How often have you taken a gadget or a pair of shoes in for repair and found out that fixing it will cost more than buying a new version? Too often, that’s how often. And Sweden is trying to fix this, by halving the tax paid on repairs and increasing taxes on unrepairable items.
The new proposals come from the ruling coalition of the Social Democrat and Green parties, and, if successfully enacted, would be accompanied by a publicity campaign to encourage Swedes to repair products instead of replacing them.
I am a proponent of this, and feel like we should push especially electronics companies much harder to release information about parts, repairs, diagnostics, and so on, to ensure that consumers are not at the whims of the Apples and Samsungs of this world when it comes to defective products.
In response to cars becoming ever more complex, lawmakers all across the United States and Europe started proposing and passing bills to ensure that independent repairs shops and dealers would have access to the same kind of information that first-party dealers get or to make sure that vehicle warranties were not voided simply because you brought your car to a third-party repair shop.
We should strive for similar laws for electronics. Much like cars, if your smartphone is broken, you should be able to bring it into any repair shop to have it fixed, by forcing electronics companies, like car manufacturers, to release repair, parts, and diagnostics information, without said repair voiding any warranties. I see no reason why electronics companies should enjoy a special status.
And yes, this includes forcing companies to provide software updates for a set amount of time, especially when it comes to security flaws and bugs. Software has enjoyed its special little world wherein it’s treated like a delicate little flower you can’t demand too much from for long enough. The failure rate of the software we use every day is immense, but if we keep letting companies get away with the shoddy work they deliver, this will only get worse.
How is this technically and legally different from the US government forcing Apple to develop a tool to break an iPhones security?
Uh, the part where that raises massive privacy concerns?
The basic question here is this: can the government legally compel a person or company to build or invent something? Whether it is a security fix or a security tool, the basic question is the same.
And to go even further, demanding “security fixes” is so vague that it will be hard to enforce. Do you only fix security bugs identified by a specific company? What about a third party advisory? If so, good luck having companies release security advisories in the future. No company will release security advisories if it introduces legal liabilities.
Yes. It happens all the time. Just look at how many parts of a car are the result of government regulation (i.e., the government legally forcing manufacturers to make them), or how many advances in fuel efficiency or safety are the result of ever stricter government standards (i.e., the government legally forcing manufacturers to invent something).
So yeah, this happens all the time, in virtually every industry. Only software seems exempt for some reason.
Edited 2016-09-30 00:11 UTC
That’s demonstrably wrong. You can get heavily fined for not securing data properly, especially in the health industry, under data privacy laws. And avionics and air traffic control software are regulated up the yinyang.
Regulations are where the risks are higher, and that’s the situation it should be in.
kwan_e,
I agree, wherever safety is involved, that has to be a priority. But all too often it seems that manufacturers aren’t held accountable for software defects the way they are for hardware ones. I can’t think of a good reason for that to be the case.
But hardware isn’t held accountable. That’s the reason why countries like Sweden are trying to make repairability a law in the first place.
The only hardware that IS held accountable is in high risk areas. And the result is the software running that hardware is thus considered to be part of that whole product too.
kwan_e,
I know this is the case for the US, but in the EU isn’t there an implied warranty covering product defects? I’ve heard several people talk about it but I’m afraid I don’t know many details.
That is a bit less cut and dry. Generally, as a health care entity, part of the process of dealing with any software or system vendor (whose products handle patient data) is to establish a BAA with them (Business Associate Agreement). This essentially makes the vendor liable for breaches caused by defects in their own product.
In other words, yes, the initial liability is on the health care provider. But outside of instances where the HCP is actually developing their own software, their responsibility is mainly to ensure they only use software and systems provided through vendors who they have established proper BAAs with.
An HCP that goes this route and uses only 3rd party software with established BAA agreements is essentially insulated for all liability for defects in said software. They are liable for instances of negligence or improper configuration on their part, but not for product defects or bugs (which is what we are really talking about).
I would go as far as to say that when it comes to software developed to handle patient data, if you develop and sell such software you have 2 choices:
1. Don’t offer BAAs and you are completely insulated from any liability at all, but no one in their right mind would buy your software…
2. Do offer a BAA, and accept that you will be ultimately liable for any defects in your software (not your customers).
In my opinion, this catch 22 is essentially the whole purpose of HIPAA. If you want to sell software that touches patient data you have to accept ultimately liability for it, not your customers – because unless they are naive they will never do business with you unless you do so.
