The Android phone maker says go ahead, fix your own phone.
The right-to-repair movement continues to gain steam as another big tech company shows its support for letting people fix their own broken devices.
Google endorsed an Oregon right-to-repair legislation Thursday calling it a “common sense repair bill” and saying it would be a “win for consumers.” This marks the first time the Android phone maker has officially backed any right-to-repair law.
The ability to repair a phone, for example, empowers people by saving money on devices while creating less waste,” said Steven Nickel, devices and services director of operations for Google, in a blog post Thursday. “It also critically supports sustainability in manufacturing. Repair must be easy enough for anyone to do, whether they are technicians or do-it-yourselfers.”
In the Oregon repair bill, manufacturers will be required to provide replacement parts, software, physical tools, documentation and schematics needed for repair to authorized repair providers or individuals. The legislation covers any digital electronics with a computer chip although cars, farm equipment, medical devices, solar power systems, and any heavy or industrial equipment that is not sold to consumers are exempt from the bill.
Google has made strides in making its Pixel phones easier to fix. The company enabled a Repair Mode for the phones last month allowing the protection of data on the device while it’s being serviced. There’s also a diagnostic feature that helps determine if your Pixel phone is working properly or not. That said, Google’s Pixel Watch is another story as the company said in October it will not provide parts to repair its smartwatch.
Apple jumped on the right-to-repair bandwagon back in October. The iPhone maker showed its support for a federal law to make it easier to repair its phones after years of being a staunch opponent.
Makes sense because google certainly doesn’t support their own shit lol
It almost doesn’t even matter for Google products: I’ve had more Google products die due to lack of software support rather than any sort of hardware issue…
Their phones keep on updates for longer than any other androids. Crap thing is they use cheaper apu’s so I still don’t want one.
As a former Pixelbook user, I agree 100%. A firmware update crippled my touchscreen, and the touchscreens of quite a few other users, from the look of their support forum.
Rather than investigate and issue a fix (which they haven’t in years, also according to their support form), they literally told me to buy a new laptop. WTF?
Well, I sure did. I got a Framework. Now I can fix it whenever I want with ease, and with every part readily available, too!
Thanks, Google!
The constant multi-year tide of Pixel support and RMA horror stories helped push me into getting an iPhone
The refusal to allow side loading is what really stops me doing the same
I remember back in /r/Pixel on Reddit that Google had a mid tier or higher customer service rep in the subreddit. Why? Because their regular customer service sucked so bad they needed someone in /r/Pixel to do damage control. If a person wasn’t in the subreddit, they’d basically be left twisting in the wind.
I had my OG Pixel XL get compromised and my Google account stolen. Asking to get it back was basically “Fill out this form and we might get back to you at some point. You won’t receive any communications from us except to tell you your account has been recovered. And there’s no way for you to talk to a real human.”
Oof.
🤔 What’s really going on? Very time I see a big company back something good. I get a funny feeling.
They have to because of the EU. So now they will get a good story out every time a state in the US “forces” them to do so.
Apple did the exact same thing a few months earlier.
https://lemmy.world/post/10678878
here you go. This is why you get funny feelings.
Companies see the writing on the wall with all the right to repair legislation going around, so they’re trying to make themselves look good now instead of fighting it anymore. At least publicly.
Yeah. I have no doubt behind closed doors they’re still trying to
bribesorry I mean “lobby” the politicians to repeal right to repair, or in some way cripple the legislature
Enemy of my enemy is my friend
Android has always been easier to repair, apple is notoriously against repair.
Force policy to cut out a large portion of your competition’s revenue strategy (Apple authorized repair only)
I mean there have ever been Android phones with a back that came off and an easily replaceable battery. Apple NEVER did that.
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I bet it’s sth like when apple came with their repair program…
Probably they’re trying to look good.
That’s a Samsung S4 in the stock photo. Those things were like Lego, I used to have a few that I’d swap out parts to keep running. I changed out screens, charging ports, cameras. And you could swap batteries on the fly. Those were better times.
I used to have a few that I’d swap out parts to keep running
I still use a S3 as alarm clock and only had to replace one battery… used it as daily driver until ~2017 too.
i’m just gonna leave this here:
TLDW: They are basically advocating for selling assemblies of parts for “user safety”. So for example, if one chip on a motherboard was broken, instead of selling the individual part, they want to sell you the entire board with all the other parts attached (which can cost nearly as much as the device was new).
