I wish they just stopped making these so often. We're beyond even generational improvements at this point. We're barely making any improvements at all
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2024
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I don't really see any downsides to annual phone releases. For those people who want to upgrade every year, they can, for everyone else, you upgrade when you want to and you get a pretty new phone. I definitely agree the improvements for slab phones has slowed down a bunch, but there are still pretty big leaps in foldables, etc.
There's no need for this consumerism. Is wasteful and unsustainable.
I don’t really see any downsides to annual phone releases. For those people who want to upgrade every year, they can
You really can't see any downside in upgrading your phone every single year? I'll give you a clue, it starts with an E and ends with a T and it is constantly being degraded by the mining and manufacturing required to flood the market with annual releases that are barely an improvement on the previous iteration.
If you're upgrading your phone every year, that is a personal choice. Plus, most people who do that trade-in/sell their old phone which gets used by someone else.
Trade ins and selling old phones doesn't really reduce e-waste. What reduces e-waste is manufacturing less phones.
That's empirically untrue. If people are selling their used phones and not keeping more than one phone (which definitely happens, but is unrelated to this point), then the exact same number of phones would be produced as if everyone bought new and only put them in e-waste when they were broken/obsolete.
Are you stupid? Let's say we have 1000 people and they all want the latest phone, all manufactured phones get bought and everyone sells their old phones. And phones don't break.
Scenario 1: Every year 200 new phones get released.
- Year 1. 200 most willing to pay the highest price buy a new phone, 800 are without a phone
- Year 2. The same 200 buy the latest model and sell their old one. The next 200 get the "new" used phone. 600 are without phones.
- Year 3, 4 and 5 I imagine are self-explanatory. By the end of year 5 everyone has phone.
- Year 6. The most willing buy the 200 new phones and sell their old phone. The next group buy the previous group phones and sell their current phone. The last group has nobody to sell to because nobody wants their phone. 200 phones go into e-waste.
- Year 7. Goes like year 6 except now there's a total of 400 phones in e-waste.
- Year 8, 9 and 10 follow the same pattern. By the end of year 10 there 1000 phones in e-waste.
- Year 20. By the end of the year there will be 3000 phones in e-waste.
Scenario 2: 100 phones get released (to better stimulate the real world because someone is going release a phone anyway, but you can also imagine 200 phones releasing every 2 years as the numbers will the same for every even year).
- Year 1. 100 people get a phone.
- Year 2. 100 people buy the new phone and sell the old one. 100 people buy the old phone.
- Years 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are the same pattern. By the end of year 10 everyone has a phone
- Year 11 the first year phones go into e-waste because nobody wants them. Total 100 phones in e-waste.
- Year 12 the next 100 phones go into waste. Total 200 phones in e-waste.
- Years 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 and 19 are the same pattern.
- Year 20. By the end of the year 1000 phones are e-waste.
- Year 40. By the end of the year 3000 phones are e-waste.
It literally cannot be empirically untrue because what I said is mathematically true. Let's say that in both scenario 1 and scenario 2 at the end of year 50 they decide to throw away all phones and never create another phone again. In scenario 1 there would be 10 000 e-waste phones. In scenario 2 there would be 5000 e-waste phones. The more you create the more waste will come down the line. If you want less waste, make less phones.
And before you go "but recycling?" only about 20% of e-waste gets recycled and the recycling process doesn't recycle all the waste.
It’s like people really think “reduce reuse recycle” is LITERALLY ALL IT’S GONNA TAKE. 1 year upgrade cycles are just as bad as fast fashion for how quickly they produce GARBAGE.
Why would you make your scenario supply constrained? Your argument is simply if we sold less phones, less would go to e-waste, and duh. That wasn't debate, it was whether releasing new phones every year was wasteful vs new phones being released every 2-3 years.
Your scenario also assuming people buy used or they just don't have a phone. People who buy a used phone generally do so instead of buying a new phone.
Since you're so incapable of thinking for yourself I'll go through it again with everything you mentioned. Same prerequisite except now everyone has a phone and excess phones turn instantly to waste, or do you need a point by point explanation on how excess supply turns into waste?
Scenario 1: Every year 1000 new phones get released.
- Y1: 500 people buy new phones and sell their old phones. 500 people buy used phones and throw away 500 phones because nobody wants to buy the previous phone. 500 phones just go to waste. End of the year e-waste is 1000 phones
- Y2: Same thing. End of year waste is 2000 phones.
- Y3: Same thing. End of year waste is 3000 phones.
- ...
- Y10: Still the same thing. End of year waste is 10k phones.
Scenario 2: Every 3 years 1000 new phones get released.
