Why is your phone becoming less durable?

Would you use a mobile phone for seven years?

Perhaps you have become accustomed to the fact that smartphones now need to be replaced every 2-3 years on average, but the European Union, which has been cracking down on the consumer electronics industry in the name of environmental protection, does not seem to think this is a matter of course.

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This month, the German government began pushing the European Union to pass a new proposal that requires mobile phone manufacturers to provide at least seven years of security updates and spare parts maintenance for the smartphones they release, attempting to reduce the frequency of mobile phone upgrades and achieve a more environmentally friendly goal.

Prior to this, the EU's more well-known move in this area was the proposal in 2019 to require smartphones to guarantee at least five years of system updates. This proposal not only further improves the requirements for system update cycles, but also adds a new requirement for hardware: "guarantee at least seven years of mobile phone hardware spare parts maintenance support" is also the main reason why this proposal has attracted more attention from mobile phone users.

Judging from the current state of the industry, there is still great uncertainty as to whether this proposal will eventually become a common law in the EU. Moreover, after the proposal was made public, it was strongly resisted by mobile phone manufacturers: the industry standard organization DigitalEurope hopes that the EU will only require three years of system security updates, and hopes that the scope of mobile phone accessories repair will only include screens and batteries, but not cameras, speakers and other mobile phone accessories.

Although there are still many variables before this proposal is finalized, it also reminds us of this soul-searching question about smartphones: Why do we need to replace our smartphones so frequently nowadays? Why are your phones becoming more and more "short-lived"?

Cellphone = consumable?

Rumor has it: When each iPhone is manufactured, a dedicated chip is installed inside the body. Every time the next generation of new products is released, Apple CEO Cook will press that button, and then your phone will start to enter scrap mode: not only will it start to freeze and heat up, but your phone will also be damaged in various accidents. In short, it's time for you to buy a new phone.

Cook: Plan Pass

This is of course just a joke, and such a button certainly does not exist, but the reality is that our mobile phones are really like "planned obsolescence". After a period of time, the originally durable batteries begin to have to be charged multiple times a day, the system begins to become unbearable, and even scanning code payments may cause a crash.

This is certainly not due to psychological factors. The real reason is that today's smartphones are designed from the very beginning, and are manufactured according to the standards of consumables with a design life of 12-24 months.

This cycle has affected almost every aspect of contemporary smartphones: for example, Apple’s “Yearly Renewal” plan allows users to replace their iPhones with newer generations every 12 months; today’s mainstream installment plans also offer 12-month or 24-month installment plans, allowing more people to be influenced by the idea that “rounding up is equal to giving it away for free” and ultimately choose to press the payment button.

At the same time, most smartphones now only provide one year of after-sales service support. Therefore, for a smartphone designed to last two years to maintain the seven-year official after-sales support and system updates required by the EU is something that runs counter to the current mainstream concept of "mobile phones = consumables".

However, from an environmental perspective, the EU believes that replacing mobile phones more slowly is a greener future. From the perspective of ordinary users, many people do think that the speed of smartphone updates is so fast that it is difficult to keep up with the iteration cycle of mobile phones. Is it really necessary to replace mobile phones so quickly?

Hardware Update > Software Update

There is actually only one criterion to answer this question: whether the mobile phone can still meet your normal usage needs.

Since the design life cycle of mobile phones is two years, as time goes by, the phone will gradually "age" and encounter various problems - some of these problems can be solved by yourself, while some are not so simple.

I currently have a flagship phone released in 2016 - Xiaomi Note 2. Although Xiaomi's official support for its system updates ended in 2019, you can still unlock the phone and flash a third-party Android system to experience more new features of the Android system and get smoother use.

After flashing the new system, even though it does not have the current mainstream full-screen design or multi-camera module, it is still a usable phone. As the main phone for daily light users, it can at least meet basic needs such as sending and receiving messages, completing shopping payments, etc.

But compared to software updates, in the process of trying to "squeeze the most" out of this Xiaomi Note 2, what most affects the actual user experience is actually the rapid aging of the phone's hardware: for example, the battery capacity decay causes a serious reduction in battery life, and the color difference of the OLED screen after long-term use. These are problems that cannot be solved by flashing the phone alone.

And if you try to further "refurbish" the phone, you will find that this model is no longer supported by Xiaomi's official after-sales service. Both the screen and the battery can only be repaired by third-party repairers, and this deal is not cost-effective - the repair price of replacing the screen is enough to buy a similar machine with a normal screen on a second-hand platform.

This is the problem that many old mobile phone users will face when repairing their phones: as modern life places more and more demands on smartphones, mobile phone components are becoming more and more complex, and mobile phone screens are rising with the increasing demand for our daily use of mobile phones - concepts such as 4K, 120Hz refresh rate, LTPO, etc. have been added to the design of smartphones.

In this context, if an old mobile phone breaks down, the repair cost is very high, and I believe many people will be more inclined to choose to buy a new mobile phone.

For mobile phone manufacturers, it is an indisputable fact that as the release date of a mobile phone goes by, the number of users using the same model of mobile phone gradually decreases, the cost of mobile phone hardware maintenance will become higher and higher, and in the later stage of the mobile phone design life, the pressure to maintain hardware replacement will become greater and greater. This is why mobile phone manufacturers are only willing to make concessions on the two options of mobile phone screen and battery in this EU proposal.

However, although it is difficult to maintain hardware maintenance for seven years, as the privacy issues of smartphones are gaining more and more attention, mobile phone manufacturers have not only begun to more actively add more practical privacy features to new versions of the system, but have also begun to use mobile phone system updates as an important selling point to attract users: including providing longer system version updates and security updates.

For example, this year, Samsung announced that all its Galaxy smartphones and tablets will receive at least four years of security updates after their release, including all devices released after 2019. At the same time, OnePlus also announced that its OnePlus 8/OnePlus 9 series will support three years of Android version updates and four years of security patch updates.

In terms of mobile phone hardware updates, iPhone can reduce the cost of maintaining the mobile phone production line to a minimum thanks to the tens of millions of shipments per generation. Therefore, more spare parts for mobile phones will circulate in the market, which actually reduces the cost of repairing mobile phones.

In addition, Apple has always adopted the strategy of updating the latest system version for old models in iOS updates. Many users who are still using old iPhones can still experience most of the functional optimizations brought by the new version of the system.

As for the majority of Android phones, which are not produced in such large quantities, different mobile phone manufacturers have different ways of providing longer support for their own mobile phone manufacturers: in addition to providing a longer Android version update cycle for its own Pixel phones, Google will also cooperate with third-party mobile phone repair companies such as iFixit to maintain the mobile phone repair cycle at the lowest possible cost.

In addition, although the cost of maintaining a mobile phone for seven years is very high, with the increasing number of "diehard users" brought by classic models, some mobile phone manufacturers with a keen sense of smell have also begun to exert their efforts in offline channels: including Xiaomi, OnePlus and other mobile phone manufacturers, have launched cheap official battery replacement services.

Although these cannot bring more direct benefits to mobile phone manufacturers, they can improve user stickiness in this way. For mobile phone manufacturers who now rely more on software services to make money, they will be more willing to promote such services to "extend the life" of old models.

As system versions/security updates of smartphones have become an increasingly important selling point, the question of "how long a phone can be used" has essentially become "how long the phone's repair service can last."

Even though the "seven-year life cycle" proposed by the EU seems quite radical now, allowing mobile phone repair services to exist at reasonable prices is not only a real demand from users, but also an important trend of change in smartphone design at a time when software is gradually becoming the focus of revenue in the mobile phone industry.