Video also highlights how you can buy a device cheaper than the cost of buying a genuine part from the manufacturer.Google are grabbing good PR headlines with backing one complaint point in the right to repair scene, but then also backing a bunch of anti-repairability in the rest of their post, neatly snuggled away in a bunch of corpo talk bullshittery.
That was my sentiment exactly. The benefits of being able to buy parts to fix a device is more muted when the replacement part cost the same as a buying an entire used phone. Maybe I’m in the dark, but the cost of screens feels inflated and like a deterrent to fixing devices, in spite of it being likely the leading reason for repairs.
“buzzword, buzzword, buzzword, anyway consume product. don’t worry about how we group unreliable parts in with the expensive ones.”
I mean it’s better than nothing. Hopefully it leads to more economical repair kits. On a personal note, of the repair required soldering chips onto/off the board I would much rather buy a working board then try to replace a single chip.
Sure, but most people wouldn’t even want to attempt a board replacement and would rather take it to a repair shop. Replacing an entire section of a device because one tiny part is broken is not helping the e-waste problem repairability is trying to work on.
These companies just want to upsell you to a new device, they want to group parts into assemblies to increase the price, and if the repair is going to cost just a small amount less than buying a new device, people are likely just to buy a new one, now that old device becomes e-waste and the company made a sale. Instead of it being a cheap repair, keeping that device going for as long as possible.
the e-waste problem repairability is trying to work on.
Just to be clear, reducing e-waste is just a fringe benefit and kinda beside the point. The real reason for repairability is that it’s the device owner’s property right, and to try to restrict repairs (or worse, make them “illegal” via inserting frivolous DRM and invoking the DMCA) is to infringe on that right.
would much rather buy a working board then try to replace a single chip.
That’s perfectly fine for you, but I do own a hot air rework station, so give me the option.
yeah, you basically need to be a pro at reflow soldering. but that’s the thing about independent shops, they’re willing to put in the extra work to be as economical as possible. ends up being cheaper as well.
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It’s Rossmann. It doesn’t need an explanation.
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Until they publish the schematics and drivers for device components for usage in making the device software last as long as possible, those are just empty words. Yeah, sure I can finally replace the broken camera sensor, as I should be able for years, but I must buy whole another phone if I want something slightly different in the OS image.
Backing the legislation forcing them to do just that isn’t entirely vapid. I mean, I’m not counting on them completely, but it is a step in the right direction.
But I guess it would be really hard to write it into strict law without loopholes.
Problem is I imagine a lot of their hardware is under NDA so they’re unable to. I appreciate what they’re trying to do but a lot of hardware companies sadly won’t allow them to publish a lot of things. I do wish there was more open-source hardware (and I say that as a huge open-source advocate)
We need regulations that prohibits such actions.
We already have patents to protect companies, they don’t need to keep their software and schematics secret.
Companies like Fairphone would love to open their drivers so distros like PostmarketOS could add support that then mainline Linux can be ported. But they can’t somehow.
I guess Apple would have a much better time in that having their own design and being much bigger in influence.
You are allowed to unlock the bootloader and install a custom ROM though, so at least once my Pixel 6 Pro is out of support I can flash lineage or graphene onto my phone
That’s really basic and not even the minimum for actual long-term support. Remember those ROMs needs to hack together pices of binary blobs and drivers scattered around stock ROM and do many patches. Basically any new Android version is doing the work once again, that LineageOS and other projects automated. And after the end of official updates they are stuck with untouchable firmware package.
What should be done is adding the support to the upstream Linux kernel itself. Like AMD and Intel are doing on desktops, thanks to that we can have almost lifetime updates, multiple choices of OSes and have one image for all devices instead of doing seperate builds. Or at least provide documentation and drivers so the community can do it.
Don’t get me wrong it’s not perfect and I 100% agree with what you’re saying, but it is vastly better compared to some other OEMs (Samsung comes to mind) who uses shit like e-fuses to make sure your phone is never able to use a banking app again or the multiple companies that don’t let you unlock the bootloader at all.
