I successfully repaired an out of warranty 2nd gen Echo. The tweeter had blown and what looks like a propriety speaker (tweeter), I've managed to find one in similar shape and size. Removed the old one and soldered the new one and used some hot glue to secure the new one. The speaker is as good as new!
Any tech company willing to make as much money as Apple does, will do this kind of disposable tech. It is not the product that is garbage, is the company.
I hate seeing footage of e-waste disposal, knowing that most of the devices in there are easily repairable if the manufacturers gave us parts and diagrams. Sad, really We're not even asking for free stuff, independent repair will pay for the components and even schematics if they have to
The thing is many of the devices that end up in landfills dont even need repairs cause they aren't broken. People have garages full of perfectly working tech that's just old and when there is no place near to recycle it it ends up dumped curbside.
That´s capitalism and that´s how these companies work. Imagine you buy wash machine that will work 20 years from purchasing. Not just you but many others. How that company will sell other wash machines if your one doesn´t break. That´s how they keep their business. This is just an example, not a great one, but still relevant. Also for some products that are cheap, some parts that needs to be replaced, price can be a bit too high or close to the end product. Take for an example low end samsung phones that have amoled display, its just not worth it, most of the time the display is half of the price of the new phone.
When it's something with moving part, it's understandable. When it's something like a battery that decay over time because of a natural degradation, it's understandable. But when a companie like Apple purposefully update Os to make the older I-phone run slower, that is where *throw-away world* come from. We live in a world with company (especially electronic) tend to make designs that will decay overtime and make the user buy more of their stuff. *AND i'm pretty sure companies that put Lithium battery wouldn't be happy if scientifist would manage to make a Solid-Carbon-glass battery that last 9001x more.*
That’s more of the nature of online retail. Yes, planned obsolescence is not good and a driving factor. The fact of the matter is it’s cheaper to send out cheap, semi disposable products than it is to do the paper work for repairs or warranties. That doesn’t excuse the lack of repair ability but there’s a lot of legal over head in repair industries. Which is why Ifixit is great though there’s no transfer of property and you’re responsible for your own repairs.
the most disgusting example of this are those "festival phone chargers" that you cannot recharge. They have a Lithium cell inside (so CAN be recharged) but sold as a disposable device... Yuck! The amount of waste...
@@johnchase7667 Yep. I've been saying this for 20 years: "the landfills of today are the mines of tomorrow." All kinds of good stuff in one highly concentrated place. It just happens to be mixed in with a lot of toxic, smelly, and/or truly unusable stuff. Some smart company is gonna make a lot of money when they finally perfect some robotic landfill refinery technology.
To be fair, an Internal Combustion Engine is far more environmentally safe than a electric engine. The Li-ion battery is difficult to recycle, then you have all the rare earth elements to dig up and charging it still takes fossil fuel. A regular engine is recyclable at the end of its life cycle, and repair it making it far more eco friendly.
quick strike Combustion engines use more inherently harmful products and produce more inherently harmful waste than an electric vehicle. Recycling a combustion engine is similarly hard to a battery and a battery also has a second use life potential as large scale low energy density storage, unlike a combustion engine. Electric vehicles drivetrains require less repairs than a combustion engine too, which is the best option.
Better idea: BUY 2ND HAND WHEN YOU CAN and always SELL your old tech (if is still be useful) is better for you (i mean money to buy something to replace it), for the one buying it (they won't spend more money in something they don't need) and the environment obviously
@Kevin B This is actually how I've gotten most of my stuff. My laptop was literally found in a dumpster (and still lasted me 5 years before I wanted to upgrade... it's not even broken, I just repurposed it as a little Grafana server), I have gone years with the old phones of my dad and my servers are literally bought for like 10-20 euros off Marktplaats (the Dutch craigslist). Nowadays, I tend to look at second hand first, I even got an "old" graphics card off Marktplaats for 1/4th it's original price, that still had 1 year warranty and is still really great for what games I play... just because the previous owner wanted to get an 8% increase on performance by buying a new one...
