and needing to be charged no more than every two weeks is an absolute killer app[liance?] for me. I have enough random crap needing constant charging or awaiting expensive replacement. So that's why my watch is a Timex (in low-enough light conditions its Indiglo backlight doubles as a flashlight. A flashlight!!) and my ebook reader is an e-ink device rather than a phone or tablet.
Come to think of it, having an LED screen of any kind is a big red flag where one doesn't have to exist. It's as true for guitar pedals as it for wristwatches - just one more thing that can break and may as well brick your device when it breaks unless your repair game and supply chain is strong.
I had Pebbles forever until they stopped making them. The eink display was so great for battery life and it was highly functional compared to other wearables at the time. I was even coding apps for it because they made the ecosystem so developer friendly. Rip Pebble
I broadly agree; the price didn't really bother me much (it's not hard to spend much much more than that on a watch), but one thing I never really forgave my Apple Watch for was the fact that I really needed to charge it every day. A Casio (or Timex) watch battery will last for years, upwards of a decade sometimes, they keep time perfectly fine, and are pretty cheap so it's not a huge deal if they are broken.
I'll admit that it was a bit tangential and I probably didn't make my point as thoroughly as I should have; I was trying to say that I feel like I dodged a bullet not buying the Pixel watch.
Also, I did mention at the end that I really hate the Pixel 7 Pro. I think it's a pretty awful piece of hardware and I am counting the days until I allow myself to buy something else.
It's probably because I'm comparing it to the iPhone 12 Pro Max which was more expensive, but keep in mind that that phone was also three years old.
Here's a list of complaints in no particular order:
> Firefox on Android doesn't properly background tabs. I didn't know this and had lots of tabs open and my phone battery would literally be like four hours total. This is obviously Firefox's fault, not the phones, but it was a bad first impression.
> Similarly, ProtonMail also sucks up all my power; if I don't turn on "power conserving" mode for protonmail, I only get like 13 hours of battery life. Again, not directly the phone's fault but a bad early impression.
> The camera is dreadful compared to what I had with the iPhone 12 Pro Max. It's not horrible in really bright conditions but it's terrible even in "general indoor lighting".
> The audio quality with bluetooth seems to "clip" a lot, even with stuff like LDAC codecs, and even playing a raw FLAC file with VLC.
> The overall interface is just mildly stuttery which isn't horrible but is mildly annoying.
> Google Pay seems to work sometimes, but it almost always rejects the first attempt.
There are more, but those are the biggest complaints. Uninstalling Firefox on Android made my life substantially better, so that's good, and maybe I'll find enough stuff that I actually like about it to where I want to stay within the Pixel ecosystem.
As of right now, though, I'm just wishing I bought another iPhone.
I did actually debate getting the Garmin as well since my sister has one and loves it, though the thing that stopped me from getting any of them was largely that I really hated having to recharge my Apple Watch all the time, and I felt like smart watches would universally require somewhat frequent charging.
Try a used Garmin, you won't be sorry, in fact you will be overwhelmed with how much functionality it has. If not happy you can resell it for about what you paid.
As for battery life, 5 days to 10 weeks depending on the model and how you use it...
I picked up a Garmin Instinct Crossover for this reason.
Absolutely loving having a normal set of hands, charging once a month (depending on my workout schedule can be once a week), and still having all of my features.
I agree, though I think I'm happier with quartz analog over automatic/mechanical. They're generally cheaper, keep just as good (if not better) time, and usually can have more complications for a lower price.
Granted, I don't really use the complications either, but I think they look cool on the watch face :)
$50 dollar fitness bands with 2-3 week battery life basically all I need. Show some messages, control media, occasionally use as remote camera shutter. There's some in watch form as well. Still nothing close to Pebble with programmable buttons.
I needed a new mounting plate for my Nest Protect Smoke + CO Monitor. I was out of warranty and Google support gave me a run around saying they don't sell that part and I would need to buy a whole new Nest Protect. After complaining a bit they caved and sent me.... a whole new Nest Protect. How can you be so against providing spare parts? There are only a few required for the whole product.