- Y1: 500 people buy new phones and sell their old phones. 500 people buy used phones and throw away 500 phones because nobody wants to buy the previous phone. 500 new phones go to waste. End of the year e-waste is 1000 phones
- Y2: People keep using the phones they have. End of the year e-waste is 1000 phones
- Y3: People keep using the phones they have. End of the year e-waste is 1000 phones
- Y5: New phone comes out. 500 people and sell their old phones. 500 people buy used phones and throw away 500 phones because nobody wants to buy the previous phone. 500 new phones go to waste. End of the year e-waste is 2000 old phones
- Y6: People keep using the phones they have. End of the year e-waste is 2000 phones
- Y7: People keep using the phones they have. End of the year e-waste is 2000 phones
- Y8: New phone comes out. 500 people and sell their old phones. 500 people buy used phones and throw away 500 phones because nobody wants to buy the previous phone. 500 new phones go to waste. End of the year e-waste is 3000 old phones
- Y0: People keep using the phones they have. End of the year e-waste is 3000 phones
- Y10: People keep using the phones they have. End of the year e-waste is 3000 phones
As you can see. Even with supply meets the demand exactly you generate waste if you release a new phone every year. If the supply exceeds the demand it generated waste. I don't see how it could be made any clearer beyond also going over your comment point by point.
Why would you make your scenario supply constrained?
Because how do you create a secondary market that would buy used phones? I could've gone with "people are poor" but that is much harder to put into an example. The supply constraint itself doesn't matter, but I did my best with the new example.
Your argument is simply if we sold less phones, less would go to e-waste, and duh.
Nope. My argument was that if we made less phones less would go to e-waste. That also covers unsold phones that go straight into waste as evident from my new example.
That wasn’t debate, it was whether releasing new phones every year was wasteful vs new phones being released every 2-3 years.
If you release a new phone every year you manufacture more phones. I guess technically you can manufacture the same amount of the same model for 2-3 years as you would manufacture yearly new phone. But that makes no sense from an enterprising point of view because you reach market saturation and the phones simply don't get sold, you're just manufacturing a loss for the company. Even if you manufacture the same model yearly you're still going to manufacture them less (due to demand dropping) than if you made a new model every year.
Your scenario also assuming people buy used or they just don’t have a phone. People who buy a used phone generally do so instead of buying a new phone.
If you paid attention you would've noticed that in both previous scenarios 800-900 people bought used phones and only 100-200 people bought brand new phones. I did that deliberately because you argued that reselling the phone has an effect when it really doesn't. At the end of the line the person who bought the last used phone throws their current phone away because you can't sell that to anyone. Which means as long as phone is manufactured regardless of whether it gets sold or not or resold or not, eventually it will go in the bin as e-waste. The best way to reduce waste is to not produce excessively like we're doing right now.
I don't know why you are soo hostile. Are you okay?
Your new scenario is still supply constrained. No one gets a new phone for 2 out of 3 years.
How about you make an example where supply actually matters.
I was just trying to refute your assertion that, "Trade ins and selling old phones doesn’t really reduce e-waste." Obviously some used phones are going to be bought by people who need a replacement, and if a used phone wasn't an option, they'd buy new.
Refute what exactly? The fact that you keep harping about supply means you don't even understand what I'm saying. The only thing you're refuting is your intelligence.
Yeah but new phones that go unpurchased don’t just magically get unmanufactured. I ONLY buy used phones, but that has literally no impact on the garbage production that comes from companies releasing a new model literally every year.
The sheer number of old phones that are still new-in-box on the secondhand market should be enough to exemplify that fact. We are WAY overproducing tech, and the “model a year” framework is throwing fuel on that particular fire.
Those aren't unpurchased new phones though. As you point out, they're discontinued, discounted and sold.
I was only trying to refute that, "Trade ins and selling old phones doesn’t really reduce e-waste." I'm the same as you, buying used phones, and if I didn't have that option I would be buying new phones instead.
yeah, reckon we’ve both been getting a bit semantic lol
i can’t speak for the original person, but my whole thing is regardless of consumer practices, manufacturerers are gonna keep making more and more phones every year, and they’re already making too many. those NIB phones on ebay were purchased, but not to be used. until they get sold, they’re just closer and closer to trash every day.
trade ins and buying/selling used DOES make a difference, it’s just hard not to think it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the massive amounts of electronics that end up getting discontinued, discounted, and sold to resellers hahaha
E-waste isn't the only problem associated with smartphone manufacturing.
While the energy required to power our devices remains significant, for devices like smartphones, tablets, and PCs, the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions now comes from the manufacturing phase. Devices have become more energy-efficient due in part to the shift to mobile platforms, as well as more complex, which increases the amount of energy required to produce each one. Life-cycle assessments of smartphones, tablets and PCs have consistently found that the production phase, including resource extraction and processing, component manufacturing, and assembly, contributes the most to total greenhouse gas emissions, in some cases as much as 80%.
Smartphones and other electronic devices are among the most resource intensive by weight on the planet–miners must dig through more than 30 kilos of rock to obtain the 100 or so grams of minerals used in a smartphone. Industrial mining scars the Earth permanently, leaving behind toxic wastewater and soil, and rehabilitation of mining areas is uncommon.
I completely agree with your comment. I was only responding to the claim, "Trade ins and selling old phones doesn’t really reduce e-waste."
In theory, phones would be cheaper if they had longer shelf life.
Similarly, we don't need new cars every year, but the beast must be fed, right? Right?!
It's not like you have to upgrade your phone every year. People are on different upgrade cycles in which these devices will be a big upgrade.
pixel is literally becoming the iphone
iPhone SE doesn't come out every year, and Apple doesn't have a foldable.
I'd argue the 9a is more equivalent to the regular 16, the regular pixel is the plus. Then the Pro and Pro max are the pro and pro xl
That was the plan all along. Google played the long con with Android.