I only buy new if absolutely needed now. Most computer related stuff I get through ebay, secondhand. Ipads, iphones, laptops and desktops. If I need a monitor, Goodwill has them cheap. I even have a full video production setup based on iphones and ipads, that cost me less than $300, capable of multi camera (4), 1080p video output. That is more than people need anymore. And I have used it to produce professional paid for product.
I usually also try to buy used if I can. But in the cases its not possible, I think its better to spend a little more on a product that will last a long time and can eventually be resold, then getting the cheapest thing that will do the trick for now but is broken or obsolete in a short period of Time.
what next? disposable tools? yep, amazon has that too. Amazon takes your disposable income and converts it into disposable junk you probably did not need to start with. Ifixit has the right idea, and it is far from a new idea... fix what is broke! You do not amputate an arm because you broke a finger. The item we own should be no different. Plus, fixing it yourself is fun and interesting. It makes you proud to turn a broken item back into a very useful and functional thing.
Unfortunately, the “disposable product” is happening everywhere. You could fix your own car but with how modernized cars are now, you can’t. You could fix your own phone but as of recently, it’s almost impossible by yourself. Soon not even building a house will be something you could do without automation. It’s just sad in a way. I get that the future is moving forward to make our lives “easier” but at the price of having no control over anything. It makes us not appreciate anything. Like spoiled rich brats that buy a new car every time they crash then.
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Have you ever used the tools included with parts for smart phones? They are so bad you dispose of them before you use them
@@DragonBuilds I beg to differ, I got a hammer from them for my dad as it was just basic needs, very good quality. Don't tarnish and the entire product line for items, and if it was crap then return it.
Easier said than done; the problem is that expensive things are still crap, and companies don’t give a crap. They make things break faster, they earn more money.
Nopparuj yes exactly, and if you don’t buy their products they will start wondering oh jeez sells are dopping down what could it be? They should realize why customers don’t buy anymore
Nothing exists in technology that's long lasting. Even top of th line electronics are obsolete within 3 years. I've used Amazon products for longer than 5 years because I know what to expect when I buy them and all my Amazon products still run the Amazon services I bought them for. Amazon products are built to last the test of time. They aren't however built to have continuous updates to the latest and greatest and no hardware is.
@@fayenotfaye When the current baseline for what is good graphics performance levels is 4K, 1080p at 100fps is obsolete. May as well claim 1080p TVs aren't obsolete either.
This is why right to repair is so important if a product makes more then 1 million in sales or projected sales the company should be required to sell parts if they themselves repair or have authorized personnel repair their products.
Well... tbf, skip that "or have authorized personel repair their products"... This kinda goes against the "right to repair" because if that happens, the company can just charge a load of cash or say they need to replace a crap tonne of stuff after which "it's not worth it anymore"... (Yes, I'm looking straight at Apple with this one)
@@FinlayDaG33k on the other hand if its profitable some other company can make knock off brand batteries or chips which they often do. the real issue is cryptographically signing components which is fucking bullshit. the signing keys should be freely available to everyone if security at the component level is a real issue and you have to have chip level encrypted communication. that being said just dont buy from them.
@@FinlayDaG33k I think what Evan meant was just that if repair is possible then the parts should be available for purchase. Another phrasing would be "If the company or a third party currently performs repairs, the company should be required to make the parts available for purchase".
"many amazon devices are used over 5 years". "many" is one of those magic words like "almost" or "natural": impossible to measure, so nonspecific its meaningless.
I'll say though their switch cases aren't bad and can probably be used for quite a few years I slipped on some water or ice or something can't remember 6 months to a year ago and it kept my switch nice and safe
@@gman3563 not criticizing the hardware or sentiment, just the vague p.r. speak. "many" is not a measurable term. i'm sure some of their products do have longevity.
For my own personal device I probably wouldn't even give enough of a crap that they work at all, I might be fine just leaving those wires disconnected anyway
The Garden of Eatin honestly just grab a Dremel or a wire cutter. If you’re replacing the speaker damaging it wouldn’t matter and you could replace the epoxy with hot Glue after the repair. There’s no excuse to not be able to fix this tablet imo. Smart phones are where the real difficulty is starting to appear.