It's an annoyance for them to track SKUs, it's almost as complicated to track spare parts as whole parts, and they just are not a manufacturer, but instead three kids and a dog in a trench coat pretending to be one.
I loved my Pixel, but Google's customer service experience is so poor that it completely drove me away from the line altogether. Doesn't look like things have gotten any better since I went to Apple (which definitely has problems of its own but at least has listened to critiques and responded in the past).
Same. I had a terrible experience with Google CS and the original Pixel, which I ended up throwing in the garbage after less than a year because it was defective and they wouldn't do anything about it. Will never make that mistake again.
I've only ever needed support with google fi (their cell phone service), and their chat was responsive and helpful. Maybe their other support teams are not as good, idk.
Honestly, the few times that I've needed for a Pixel, it has been pretty decent. It does depend on where you've bought it from, though. The Google Store has decent support in my experience.
The reason we don't have one is the embodied carbon tax would have to be 100,000x higher for a Rivian EV than it would be for a smartwatch, while superficial 20th century environmentalist doctrine concentrates on the relatively negligible portion of "e-waste".
Ideally you will have a different definition of repairability for each category of devices or even per-manufacturer. Policy wise, the problem is the specificity of the legal language/phrasing.
To me the easier approach is to make exclusive supplier contracts illegal in the retail segment. A third party repair shop should be able to buy the same parts as Google and offer a repair service if Google is unable to provide one.
I have a pixel watch and I smash it on things all the time, door knobs being one since I am short and it doesn't break. Maybe by the third version there will be enough second hand watches to warrant a repair program. Its the cheapest watch I have owned in 20 years.
I wonder how samsung's galaxy smart watch compares? I'd never own an apple watch because I'd never want an apple phone, but I might someday consider getting a smart watch. Seems the options are the galaxy watch or ...nothing?
Take a look at Garmin watches. They're a bit of a different beast than the others, more a stand alone device that can talk to your phone than the others, but they're still quite nice. And the 20 day battery life is nothing to sneeze at either
Try a used series 4 from eBay if you're curious. They have the same processor as the 5 and 6, and are dirt cheap.
For me it's been good enough to overcome "I could take it or leave it" - it's handy for reading alerts without pulling out the phone, and Google Assistant even works most of the time.
It's also nice to keep the phone on silent and just get a buzz on the wrist for calls and alarms. Plus smarthome integration if you do that.
They are fine smartwatches but terrible sports watches. I only bought mine (GW Pro 5 LTE) because I like trail running and I enjoy the ability to go on a run without carrying my phone for safety. If coros ever releases a watch with LTE I will happily sell mine. Their sports features are years ahead of the what Samsung offers
Yep, wearing my pebble time steel till it dies)). Hope, maybe someday garmin will allow sideload so that we could load rebble into forerunners. It would be perfect combo
Is there any factual information that Apple actually repairs your broken iWatch, or do they just replaces it with a brand new one, and then throws your broken one in the e-waste bin?
I can tell you from personal experience they will not repair Apple Watches - they recycle them and charge a pretty hefty replacement fee if you do not have AppleCare+. I had a Stainless Steel Apple Watch Series 6 just outside the 1 year warranty. The display came dis-attached from the frame, either because the adhesive failed, or the battery had swollen. Like, literally I was just driving down the road and the display started hanging off the watch from its flex. The Apple Store wanted $400 to replace it - would not even evaluate a repair.
Yeah, if you're out of warranty, Apple's m.o. is also to just buy a new device as they don't repair them or they quote you a cost to "repair it" that's as much as a new product, to discourage you from that track and encourage you to buy a new one instead.
It appears that the screen and battery are both fairly straightforward replacements, about as easy as any modern smartphone. It would shock me if they weren't performing these repairs.
It says nothing there that they actually repair broken iWatches. "Refurbished" doesn't necessarily mean "repaired" but usually come from the pool of devices in good condition that have been returned in the 30 day period or traded in for an upgrade, but they are never "broken" to need repairs.
And they also mention for other products that include new housings, which they don't say for the Apple Watch. So I suspect that cracking them open for anything more than a battery replacement would make labor exceed the cost of the entire unit. Because these are relatively cheap devices that are labor intensive to work on.
