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Fixers Know What 'Repairable' Means—Now There's A Standard For It - Ifixit:
[Earlier this year], three years of arguing with industry finally paid off, as the European standard EN45554 was published. This official document with an unexciting name details "general methods for the assessment of the ability to repair, reuse and upgrade energy-related products." In plain English, it's a standard for measuring how easy it is to repair stuff. It's also a huge milestone for the fight for fair repair.
We want to repair the stuff we own, so we can use it for longer. This is not only important because we want our money's worth out of the things we paid for, but because manufacturing new products is a huge and underestimated driver of climate change. So if we want to avoid cooking our planet, we need to stop churning out disposable electronics and start repairing more. Like, right now.
The problem is, industry won't do this by itself. Managers get ahead by showing quarterly sales growth, not increased product lifespans. Hence we need the government to step in, banning unrepairable products and helping consumers—that's you!—to identify the most durable products out there, so as to empower them to make better purchasing decisions. And in the EU, our political leaders are getting ready to do so.
But here's the rub: those leaders don't know what a repairable product is. If you ask manufacturers, they will all tell you their products are repairable. If you ask us, some devices clearly are more repairable than others, and some are frankly just not repairable at all.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ledow on Monday July 06 2020, @09:16AM (24 children)
Imagine how much human effort, energy and resources have been wasted over the centuries producing the same things over and over and over again with only slight variations, making them useless when the manufacturer is no longer around to supply parts, etc.
It's utopian to suggest that people would actually just go "But if we made this a standard part, everyone could share it or repair it", but can you imagine the nightmare of finding a "compatible" electrical device without such things? 220v? 110v? 2-pin? 3-pin? Which pin is live? What mains frequency? Hell, even AC vs DC was an actual international argument for many years.
I don't care about "repair" (in the sense of actually fixing a broken component) as such - I can't repair a smartphone, hell I couldn't repair an SMD device with any consistency. I do care about standardisation and modularity - I shouldn't need to "repair" if I can just get hold of a standard module from anyone and replace things that are broken. Even our spaceships have differing standards that have to be catered for with adaptors between countries and different hardware.
If there is some space-faring civilisation out there, I bet that it actually got there by stopping all this kind of nonsense. "This phone takes a standard user-replaceable Type 2 GSM module, up to 5G speed". Or "All spacecraft must use industry-standard propulsion modules fitted into a Size X frame."
Everything else is just a waste of an already precious resource.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday July 06 2020, @09:31AM (8 children)
You? Probably not. But a fixer could. To the benefit of everybody except the manufacturer.
One can hope to see a reduced prevalence of planned obsolescence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Monday July 06 2020, @10:17AM (5 children)
There's a point of practicality here - I just want to swap the module for a working one. What a repairer does in a back-room to then turn a "broken" module into a "non-broken" module that they can sell on is not my concern. With modern electronics, those kinds of SMD/solder reflow jobs aren't particularly cost effective even with the best equipment in the world.
But there's nothing stopping making things modular for the consumer so they can "repair" things themselves. If my washing machine breaks, I'm not tearing the thing down to break out the soldering iron. I'm looking for a working replaceable module - available from someone who can supply one. If they can even turn the old "broken" one into a working one is far beyond certain.
Far more important is modularity, the availability of alternative compatible modules if necessary, and the standardisation of interfaces to allow that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by anubi on Monday July 06 2020, @10:46AM (1 child)
There is a market for rebuilt car parts. In order to get a freshly rebuilt part, you need to give back your broken one. Else, you pay an additional "core charge".
Very common on parts with custom castings...alternators, starters, and things like computer modules.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday July 07 2020, @12:50AM
Yes, definitely. I work on cars a fair amount for someone who doesn't do it as a job. Anyway, more and more the aforementioned parts are NOT being offered as rebuilt- sold as new only, coming from China of course. They're so inexpensive that it's not worth rebuilding them. Many recent examples: water pumps, alternators, starters, etc. It's great that they're so inexpensive and you're getting new parts, but I question the quality and I'd rather have rebuilt older ones. More and more I've taken to buying the parts- like bearings and seals and brushes and rebuilding the things myself. One alternator I took apart- I could not find anything wrong with it, so I blew out the dust (air nozzle) and reassembled it and it's been working perfectly for 2 years. I reason there must have been a loose connection that I unknowingly fixed by disassembling and reassembling.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Dr Spin on Monday July 06 2020, @12:21PM (2 children)
Take your straw man, set it on fire, and then jump into the fire: Not all repairs involve soldering hardware.