@@RATsnak3 Yeah. The way he was awkwardly picking away at that dab of glue was pretty frustrating, as much as i agree with the overall message. I'm currently trying to change the battery in a jbl flip 3 speaker. The whole battery is glued into it's own orifice within the moulding. I'm cutting away and attempting to redesign the damn thing because i don't want to throw away a great speaker. Surely he could have picked a better example than that tablet lol.
Carriers, pretty simple. Most consumers don't seem to care, and core Android apps are updated via the Play Store anyway (unlike entire updates in iOS) so being a version or two behind doesn't really matter outside minor UI changes.
Samsung is the worst. Had a surround sound system which lasted 6 months before crapping out. Even though it was only 8 months old (by manufacturing date), with a 1 year warranty, they wouldn't repair it because I threw the receipt away. A few years later, I bought a 12.2" Samsung tablet only to have Samsung stop providing updates just a year later. 5 years later, bought a Samsung TV, only it will not stay connected to wifi requiring it to be unplugged at least once a week. 12 years later, I will never buy another Samsung device. Amazon, I'm okay with. Their tablets and e-readers are supported for a decent period of time. When my Fire TV stopped working, they replaced it.
@@dennisjoslin I have a Samsung J7 Prime (2016), there are still occasional security patch updates, but recently after a recent patch update the system UI crashes every so often, had to reboot just to fix it and hours later it will happen again. Even tried rolling back to a previous patch update, but the damage has already been done, even with a rolled back patch update, the system UI still crashes. SOLUTION? -Don't buy a Samsung device again- Rooted it, and flashed a custom OS. Basically start anew. Been happy ever since :) No need to buy a new phone.
I remember the good old days when you didn't have enough fingers to count your I/O, laptops didn't have soldered ram and storage and the battery (which inevitably degraded within roughly 2 years to a full charge lasting 30 min) was easily replaced by 2 sliding locks, no teardown needed, jeez those was the days.
what should consumers do? purchase with your brain turned on ... 1) consider what you really need - and what product fulfills this need. In most cases, people do not require new products - they can do with their old ones for much, much longer without loosing productivity. 2) be conscious of what you buy. Inform yourself before a purchase and read up from 3rd party assessments, especially in regards to sustainability 3) do not be greedy and actually pay for a sustainable product. Many people talk the talk on the internet, but when it comes to actually buying .. they choose the features and flashy tech over sustainability - but while tech ages quickly .. sustainability is a much longer lasting benefit. 4) take care of your devices 4*) that one especially for parents ... do your kids really need all the plastic electronic garbage? Kids can do without a smartphone until they can buy it themselves. If you care for the above, you will automatically screen out those Amazon products that pay for themselves by being "smart" (which only translates paying by allowing data collection, advertisements and applications even if you do not want those)
So many things are designed to be thrown away. It’s infuriating, and irresponsible. At work we still manage to get discrete components replaced on circuit boards from the 90s
I pick parts from electronics recycling and I gotta say, it's definitely surprising knowing that most stuff that's thrown away is mainly just older equipment being upgraded. I was handed in person a high end vga projector for this same reason. 80% is perfectly good electronics, while out of the remaining 20% I would say half of that is still usable for parts. What I have may be crap, but at least it's long lasting crap that I don't see breaking anytime soon.
It's bad they screw you over with repairs but some of their stuff definitely lasts. I've had my kindle fire HDX since 2013. I even installed a custom rom recently which has extended its use for me.
I bought a laptop yesterday because it was better that the ones in walmart, but other then that, i don't like to buy from them. I bougth a samsung tablet for $350 in 2017 and still work .
Amazon could build a prompt into its suggestions page when you buy a new Amazon device asking you if you’d be interested in recycling the old device, then automatically filling the recycling form. A simple prompt would likely massively increase uptake... which might be the point of the poor form come to think of it.
The landscape has changed so much in the last twenty years & everything is working against the average consumer. Even getting laws passed has become pay-to-play. We literally have to rebuild the repair economy.
tfw my heavily used gen 1 echo dot still going strong since 2016 tho. By the will of my soldering iron and 64bit driver kit, it's not going to eWaste until i've given it a fair shot.