Edited 2016-09-30 06:25 UTC
galvanash,
Well sure, I do agree with all these and the rest of your points.
However there’s nothing stopping a HIPAA covered entity from using off the shelf software, and it’s probably not that uncommon for this software to be used with sensitive information from time to time, in which case the entity would be responsible rather than the software developer who has no HIPAA obligations.
I agree with you that medical practitioners often outsource their IT to a company like the ones we work for, our companies have to agree to HIPAA compliance. But even in this case we don’t write software from scratch, we can and do use things like openssl (for example) and those things can be vulnerable (ie heartbleed). The developers of the vulnerable code can’t be held accountable under HIPAA because they hold no legal responsibility without a contractual relationship saying they do.
I’m not asserting this is necessarily good or bad, and I don’t think this disagrees with anything you’ve said, but it’s just to clarify my original point that software developers aren’t liable under HIPAA unless they’ve agreed to it in a contract.
Edited 2016-09-30 13:07 UTC
What you’re missing here is the fact that, regardless of whether the responsibility is on the hospital or not to ensure HIPAA compliance, the fact remains that it is still a *requirement*. The software and the contracts we have, have to (obviously) cover HIPAA, because of the government regulations.
No, sir you are incorrect. I can guarantee you that the software vendor I use in my profession as an EHR analyst at a major California Bay Area Hospital has made sure their software is HIPAA compliant.
Edited 2016-10-02 05:36 UTC
elektrik,
Apart from these contrary assertions, I’m not really seeing what you disagree with. The onus of HIPAA is on the medical providers, who in turn stipulate HIPAA compliance with their contractors, but it’s not automatic that 3rd party developers are covered. Again, I don’t think we have anything to disagree over on this.
What I’m disagreeing with and the original point is the fact of the required HIPAA compliance that the original poster was alluding to.
Oh, and for your example of the HIPAA requirement, I’d say your company was extremely lucky to not have any issues, because I can also guarantee you that we are most assuredly responsible for the 3rd party software that we use. So as you can see, I can provide a clear example of where the Gov’t Regulation for software is indeed real.
Edited 2016-10-03 00:20 UTC
We were only responsible for our work, which IMHO is very reasonable and legal.
I think what’s missing here is that HIPAA is aimed at those who access or store the data, which applies to contractors, but not the developers of off the shelf software. For example, microsoft will sign HIPAA business associate agreements for applications hosted on Azure, but not the Windows and Office software installed locally.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/TrustCenter/Compliance/HIPAA
Maybe we can argue that’s not enough to keep hospitals secure, and I would agree there are definite risks:
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/429616/computer-viruses-are-rampa…
Edited 2016-10-03 14:13 UTC
Those examples are hardly applicable to software. All of the examples you gave have a legal test to pass before they are distributed. Are you really willing to give the power to the government to have to legally approve software used by the public before they are distributed?
Right now, whether it is in the EU or US, you cannot legally drive a new vehicle that is not approved by their respective transportation agencies. This doesn’t just apply to large manufacturers, but anyone. You can’t just build a hobbiest car and drive it around. With software, this isn’t the case. You can write software and sell it, or freely distribute it under the GPL.
You really want the government equivalent of a transportation agency, but for software?
Most of mature software runs as should. Besides, some System Engineering problems are of the kind that no IT Team is going to resolve.
I trust the fussy logic of my washing machine. I have seen it resolve quite complex scenarios [including criminal lack of maintenance], in a decent way.
Don’t expect it to be rooted, wormed, Trojan-ed.
The hurting fragility is circumscribed around that mad rush for “interconnectivity”, as a new additive form of exploit.
Government doesn’t care if You drive out your promises to your Consumers by SW, FW or Hardware [ in the good, old way
] You have to stand by your words.
[By the way, Government neither care if ultimately is impossible drive those out. You can give all the technical ‘explanations’ you want].
No, but it’d be a good start for them to add non-tivolization and “submit technical documentation” requirements to the FCC/CE/etc. certification process that the hardware must already undergo to be legal for sale.
(The patent submission process can provide precedent for the idea of requiring that documentation be submitted to a free-to-the-public repository in order to receive approval.)
Maybe in 40 or 50 years, we could then push through an additional requirement that all pre-installed or vendor-provided software for network-capable devices must be open-source in order to receive certification.