I have several phones which work, but the OS is obsolete, and the information does not exist to replace it because the datasheets for the parts
and the boot loader API are not publicly available.
The manufacturer should be required to put these in escrow before being permitted to sell the device, so that the FOSS community can
replace the bloatware with a usable alternative if it performs better than his shitstorm or he forces an upgrade on me with a UI that is worse
than shit.
Failing that, he should be treated as a serial fly-tipper, and fined several thousand for each phone he sells, on pain of lengthy terms in prison
for each and every director if the company turns out to have supplied duff information, or defaults on payments.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday July 06 2020, @05:14PM (1 child)
You're now introducing software specifications.
Almost every phone is nothing but an ARM chip, the bootloader isn't necessary to boot an alternative OS (proven by LineageOS).
What you're suggesting is completely open hardware - admirable but more unlikely that someone just making a "CPU board" that can be replaced by any other that connects to a "GSM board", a "screen module" and so on. Often datasheets
While ideally you'd be right, it has nothing to do with repairing the device (and you accuse me of strawman?). Datasheets for things like the x86 chips are just sitting out there for everyone - doesn't help you crack the XBox, etc.
But if you could just swap out the CPU module for an OS-version one, you'd be laughing, and could even get better, more suited chips/BIOS for the things you want to do. Then "the OS" just becomes a pluggable module, in effect.
And with security heading towards secure-booting everywhere, you can have all the details in the world - if you don't have the bootloader key, you can never load the OS (without invalidating the warranty by permanently flipping a bit, like how phones work now) even if you know every other detail of how it works. And Samsung aren't going to sign your bootloader or provide an opportunity to bypass it without it being extremely obvious (as they already do).
You're two steps ahead. But my suggested step would not only make your possible, but would probably negate the need for it anyway. Buy a new phone, buy an "open" CPU module... done.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Dr Spin on Monday July 06 2020, @06:38PM
Prior to Bill Gates, almost all hardware had published datasheets which the manufacturer would happily send you free of charge.
The 8008 datasheet explained exactly how the instructions were executed, to the gate level (I have a first edition).
I headed a team that wrote an OS for the 8080 quite similar to CPM (could read CPM, Intel ISIS and RSX/11 files).
DEC would supply you with free manuals explaining the internals of all the parts to the level required to write Unix.
In the 1970's no procurement team would buy chips (or any other component) for which there was no second source.
Hence Intel and AMD cross licensed a load of chips, All was happy.
Then came manufacturers of video chips which were "proprietary" - primarily because they were so bug infested that
anyone who read the datasheet risked their head exploding (I wrote OS/2 drivers for S3 chips).
But my suggested step would not only make your possible, but would probably negate the need for it anyway. Buy a new phone, buy an "open" CPU module... done.
No, its not about my phone - it is about Mr and Mrs Twit and their kids buying stuff that manufacturers are free to brick and send to landfill. There should be no "freedom to
make money by trashing the planet" any more than you are free to enter my house and enter your trash can on the carpet.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SpockLogic on Monday July 06 2020, @11:40AM (1 child)
The curse of the MBA strikes again. Short term gains over long sustainability every time.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @08:24PM
It is a bit funny as our company was just looking at extending our warranty from something like 10 years to 15 or 20.
Then again, we don't sell consumer grade stuff. This is seriously industrial stuff, and we sell at a mark up for our quality.
Companies are willing to pay a bit more when they know they wont have to touch it for the next 25 or so years.
(Score: 2) by inertnet on Monday July 06 2020, @10:16AM (2 children)
Someone already designed a modular smartphone [wikipedia.org] in 2013. Motorola and Google ran with it, but it never really took off.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday July 06 2020, @10:22AM
"There is no plan to actually produce the Phonebloks design as a commercial product."
It's not that it didn't take off. It literally never got to market.
If consumer had the choice on a shelf between the two, which would they choose?
(Score: 1) by petecox on Monday July 06 2020, @11:13AM
Europe has the Fairphone.
But I don't know if there's a market to upgrade modules to more powerful parts, while FP3 modules are incompatible with FP2. :(
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday July 06 2020, @01:20PM (10 children)
I care quite a lot about how easy it is to repair stuff, regardless of whether I personally can do the repair. And that's because it affects the cost and difficulty of having somebody else do the repair for me.