As companies clearly have no incentive to be environmentally responsible or indeed consumer-friendly after the date of purchase, other than some cheap PR efforts, we urgently need regulation along the lines of the following: - All devices should come with a 2-year warranty - Devices sold for $25 or more should come with a 5-year warranty - Companies should provide replacement parts at little to no markup as well as repair guides to all their products - Products sold for $1000 or more should come with a mandatory 10-year warranty - All companies should provide well-regulated recycling programs for all products sold Consumers have rights, not only corporations!
Amazon? A bad company? Who would’ve thought? In all seriousness, this is why I can’t support them anymore. They don’t seem to care about their employees or the environment, and frankly I won’t tolerate it.
Simply put, I don't purchase something I don't expect to own for years to come, if it breaks, I fix it. In other words, if I know I won't be able to fix it, I don't buy it. I suggest that others do the same. But, another suggestion I have, is just respect the items you own.
Sir Terry Pratchett's character Sam Vimes sums this up nicely: (from "Men at Arms") "The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
I do have soldering equipment (everyone should these days) but I do find a problem with glue. Glue, in my opinion, should be only used to fix things permanently in places you don’t need fixing afterwards i.e. placing a loose tile in its place or gluing a vase back together. Glue doesn't belong in things like electronics. When ever a company manifacturing electronics and using glue to do it, employes me, I'll make sure the glue is replaced with goo that doesn't conduct electricity or stick to anything but rather just look like glue to the people who have the job to glue things together.
Hot glue while messy do have it's place, to provide some mechanical protection, gone are the days wires are soldered through hole (and looped around itself), it's all surface soldered and the only thing holding the wire in place is the solder pad...
@@daijoubu4529 And some sound emitting devices who are not supposed to make sound. I mean pitchy sounds from voltage regulators as I heard that motherboards will have them instead of the power supply unit.
There are plenty of times a bit of glue makes a lot of sense. It can be good for strain relief and allow inexpensive connectors to hold as well as resource intensive connectors. There are plenty of times when a bit of glue will make a device much more environmentally friendly than a glue free device. As long as the glue is relatively easy to remove and replace then glue can be a way to reduce the environmental impact of a device. The same holds true for soldered connection. Soldering wires directly to a board uses few resources than making a mating set of connectors. Adding rarely used connectors to a device, unnecessarily increases the environmental impact of the device.
As a person working in a company which very much designs and manifactures electronic devices and smaller pcb layouts, I know glue is a poor solution to anything. It gives the device a cheap feel and lowers the credibility of the company that the company has hard worked on to achieve. *Glue is the last resort, when there's absolutely nothing else to do to keep components together. * I get what you all are saying and understand what you know is a good solution - but so long as nothing is permanent or as long as we want (at least in our company) our customers to get the best and most durable solutions for their devices (which means no cheap parts or cutting corners), it is best not to grab onto the hotglue to glue things there onto their place. While fixing the products unprofessionally or to your own use, I think hot glue is not the furthest solution. Still you need to keep in mind if you ever have to change the very parts again.
@@erwinjitsu_3706 Absolute hogwash. Glue is used all the time in excellent products. Glue and soldered wires can reduce the part count of a device which both reduces the cost of the device and environmental impact of the device. I have an aversion to using glue in products I design (my day job) but it's mainly because I have to take the product apart so many times as I test the various components. I recently took apart a competitor's product and realized I'm much too adverse to using glue since the competitor's product had made wise us of it in several places. Glue and directly soldering wires is one way to reduce the environmental impact of devices. Glue and solder do not necessarily prevent a device from being easy to repair. If you watch EEVLOG, you see many teardowns where Dave praises the use of silastic for to reinforce connections. Judicial use of silastic or hot glue can greatly improve the durability of a product. Bruce of RCModelReviews also often praises the use of hot glue in RC products.
All that info that can alter your very future and that's what you take away from the video? Dang people are so senile but its crazy because it only applies to old people but I bet you're in your 20s~30s but yet many are not all there in the head because their brain raped by society and at the same time claim to be sane individuals.
whilst I agree that right to repair is important, and would love to see the fire tablets improve in that regard... amazon did promise that they would provide updates for devices up to 4 years after the device was last available for purchase. considering most devices are available for at least 2 years, that means they're providing updates for at least 6 years, rivaling apple, and beating google/samsung (who state they'll only provide updates for 5 years after release day). that and, those big, labelled solder pads for the speakers are less threatening than the adhesive glass backs required for any component of a modern smartphone, makes this feel more like a hit-piece than anything else.