(We could call it e-Testing. I think I remember the car industry using a name like that. ;P )
Edited 2016-09-30 04:35 UTC
Actually, in most US states, you can build a hobbyist car and drive it around. And, I believe many European countries have processes for that, too.
You can’t build hobbyist cars from scratch and sell them to someone else to drive around as a business, though, without going through the certifications. You can build parts for one, though, and sell those, for someone else to build (either as a service to the customer who bought them, or for the customer to do themselves).
Surely you are not so dense that you do not see the difference between having to meet certain standards BEFORE selling and being forced to work without compensation AFTER the point of sale.
ansidotsys,
Why does it even matter? If anyone finds something like a remote exploit during the required support period, then wouldn’t you agree that it should be fixed?
Sure, of course I agree that it should be fixed. But it’s another matter entirely to say that I believe that a government should have the power to legally demand someone fix it.
The reason this matters is because once you grant power to the government, then you damn well better define it. And what software will be covered here anyway? Just the software included in the box? Okay, so then you’ll have cell phone manufacturers ship phones with barebones software that is secure, then download the rest with its own EULA. Good job. What about software that a user installs? What about free software?
ansidotsys,
If I install 3rd party software on my device, proprietary or FOSS, then any vulnerabilities arising from that is on me. If they shipped the device with vulnerable software, proprietary or FOSS, then they should fix it.
You are right to ask questions, and someone is going to have to enumerate all those what-ifs. But the way I see it, it’s not so much about introducing new regulation specific to software so much as stopping the practice of using EULA to denounce responsibility for fixing software defects just as they would a hardware defect.
Edited 2016-09-30 02:09 UTC
I could also see situations where a company can’t offer security updates for its device, because it licensed said software from someone else, the new version of said software doesn’t support the company’s hardware anymore, and the old version has a gaping security hole. Then what? Or what if you license a component from a software vendor who goes out of business 3 months after your product is released, and then a vulnerability is found with that same component, for which your product won’t work without?
There’s all kinds of ‘what ifs’ that would make this hard to enforce.
Edited 2016-09-30 03:09 UTC
WorknMan,
Well sure, there is always the risk that a critical supplier goes out of business and the product can’t be fixed. However I’d like to point out this risk is in no way limited to software, it’s a risk of B2B in general with any kind of supplier. Even if this is the worst case scenario, it probably is not a very common scenario with reputable companies.
I worked for a software contractor that built expensive customized proprietary software for mainframes, their clients had very similar concerns: what if we stopped developing this product or went out of business? Well, they took a pragmatic approach, the risks were mitigated by holding the source in 3rd party escrow. So if we dropped the product or went bust, they would get the source. It gave them confidence about the software and gave us an incentive to actively support it.
Rare earths are called such for a very good reason. It’s tremendously damaging to the environment to get a grip at them. We have to extend, reuse, recycle. Even if products end costing more.
If you are half competent in business you will negociate an escrow agreement with your supplier so that you have full rights to the source and license to the software in the case of them going bust.
If you don’t do this then you (IMHO) should not be in business selling software.
ansidotsys,
Bug & security updates make end users safer. That’s actually one of the bigger problems for phones that aren’t updated, their software becomes vulnerable to attacks with no way for users to fix them other than to throw them away and buy a new phone.
If you don’t understand the difference then you’re part of the problem.
I’m with Sweden on this. Even if economic sense never comes to realize. It’s about self-reliance. Also promotes trust building, consumer-manufacturer.
I am with them too.
The problem I see it is that Equipment makers are making stuff that can’t be repaired when 20+ years ago they could.
Let me take an example of a Washing Machine. Once upon a time you could get just about any part you wanted and install it. Some makers even provided instruction guides to help you do it.
I did this with the motor brushes and bearings.
Fast forward to 3 years or so ago when my Electroux (Swedish company AFAIK) needed a new drum bearing. They just did not supply one. There was just no way to repair the device so it went for scrap.
Then in the USA you get the DMCA getting in the way. I’ve seen makers hide behind that as a way to avoid selling spares to anyone. Look at how many law suits ORacle has filed against companies offering repair services for Sun kit.
Good luck to Sweden with this move. It won’t get anywhere in the USA IMHO.
“The failure rate of the software we use every day is immense, but if we keep letting companies get away with the shoddy work they deliver, this will only get worse.”
Apple: Are you reading this????