Recently I read that Xiaomi new “HyperOS” won’t allow bootloader unlock at all unless you have max level of support on their community forums and even then only 3 devices a year🤦
"We’ll make our phones almost impossible to fix yourselves, much like cars that place the easily changeable battery under light fixtures and other metal pieces of the engine!
But please, by all means, fix your own phones!"
Your battery is still in the engine bay? Must be nice.
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Google doesn’t really sell phones, this is just a cheap way to match Apple.
You don’t see them backing open access anywhere else. In fact, they’re trying to lock down all the client software to stymie ad blockers.
I guess the pixel I’m currently typing on doesn’t exist.
They have a ~0,7% market share.
Still a lot of phones though.
Aren’t they like the only company that actually saw in increase in phones sold?
They made a big deal of being the first manufacturer to officially offer parts through ifixit, but a replacement kit for the internal display on the Pixel Fold is over $900 USD. It’s almost the same price as a brand new 512 GB Pixel 8 Pro, but that will have a warranty and is guaranteed to be waterproof, unlike a repaired phone.
Got any non-folding examples? I’m not surprised to hear a low volume folding screen is $$$.
The 8 pro screen kit is $236 which is lot more reasonable. I just have a hard time believing the inner screen is really half the cost of the phone. I imagine supply is tight and they want to keep people from buying all of them to flip on ebay for like double the price.
So I don’t own a pixel?
It’s a very small part of the total Android market.
And your point here?
They make the pixel, but they don’t make phones.
I’m confus
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Apple recently dropped their longstanding opposition against right to repair.
I think they saw the writing on the wall in the EU.
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Their components are still software locked. Regardless of which way you take, if you want to do it correctly, you gotta go through apple.
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This is good news but, I gave up my last phone after 3 years because they stopped security updates. My new phone was marginally faster and worse in many ways.
I once had a phone with a replaceable battery, headphone jack, IR blaster (so it was also my TV remote) and SD slot.
I feel after this we gained waterproof phones.
(although I only once dropped my phone in water and it was before waterproof phones and it still worked 48 hours later, so I don’t care that much for waterproof phones).
Anyway I feel we just got downhill after this phone, my current pixel has no: headphone jack, IR blaster, SD slot, replaceable battery, etc.
I wonder what would happen when a major smartphone maker would make a phone with all those features again.
Sony flagship phones (xperia 5 and xperia 1 lineup) still have a microsd slot and a headphone jack
And shown by MKBHD’s smartphone camera blind test, a shit camera phone for regular people. It’s a great little device for professional photographers but a shit choice for regular people.
- Camera auto mode is sub par
- Hugely expensive
- Doesn’t have a good track record of providing updates or parts reliably
- Not available in many markets etc.
Even pro photographers won’t really utilise it in a professional shooting. It’s kinda like a gadget that seem interesting to camera enthusiasts but has poor real use cases. I worked with Sony cameras and interface is very familiar but shooting manual on phone is not enjoyable because it’s done with touch screen and no viewfinder. Without dedicated tactile buttons and wheels for shutter / aperture or focus and zoom It’s just not replacement for the camera. It is a nice concept of the benefits of having android in an actual camera.
The benefit of shooting with phone is quick return rate but if you need to waste a ton of time in manual because auto and ai does subpar job then what is the point if you can just use camera and have it paired with phone for publishing. The other benefit is convenience of having it with you at all times and it’s small form factor which in professional setting doesn’t mean anything and for hobby or family moments when I wanna capture something and don’t have my equipment with me I will just use auto.
Tbh Sony phones just feel like beta test on how to integrate android into their cameras in future. That is the only reason I can see their niche focus making sense.
Galaxy S5 has all those features, including decent water resistance
So that was the peak!
Would have been peak if it had USBc, but I don’t think it was around at that time. Instead it had the dual plug usb3.0 connector you find on external hard drives.
It’s literally a policy in the EU for new devices so nothing newsworthy here.
It’s newsworthy because common sense doesn’t apply to the USA.
If R2R doesn’t pass in the USA, hardware is going to be region locked by software, like game consoles in the 90s and 00s. So only the EU will be able to use replacement hw.
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They know it will hurt Apple more than them.
Still waiting for the other shoe to drop with Google phones being accessible and user friendly
It’s good news, even if i think , because we know how Google work, there’s a catch
Notice how John Deere is exempted.
Sure ;)
