If you want people to buy a new phone every year “for the economy”, the $1800 phone must be reduced to $50, and the quality stays at flagship levels. The citizens are not here to make the oligarchs wealthy. Fuck your economy.
For real… “device hoarding”. Lol. What about “saving”, “environmentally friendly”, NOT wasting resources for nothing"? No, we need a negative term for that!
Frankly there is a way to get me to upgrade my phone from my current one but I can garuntee that there ain’t many companies making phones to my upgrade standards. But here’s a list.
-Easy to swap battery where I can just pop the lid and put a new one in.
-Aux jack because I want it.
-MicroSD card slot.
-Solid CPU, Ram, Storage, Et cetera.
-Give me actual buttons at the bottom you fucken cretins, I like my textile response you lousy motherfuckers.
-If you put the button on the back I’m breaking your back.
That’s all I need, ideally it’d also be modular and upgradable but I severely doubt I’m getting that anytime soon. A lot of the problem with phones is that you can’t really customize them to your needs, if I could I’d have a smartphone that’d look like it’s from mid 90s scifi where it’d have a big fuck you battery on it and a host of controls along the side for quick use, but noooo it all has to be overly generic hyper standardized crap. Fucken hate modern phones.
Will someone sell me one that is secure, doesn’t resell my data, isn’t preloaded with useless AI “features”, and doesn’t have Israeli Spyware on it?
I’m waiting for Canada to allow some of the Chinese models in Huawei looks great. They may still collect data, but not for the US tech oligarchs.
You see, here’s the thing.
When this whole smart phone thing started, smart phones sucked. They ate a lot of power, so the battery didn’t last, they were slow, both in computation, and loading data, the screens were pretty trash (dim, low res, huge bezels)… Everything needed improvements.
Now-a-days, my phone, whether new, or a couple years old, has an all day battery life, it’s pretty quick and snappy, apps load quickly, data appears almost instantly on it, the screen is bright, with minimal bezel area… Nothing I care about changes.
So why am I upgrading? Slightly better camera? Slightly better everything else? Stuff I don’t perceive has been “improved” and I don’t actually give a shit.
My reason to upgrade isn’t there. Currently, my reason to upgrade is: this phone will no longer get upgrades, I should get something that will… For security. That’s it.
So why in the actual fuck, would I bother doing it if I don’t have to? AI? No thanks.
If you turn your phone off at night and just leave it unplugged the majority of the time, it will last for many, many years.
So why in the actual fuck, would I bother doing it if I don’t have to? AI? No thanks.
Hell yes.
Also 1k or more? Fuck that. I usually get 1 to 2 year old phones. My pixel 6 pro is still doing well.
Same. Plus you’re upcycling.
I’d start questioning an economy that relied on getting rid of perfectly good things.
It’s been that way for a long time. I went Nexus 6P -> Pixel 2 -> Pixel 6
I don’t break my phones, so I basically buy the device with the longest software support and keep them as long as support lasts.
It’s also wrong that this has a negative effect on the economy. If people consume less and save more, those savings will be invested by banks in businesses.
Maybe if any of the good features coming out today wasn’t paired with the monkey’s paw that is:
- it’s behind an app
- it’s a subscription service
- it’s planned obsolescence
- I can actually fix it with third party vendors
- it’s selling your data
Maybe then consumers would actually get excited by new developments. All these trends are doing is turning the new generations into luddites.
I love it when people are called “Luddites” for hating the enshittified tech because guess what? The OG Luddites weren’t actually “Luddites”, either. They weren’t afraid of progress per se, but its use against the average person. Unfortunately, the propaganda against them worked too well.
Can we get a headline about bazillionaires hoarding wealth?
Some journalist should start calling them all Smaug. The problem is a bunch of us asshats would then be like “Smaug did nothing wrong!”
Why should dragons pay tax. He earned that gold fair and square!
#temporarilyembarrasseddragons
That’s full-on Newspeak, is what that is.
Lol “hoarding”… If they were truly that concerned about a stagnant economy they could sell product at cost and not inflated retail. That would incentivize moving a lot more product while turning all the gears in the supply chain and satisfying a ton of jobs throughout.
But they don’t really care the economy itself, just that it can be harnessed to make a rich guy richer as a byproduct. An economy that isn’t making the rich richer is worthless to them, so they come up with articles like this to shame people.
Seriously, I remember the days when buying the newest model of phone every year was seen as near parody levels of hyper-consumerism. It was lambasted, mocked, looked down on.
In the meantime EU is forcing manufactures to use replaceable batteries, provide updates for 5 years and spare parts for 7 years.