Oh…. Second post I read, and then all about that gourverment vs. apple. YET AGAIN!!! (shake my head)
Anyway.
Good for sweden. I like it.
We should strive for similar laws for electronics. Much like cars, if your smartphone is broken, you should be able to bring it into any repair shop to have it fixed, by forcing electronics companies, like car manufacturers, to release repair, parts, and diagnostics information, without said repair voiding any warranties.
Completely disagree. Why should the manufacturer be responsible for the shoddy work of Bob’s Repair-All? You can’t make a manufacturer honor their warranty if they can’t ensure repairs are done up to their standards. At least where I live, that doesn’t even apply to cars. If my car breaks under warranty, I wake it to the dealer and have it fixed. I’d be voiding my warranty (and spending money on repairs that should be covered under warranty) if I took it elsewhere.
If you live in the EU or the US, this is not true. I don’t know about other places.
I agree.
Besides, there is no nefarious plot by companies to make us keep buying new products by making it harder to repair them. It’s just not worth anyone’s while to repair most gadgets, especially if the gadgets are cheap to begin with. if mobile phones cost $2000, there would be more of a market for repairing them.
Companies also can’t underwrite the potentially shoddy work by third parties. If your phone is under warranty, take it in to be fixed free of charge! That’s what warranty means.
It’s not just mobile phones. No one I know would repair a TV that has died – sometimes I feel like accidentally knocking over my 10 year old TV to justify a new one. The other point being that when things generally work really well repairing becomes a not very useful skill. Regardless of the headlines, the vast majority of the 60-70m iPhones and even larger number of other smartphone sold quarterly out there continue to work without major issue for their owners.
mkone,
Whether it’s $50 ink cartridges, $500 phone, or $1,000 home appliance, they all have a potential incentive to make the product less durable than it could be. If the manufacturers are able to find a way to decrease lifespan without putting off the buyers, then this is a very effective strategy for increasing sales even though the products are worse.
http://www.naturalnews.com/041774_ink_jet_printers_consumer_waste_c…
On the one hand we can argue this is the free market in action and laissez-faire will maximize profits while finding prices the market will bare. But when there’s no incentive for manufactures to internalize the costs of their product waste, and when there is a financial incentive for products to have a shorter lifespan, then the resulting products will ultimately end up being cheap & wasteful rather than durable ones, even though the durable ones would cost much less in the long run.
Some people will nevertheless side with profits over high durability goods, but what is completely insane is that the free market actually encourages this kind of waste. It’s just a sad state to be in.
The free market isn’t actually free. The true costs just gets shuffled away somewhere else. Mostly onto poor people and the environment.
But if you can fix a 500$ tv or phone for a 100 bucks and you can make use of it 2 o 3 years more, it is definitely worth it. And there are a lot of situations like that.
Replacing bits in your smartphone is a long, long way from servicing domestic appliances.
If I can’t do any repairs on my Washer, Vaccum or anything because of the maker won’t make parts available then those makers need to be named and shamed.
Smartphones are generally not repairable except by the makers. There is very little even a competent Electronics shop can do to find and fix faults that are not simple ones such as a screen replacement. There are places that do that. Beyond that requires really specialist diagnostic kit. Changing the motor or a pipe in a domestic applicance is not beyond the skills of a competent person. Fixing the innards of a TV etc is very much beyond that person.
No, the warranty at least in the EU is not optional or given on the graces of the manufacturer, it is a strict legal minimum. You can not lose it ever. Though they are not under obligation to fix damages intentionally inflicted by you or others, but they would have to prove the damage was caused by the other mechanic first.
How do you go from offering incentives to promote repair (which is what this program seems to be), to we should force companies to do what we want? I like what Sweden’s doing here. Incentive programs generally work better than brute force. I fail to see how you think one follows from the other. I’m glad at least one country understands that sometimes you have to encourage these ideas instead of shoving things down everyone’s throats and doing more damage than help in the long term. So, go Sweden.
Printers. They’re terrible. Half the time you can buy a new printer for less than it is to get new ink cartridges.
I remember when one of my printers was messed up and I tried to find a place to repair it. It would have cost about 95 bucks, ended up buying a new, better printer for 100.
It’s insanity how buggy they are still as well.
I’m not a proponent of government “force”
Things are cheaper to make new than repair because these items are complex and it actually takes more effort and energy to perform a repair then make new in an automated way. Molding economics with taxes. Why not just recycle the old defective unit?