As an example of how things work right now: I was having some brake trouble on my sedan, so I take it to a local garage that I have good reason to believe is fairly honest, and they and I agree that brakes on this car are pretty standard and they should be able to handle it no trouble at a reasonable cost. So far so good. But after the parts are all in and installed correctly, they need to bleed the brakes, and it turns out that to bleed the brakes on this car specifically is a special process, even though the brakes aren't all that unusual. And the manufacturer only sells the equipment to do that special process to its dealers, which means our only option ends up being to tow it from the local garage to the nearest dealership and have them bleed the brakes, and a task which would cost at my local garage something like $100 cost instead about $500 because the dealer knows about the things only they can do (which eliminates competitive pressure) and charge accordingly. And one aspect of that whole experience was that if I was the sort of guy who did all my own auto repair work, I still couldn't do this repair, no matter how well I knew my car.
And contrast that experience to when I encountered a problem with my electric stove, and was able to figure out with no previous training but a bit of help from Google how to isolate the busted part, remove it, and replace it with a reasonably equivalent part that set me back something like $15.
So whether or not I could repair a thing, it matters whether a reasonably skilled technician in the field could repair the thing.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @02:10PM (3 children)
What car requires this custom brake bleeding tool-set?
I've been bleeding brakes since about 1970 and, while slow, the same two-person method always seems to work (one pushes on brakes, the other opens&closes bleed screws). Really curious how some company managed to screw this up!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 06 2020, @04:16PM (1 child)
A Toyota Prius, which has some fancy stuff on its brakes because it's capturing some of the kinetic energy to charge the electric engine battery.
But that doesn't explain why nobody can get the equipment to handle it correctly if they're not a dealer, or why a 1-hour procedure costs $500.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 07 2020, @04:13AM
Ah, should have known. Some quick searching suggests that the Prius brakes are (at least partly?) brake-by-wire, so pushing on the pedal may not displace any brake fluid. Didn't bother to dig deeper, but good to know that there are systems out there which are truly different from standard hydraulics--thanks!
I've read that totally electric brakes (no hydraulics at all) are being prototyped by some of the major brake suppliers. They'd better have darn good water protection for all the electrics and connectors because the salt bath here in the winter is very rough. Not sure I'd want one of those cars after ~10 years of winter salt.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday July 06 2020, @07:01PM
ABS systems require some kind of external controller to cause them to open internal valves so you can purge the air out of them. There's no standard for that fun job- it all depends on car year, make, model. It could be through OBD2 / CAN interface, or proprietary ABS system interface.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday July 06 2020, @02:35PM (5 children)
Indeed. I think a lot of people have gotten so used to the "no user serviceable parts inside" mindset that they don't even realize that this is an incredibly new thing. Thirty years ago even my small home town had a machine shop, a couple appliance repair shops, an electronics (TV, etc) repair shop, and several others. I think now they've all closed except for a single appliance repair shop. Some of that is that products have gotten cheap enough that repairs aren't the cost any more - but even that is in large part because products are no longer made to be repairable, which makes them a little cheaper to make, and a lot more expensive to fix.
Computer repair is probably the one exception, partly because most of the problems are software failures that can be fixed with a reinstall if nothing else. And partially because most are still designed to be at least somewhat modular - desktops are usually highly modular so that failed modules can be easily replaced, while laptops have historically made at least had the memory and hard drive relatively easy to replace. Though that's been changing, and for whatever evil reason they usually make it an arduous ordeal to reach the single most common point of failure (and only component that benefits from regular maintenance) - the fan.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Monday July 06 2020, @07:04PM (4 children)
More and more laptop RAM and SSD are soldered onto the motherboard. I hate that maybe slightly more than I hate soldered and glued-in cell phone batteries.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday July 07 2020, @03:10PM (3 children)
Exactly what I was referencing. And I agree completely - I absolutely refuse to buy any laptop with a soldered on consumable components. RAM I might tolerate if there's enough of it - RAM generally lasts a long time, and demands have pretty much plateaued. SSD and battery though - you're almost guaranteed to have those fail at least one or twice before the rest of the hardware is obsolete.