They most certainly repair them. You can get AppleCare on the watches and they'll repair devices outside of AppleCare for a fee - going all the way back to the first watch.
That’s a special service they offer with AC+ but not the only option (would be a problem if it was because they require a hold on your card of the amount of a new retail one to ensure you don’t fuck around).
That said, most repairs are done offsite so anything they can’t do on the spot they just trade you a refurbished one and do it on their own time offsite.
I say “refurbished” but Apple calls it a “replacement” model. This seems like a distinction without a difference at first but Apple has two streams, “refurbished” and “replacement”.
The former you’ll see on their refurbished shop and might have minor signs of usage, the latter is used in their replacement process and always looks like a brand new one that you buy new (even though the fine print says it could have signs of usage).
I always prefer replacement over repair if I have the choice, because you’re essentially handed a new device.
In rare cases, > 3 coming back for the same issue, they’ll simply give you a new current retail model if your issue seems tied to a design issue in the model you own (e.g. this happened sometimes with the MBP GPU issue and later with the keyboard issue) so it always pays to keep badgering them if your issues aren’t resolved.
they don't repair it with you in the store, they send it back to a service center for refurbishment, but they do absolutely refurbish and repair units in house, and this stream ends up as other people's replacement refurbs, or on the apple refurb store, or sold in emerging markets.
This article is about screen replacement, which Apple charges quite a bit more for, more than the total cost of a Pixel Watch. Battery replacement does not require replacing the whole watch for Pixel Watch. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Google+Pixel+Watch+Battery+Repl...
And then apple attacked for planned obsolescence.. honestly, after I was an android user since smartphones became a thing after Nokia, I switched to Apple since 2017 and never looked back, the only company that used Android and I really liked was HTC (still have my HTC M8 with lineageOS), but it isn’t competing now, and the state of other androids phone is much worse than Apple, bloated and fragmented, and very poor on updates especially on security updates, sure, you might get a nice moon shot -that turned out to be AI generated, but I have a telescope for that.
I think its OK if they can't fix it. The problem comes when companies like Apple (don't know about Google) block right-to-repair legislation, or block access to parts for third-party repair or generally spread FUD about third-party repair.
So you’re ok with the company that sells it to you not being able to fix it and dropping support, but the company that provides repair services up to 7 years and battery replacements for Macs up to 10 years is somehow worse than that because they refuse to provide access to parts to third party repair shops that don’t join their program?
Again let me recap here:
- company that drops support, with no access to parts at all
- company that provides support for almost a decade and limited access to parts
And somehow you see that and say that the first one is better?
> but the company that provides repair services up to 7 years and battery replacements for Macs up to 10 years is somehow worse than that because they refuse to provide access to parts to third party repair shops that don’t join their program?
Apple is well known for forcing customers to swap expensive internal components (instead of repairing them) and contributing to greater e-waste. They force suppliers to not sell parts to independent repair stores. It sounds like you're not very familiar with it, so I won't blame ya.
I have the option of not taking my car to the dealership and instead doing simple stuff like oil changes myself, or taking it to a mechanic I trust. I'd like the same option for my electronics. If you don't trust anyone except Apple, you can keep going to them.
> Apple is well known for forcing customers to swap expensive internal components (instead of repairing them) and contributing to greater e-waste.
I’ll do you one better, they often swap out the entire device.
The customer doesn’t have to wait for a repair and can walk out with a working device, the defective device meanwhile is send off to one of their repair centers for further assessment.
I don’t know if this contributes to more e-waste because I don’t know the percentage of devices repaired, stripped for parts to be reused and stripped for parts to be recycled.
What I do know is that they heavily invest recovery of parts and other environmental focused processes and that they make extensive information on it available[0] just so they can brag about for 20 seconds during their keynotes.
It seems unlikely to me that, despite this, they secretly bury a bunch of e-waste in their backyard (so to say).
> They force suppliers to not sell parts to independent repair stores. It sounds like you're not very familiar with it, so I won't blame ya.
They have no issues providing parts to independent repair stores, provided they’re part of the Independent Repair Provider Program[1].