Edited 2016-10-01 05:42 UTC
By “repair” I don’t think the mean the ability to fix every little bit that can go wrong. Just the ability to swap out some of the self contained units so that the whole thing doesn’t need to be thrown away.
As to recycling, modern electronics are toxic to recycle. So you can put the word “just” in there – it doesn’t make it any cheaper or easier.
The light at the end of this tunnel is deflation.
Actually it will go against deflation, by promoting local employment. If your Economist say another thing, send Him for ‘repair’.
Just imagine a future where Your house having a mayor failure, should be replaced by a new one. Just because a deliberate twisting of the merchandising chain make it ‘cheaper’ to do so.
Houses and other buildings are commonly demolished when the cost of rehabilitation exceeds the value of the property or the cost of building new.
– no glued or soldered batteries;
– no soldered storage. Standardized connectors and interface;
– sockets for processor and memory;
– standard interfaces for displays and its connectors;
– Incentive for products assembled with screws instead of latches and glue.
Most of the problems I see are related to damaged screens on phones, tablets and notebooks, followed by poor performance (so upgrading the processor, memory or storage would allow a larger lifespan) and failure of components, mainly batteries and, at distance, storage. Can’t give a number but I’m sure the immense majority of devices we use would more than duplicate (or even more) their time of usefulness with these simple requirements. Not going to happen, though.
The problem with software is, as already said, related to security and bugs and we are increasingly more reliant on our devices to financial services. How to open them to software updates by third parties without expanding the window of exploitable opportunities by knowledgeable criminals is a nontrivial issue.
You are welcome to carry your brick of a phone (as was the case circa 1995 or thereabouts) with you everywhere.
People won’t accept going back to huge devices.
Hmmmmmm….. Perhaps that is a good idea after all. This might be a way to get people off of ‘anti’ social media every waking minute of the day.
You would be surprised by the number of cell phones and tablets with cracked screens that end up in trash bins. Almost same with notebooks with glued or soldered basic components.
Don’t see how the things I asked could make the devices much larger nor making the costs much bigger (perhaps a couple of dollars more and also better for handling, being a little more thick). And it would make them much easier to fix. I think they should be mandatory. Chance of them happening ? Close to zero.
I’m not convinced that disposable is bad. In fact I think disposable might be a key part of what has allowed our technology to develop at the pace it has for the last few decades. I’m probably going to get flamed for even suggesting this, but we should be developing better recycling/recyclability instead of better repairability?
In the not too distant past we fixed things. Because we fixed things, they tended to stick around when superior options were available. This meant that superior options were frequently nonviable commercially.
For example, look at TV. It took decades to upgrade from the old ~240 scanline standard to HD because nobody upgraded their monitor. However, in about a decade, 4k is already starting to show up in a significant portion of homes. The adoption of 4k is being pushed by disposable tech like TVs with 5 year lifespans and cheap disposable streaming boxes like Roku and Chromecast.
The same thing can be said for washers/dryers. They were pretty much unchanged for nearly a century. But look at the last few years, massive gains in efficiency.
What about computers? Look at the various governments that keep hardware forever. By not adapting to a disposable culture many governments are running critical services on laughably outdated hardware. Every year there is an article about the US Internal Revenue Service running 1960s era computer hardware, and 1980s era software, for many of their necessary functions.
This argument can be repeated for almost any product: cameras, cellphones, refrigerators/chillers, cars, etc…
Nondisposable tech tends to be problematic. Trains, planes, buses, roads, buildings. We find ourselves complaining about these things because they do not evolve or do so slowly. We end up with old, dirty things that people do not want to use.
What if we scrapped our planes every 5-10 years. Would we still have this hub based airport architecture, or would we have smaller more personal options. Because we fix them, and they tend to stick around, our whole aviation system is based around a bus/train model. Manufacturers do not develop anything else because it would not fit that model, so it reinforces a system that is universally disliked.
Imagine if we could scrap our roads every 5-10 years… alright every 10-20 years. Still, imagine a world where everything was adaptable. Instead of clawing back technological progress we should be trying to push it everywhere.
On the other hand, I understand the concern with disposable cultures, they create waste. Nobody wants to create a waste problem. But I propose that the problem is not disposability, but recyclability.
We need to spend more time/energy in developing better ways to break things down into reusable parts. We also need to find a way to make our products in ways that are easier to break down into reusable parts.