What *really* pisses me off are the low end laptops with 4GB of RAM and some tiny SSD soldered on. You *know* that's going to be barely adequate to begin with, and rapidly become completely intolerable. Tiny SSDs in particular are going to wear out incredibly fast. And yet they make a product explicitly targeting poor people that is a complete technological dead-end, rather than raising the price an extra $2 to make the most-inadequate components cheap and easy to upgrade when they can afford it.
I would love to at least see mandatory consumer-information tags on computers that specify how difficult major components (including the fan) are to replace - perhaps on a multi-tier scale ranging from "unscrew a cover and plug in a new module" through "spend an hour dismantling things" all the way to "buy a new motherboard".
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday July 07 2020, @04:03PM (2 children)
Yay! Like-minded! Lets get our pitchforks and torches and, oh wait, nevermind. That's being done and we'd be lost in the fray. :)
I guess we need to write letters to congress. That and help them set up better constituent polling systems that can't be poisoned by hired influencers.
RAM has gotten better, but I've replaced quite a few bad RAM modules in fairly recent years, more so in laptops.
My gripe about SSDs, which includes all of your thoughts, is that if an HD gets infected, do NOT boot it, but must REMOVE it and scan it as a secondary drive in a (hopefully) known clean machine. I spoze you could boot from a USB FLASH drive and accomplish the same thing, but it would take more work and time to keep the USB drive updated.
I'm also thinking of phones, where I really wish I could remove the SSD. I have at least 1 phone (I have several) that has no microSD slot.
But otherwise you can use SD / USB FLASH drives to expand the otherwise too small internal SSD.
I spose I'll be changing SSD FLASH chips on someone's laptop MB someday... And really there's probably no point, unless it's otherwise a great machine that the person loves. Kind of like an older car- if the engine dies, and you like the car and it's otherwise great and there's no close replacement, get a good used engine or rebuilt. Unless it's a newer John Deere tractor- then you just decorate it and use it as a plant stand and visual adornment.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday July 07 2020, @05:52PM (1 child)
Heh, yeah, I tend to think that the primary purpose of protests is to give protestors something to do together to blow off steam. Unless the protests pose a threat greater than the lost profits/power from meeting their demands, nothing is likely to happen. (Violent protests seem to have a somewhat better track record, but demand that protestors be willing to risk their lives in the retaliatory strikes. The Civil Rights Act finally being passed in the face of the post-MLK-assassination riots springs to mind)
For infected drives, I've always found the USB stick option to be much more convenient than transferring internal components between machines, even if I have to start by downloading a disk image (it's rare I deal with the situation often enough that updating an old USB stick is even worth considering). It also completely eliminates the risk of a particularly pernicious infection spreading to another machine - internal drives are generally treated by the OS with far less caution than external ones, not to mention you have to make sure your BIOS is set up properly to avoid the risk of booting off the infected drive. Not exactly rocket science, but an added nuisance nonetheless, and enough of an issue that I'd never suggest drive-swapping to someone who isn't already intimately familiar with adjusting the BIOS
I certainly agree on phones - I can understand the hard-wired RAM, since that's generally incorporated into the SoC architecture. SoC storage on the other hand is typically minimal to nonexistent and gets soldered on separately. And while there are some good arguments against having primary storage easily removable (as anyone who ever ran even an ancient primitive OS off a floppy disk can attest), not having any sort of replaceable storage just seems like a raw cash grab to me. Especially in the face of the fact that such phones are often available with two or three different capacities of storage, with the upgrades being sold at several times the value of the larger storage chip being used.
Phones though - really they're a whole new level of planned-obsolesce evil. It's been terribly dismaying to see their strategy being adopted by tablet and even laptop makers.
As for USB storage expansion on soldered-in laptops... I've done it, and with the ultra-compact "dongle drives" available it can work considerably better than a relatively slow SD card - but far too often such laptops also have only one or two USB ports to begin with, and personally I like using a mouse, and use external storage often enough that even a "generous" two ports means giving up the mouse during file transfers, while a single port is just a huge PitA under virtually all circumstances.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday July 07 2020, @07:27PM
Like minded we are. Gotta have a mouse, and to be sure that happens, I have some small USB multi-port expanders. Keep one in your wallet. :-}
Re: secondary drive, I meant I use an IDE / SATA to USB adapter.
Besides my many reasons for hating planned obsolescence, my bigger concern is that newer phones contain more built-in tracking / spying software.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 06 2020, @02:23PM
Yep. They stopped the nonsense by relocating all the females to a separate planet, in a different galaxy.