I had to buy a new phone for work. My current jailbroken one was rejecting the auth app I needed to logon suddenly after an update.
I tried using an older phone using a newer (lineage) OS, no root, but the App kept saying no. I was beginning to lose quite a few working hours on this, and my work said “no” when I asked them for a phone.
So I bought a Fairphone6. Unnecessarily. I’m certain it’s a good phone, with great repairability, and I will probably switch to it at some point in the future if my current phone ever stops working.
But it exists to log me in to work. That’s its sole purpose. I dread to think what I’ll have to buy next if the logon app gets too old on this phone.
My company recently took away text-message as a way to 2FA and wanted us to download their app. I told them (politely) that I had an authorization app already that I trusted because it was Open Source (Bitwarden) and could I use that instead of installing a corporate app on my device.
They said no.
Never install your work’s corporate spyware on your own personal device. Rule #1. If they want me to install their shit, they can provide the phone for me to do it.
Same thing happened to me ounce. I downloaded older version of the app and was able to keep using it.
Also, I’ve checked recently and in my country the employer can’t legally force you to buy devices you need for work. If job requires a device they have to provide it. So it’s worth checking the regulation.
Currently I’m forced to use MS Authenticator app but it works fine with Graphene OS.
All that being said, I also have two phones because my car has Android Auto and I only recently was made available on Graphene. EU has a big issue with dependency on US tech but I think we’re seeing some progress here. They should really focus on Android and force AOSP compatibility on everyone.
Buying an old galaxy s7/s8/s9, oneplus 3/5 or something like that would have cost 90% less and saved a phone from the landfill. Or one with a cracked (but working) screen for 95% less. If all you need is the login process, an old phone with stock firmware would have been good enough.
I have two of those old phones, I flashed the stock but the Android was too low, I flashed the lineage with Android 13, re-locked the bootloader, and the App still fucking said no. Once you’ve opened the bootloader even once, a flag is set in the gsettings.
At that point I wasn’t even sure if my boss was going to let me keep this job, so I just went out and bought a new phone that I knew would be delivered the very next day
If it was a work requirement, it should have been provided by work. Employers passing their own costs down to employees needs to stop.
Agreed, but welcome to the US where people are fearful of losing their health insurance because they got fired after pushing back at their job.
Yes, these people are truly insane. I recently read the following headline:
Rheinmetall shares: Fear of peace shocks investors
(Translated from German, source | Rheinmetall is an arms manufacturer)
wtf
This world is fucked.
From the people who brought you… https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/12/26/managing-the-e-waste-problem-will-take-a-much-bigger-commitment.html
“Costing the economy”
Thankfully wealth horders aka. billionaires pouring money into offshore bank accounts, unaffordable real estate, government bonds, and inflated stocks are all in our benefit. Only us peasants are being selfish.
If those billionaires wanted to increase the GDP they should pay more so more money circulates.
What if, bear with me here, what if people just don’t have as much disposable income after the dramatic transfer of wealth to the rich class we’ve been seeing?
The economy is collapsing and the lower classes are feeling it already. The rich investor class isn’t seeing it because the tech industry has been propping up the market with their investments going all-in with unrealistic expectations for AI technology. We are currently experiencing a K-shaped recovery where the richest are on a spending spree while the poorest are cutting back their expenses. How much more obvious must it be that this is what’s going on?
You want the general population to start wasting their money on useless crap again, you’ll have to give them more money to work with.
the poorest are cutting back their expenses
those people have nothing else left to cut back on.
I agree, but I gotta point out the area you’re wrong. It’s the internet after all. So don’t take my hyper-focus to heart.
The investors are absolutely aware. They don’t care if AI has any material value. They will happily invest in a bubble and inflate far beyond what anyone believes is possible. The capitalist system has only evolved to be BETTER for capitalist when the bubble pops. They know this. They literally have lobbies dedicated to ensuring their wealth is protected.
I think we confuse the “irrationality of the market” with the investors being irrational themselves. They are doing exactly what any rational investor would do in an economic system that has been built to favor them.
I’m sure you’re aware of this given your perspective. But I think it’s important to use the right vocabulary to describe this. The problem is not a “broken system” with irrational actors. The system is working EXACTLY as intended and the investors are acting completely rationally within the economic system that has been created for their benefit. This isn’t “bad capitalism” that needs regulation. This is just capitalism.
Bubbles and crashes are not something that investors are working hard to avoid. They are a feature of the contradictions of capitalism. Capitalist are very much aware of them and have ensured they can benefit from them while the working class takes the losses.
They’ve also been propping up the market with some sketchy circular deals, swearing up and down they’re not like Enron.