Before somebody says anything, what about the money though? Wealth inequality will have the same effect in a repairable world as it does in a disposable one. The rich can afford to buy the best. The only difference is that the best will come along much slower, and the poor will be without it even longer.
For example, look at private planes (and trains back in the day), expensive toll roads, corporate shuttles, etc. Now, try to find an example of where rich people have a cellphone or TV option that poor people do not? It might be stupid for a poor person to have an iPhone 7 with a 65″ 4k LED TV, but I know more than a couple who do anyway. I don’t know any who have a private plane, or that drive in the lexus lanes very often.
jburnett,
Well, isn’t that what Sweden is looking to do?
Edited 2016-10-01 17:28 UTC
Yeah. Imagine a world where there’s constant roadworks. People love driving through constant roadworks and having to change their routes to work all the time.
I would argue disposability is clawing back technological progress. That’s because I don’t see technological progress as “do what we’re currently doing, but faster and if it doesn’t work, throw it away and buy a new one”. I see technological progress as “let’s do something different from what we’ve done in the past”.
The mentality of “if it doesn’t work, we’ll just throw it away” keeps people and technology stuck in that rut, doing the same thing over and over again. That’s not technological progress. That doesn’t produce breakthroughs.
“The mentality of “if it doesn’t work, we’ll just throw it away” keeps people and technology stuck in that rut, doing the same thing over and over again.”
Agree, Kuan_e: An attitude of disposal toward our crafts ends also being toward the culture that generated them. If We don’t get used to fix our messes and tantalizing steps, then We end starting “over and over again”. That’s a Nietzsche-ian course.
Errata: “That’s a Nietzsche-ian CURSE”.
My old SeaMonkey has his own way of thinking
“…Flying is SAFE…”.
And it has to do a lot with this long term, ‘feed-back’ loop embracing view of technology.
“…I’m probably going to get flamed for even suggesting this, but we should be developing better recycling/recyclability instead of better repairability?”
Quite the contrary, Jburnett. A very well meditated argumentation. But a ‘consumer’ one:
“…By not adapting to a disposable culture many governments are running critical services on laughably outdated hardware.”
Thanks God, but no. The latest, most global hall of shame blunders have occurred not on ‘laughably’ outdated hardware, but on those critical services uploaded to the ‘Cloud’. ‘New’ doesn’t USUALLY carry an equivalence to ‘better’.
“…Nondisposable tech tends to be problematic.”
Yes, that’s exactly Sweden point. There is no ‘problema’ in simply disposing of what at first try didn’t deliver. Sweden is committed to return empowerment to their local technicians. That’s a National Asset.
Not dropping the thread without commenting where I agree with you, Jburnett:
Always markets accepting nothing MORE than piano-black|pearl-rose and 6mm, top. For them the way forward could be to pay the full tax, and ask Gov. for it to be hard-linked to oxygenating the still tantalizing electronics recycling industry.
Is it for real? That “Electronics Recycling Industry”?
Or could it be just a maliciously crafted & delivered Myth to the masses?
Another one…
In which this website was osnews.com, not thoms-soapbox.org
Thanks, Man! An stochastic data structure is showing a narrative
Fixing expensive gadgets? I think we’ve passed that point on most of this stuff, it’s all custom printed, custom fit, tiny tolerances. I’m more into making the manufacturer take it back and recycle/dispose properly.
Where we can make some real headway is in packaging. Some european countries have made progress here. Manufacturers should be responsible for making the most environmentally friendly packaging possible, and retailers should advertise that feature and carry product lines that follow better packaging guidelines.
The devices provide continual tangible service and often stay in use for many years, making their net usefulness positive.
Most packaging, on the other hand, is a temporary thing to get the device from the factory to the store, then to you, then to the trash.
For an example of good gadget packaging check out the Pono Player. It ships in a bamboo box with recycled cardboard inside and out. Besides the cords and such, the only other material included is a leather case. Almost nothing goes in the trash and bamboo/leather are renewable.
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/glEudRSepVw/maxresdefault.jpg
Agree, Ezraz. My last phone huge packaging + accessories + ‘manuals?’ + another little power brick idem to the last one amounted to literal trash.
Also agree with a back-track to manufacturers recycling chain, for anything ‘mobile’.
Just needing one fresh micro USB cable. Those are truly fragile. Power only type.
Used batteries should go a different, more secure track.