The main requirement of which is that the technicians get certified, certification fees are waived and there’s no fee to join the program.
I can hardly blame them for wanting to make sure the parts end up in skillful hands if the repair is going to be advertised as done with genuine Apple parts, because the customer will sooner blame Apple than know to blame a shoddy technician.
> I have the option of not taking my car to the dealership and instead doing simple stuff like oil changes myself
Have at it, go change that oil[2].
> or taking it to a mechanic I trust. I'd like the same option for my electronics.
And you have. Like with cars you can go to a mechanic you trust that can’t get their hands on OEM parts and will use imitation parts or you can go to a mechanic you trust that does have access to OEM parts.
With cars it’s actually a bit more complicated because it depends on the car make, model, the part in question, the region you’re in and some other factors.
But without devolving into a new tangent, you have those same options.
I'm talking about component level repair, not recycle. Apple doesn't offer that service, and has never offered that service. They tell the customer to replace entire motherboards (costly + wasteful) which is so costly that its often cheaper to just buy a new device. Repairing a product by replacing a part that costs 50 cents is a lot better than extracting rare earth elements from the planet all over again. This isn't about forcing Apple to repair stuff, I just want them to get out of the way. Also, I don't mean to single out Apple, they're just a popular target, many companies have the same anti-repair policies.
That's a very disingenuous recap, the commenter was complaining about Apple opposing and derailing right to repair legislation. Apple doesn't just refuse to provide parts either, they're increasingly serializing parts such that perfectly working components from 2 brand new Apple devices can't be swapped between them.
Not that Google is any better, they're all inexcusably terrible, anti-consumer, e-waste generating operations.
The commenter said “Shit action is Ok, but boy that other company is worse” and that just doesn’t compute for me.
> Apple opposing and derailing right to repair legislation
I guess you didn’t hear the latest news[0]?
> they're increasingly serializing parts
A pedantic minor correction: they haven’t so much increased it as people have started noticing stuff that had been serialized prior
> such that perfectly working components from 2 brand new Apple devices can't be swapped between them
They can be swapped, the device doesn’t block it outright or refuses to boot (with the exception of biometrics).
The problem is that some of the calibration and configuration is component specific, so in certain cases a replacement has unintended consequences, which, because it’s Apple, gets explained a purposeful attempt by Apple to break non-authorized repairs.
Personally to me this is rather hilarious notion because Apple isn’t known to be shy about being explicit in their messaging, case in point would be the messaging when replacing a battery.
The simple fact of the matter is that calibration is simply part of the repair and if not done, the repair isn’t done properly.
It’s the same as replacing your tires without aligning them and then blaming the car manufacturer for all the vibrations you feel during your rides.
Just about now the conversation then shifts to who gets access to calibration tools.
Currently Apple, Apple Authorized Service Providers, independent repair shops that are part of the free Independent Repair Provider Program and customers using the Self Service Repair service have access to these tools.
That covers pretty much all scenarios, with the exception being cowboys that want to go at it alone because they don’t want to subject their skills to any form of scrutiny.
I think it stands to reason that they then use their unimpeachable skills to transfer the control chip that holds the calibration data.
>The commenter said “Shit action is Ok, but boy that other company is worse” and that just doesn’t compute for me.
If you're using quotes, you should be quoting something I actually said, rather than making stuff up. Don't worry, I'll tell you exactly what I think, so you don't have to do that.
I bought a google nest hub on my office desk specifically for having meetings with Google Meet. Yesterday it tells me I can no longer do that after Sep 28. WTF.
This phone was released in 2020. Mine is barely used. I was a bit WTF when I found out.
From an older article I found off Internet, Google justifying this policy:
"""
In response to an email asking Google why it stopped supporting the Pixel 3, a Googles spokesperson said, “We find that three years of security and OS updates still provides users with a great experience for their device.”
"""
Mine is still usable because you still get app updates and it's not like it stops just working but it's a bit uncomfortable to use out-of-security-updates phone. Waiting until the new iPhones get out next week.
Why can't companies support their products for a longer time. I've heard the best way to reduce e-waste is to keep using the stuff you have as long as possible.