@Hitogokochi Apple is arguably worse than Amazon in some respects...like bricking devices that had thier screens replaced with an update...and then blaming 3rd party repair outlets.
Often nowadays, they'll just replace the whole board and even if it's available, it's going to cost you probably more than buying new, especially factoring in the labor... it's not just Amazon, most electronics nowadays are throwaway. Repairing small SMD multilayer PCBs with a whole bunch of small package ICs is no small task, unless there's valuable data to recover... people won't pay up just to reduce e-waste sadly
This video would have been much better and more persuasive if it answered some obvious questions about the financial burden of making these products more reparable. e.g. Would making these devices more repairable be expected to significantly increase manufacturing costs and prices paid by consumers? Is Amazon taking deliberate steps to thwart device disassembly and repair or are they just not making an effort to support repairability? We are talking about fairly inexpensive electronics after all, and not many people would be willing to pay a premium for light bulbs that could be disassembled and repaired or would expect light bulb manufacturers to even offer this.
Thank you for addressing this problem and calling out Amazon on it. The best way to recycle the product or component is to reuse them and not waste time and money breaking them apart and filling up landfills. And to the people saying "don't buy cheap crap": the problem is ALL the companies are selling cheap crap and some are selling expensive crap. At the end you will have to buy something and you would go for a cheap option for the price.
Go to Louis Rossman TH-cam channel and watch some videos about right to repair if you're US citizen. You can support these bills by providing testimonies for example.
I think this is a very important call, and would like to see more calls of other big hardware manufactures. My quibble is how much this will affect accessibility and price.
I think that those cheap electronics are really a waste of resources. It dosen't matter if you are talking about laptops tablets phones or headphones. If you don't have a lot of money you sould buy used stuff wich is ofter cheaper and sometimes even last longer.
It's actually good for people who have a tight budget, the only thing they need to change is their repairability and how they get their materials like Fairphone...
@@平和-v1z The problem is the performance. When you buy a 200$ laptop on amazon they have 4gb of ram and in the worst case a solderd ssd. I have a Thinktad L440 with 8gb of ram and 120gb ssd full hd display and I paid 175€ a 1.5 years ago. It has been used for over 6 years now, but a 200€ laptop is probably obselete in 2 years.
@@markus98sb I think the problem is that people doesn't inform themselves before purchasing an item. When comes to electronics, people tend to think that a newer device is always better; the same goes with car. As you mentioned, there's going to be people that go to Walmart or Best Buy to get a new laptop without even knowing what they want from it. That's when a seller easily convince them to get an expensive laptop, which lack of any upgradability. After a couple of years, they will toss it away because it doesn't performance good. I own a Lenovo Thinkpad X230 that costed me $120 on eBay. I put a SSD and 8GB of RAM, and it works great, especially running a Linux distribution as its OS. Another example would be people buying MacBook just because they own an iPhone. I know all Apple products are designed to work flawlessly within the Apple ecosystem, but I know people that waste money buying a MacBook just to use Word.
I just outright avoid Amazon entirely. I needed a FireWire 400 to 800 cable the other day and I payed almost twice as much to buy it from B&H. Amazon is an appalling company.
I brought an Amazon tablet for my Son, he was 3 at the time, now almost 3year later it's working well, had been updated twice, yes small, and little memory, but for him it's great. The cost was less than the twice repaired iPad I had to fix when he threw it on the floor after angry birds adverts made him cry. We live in a world of consumerism and built-in obsolesce into many products. You should look at the really poor crap coming in on mass from china that's doing the most damage.
@@chrism6952 Yes, I would rather encourage my son at a young age to be happy to use technology. Glad to say he has never done again and is a good boy. Now a big Apple Arcade fan. (in moderation of course)
@@thearousedeunuch The difference is that the "digital assistant" devices are explicitly advertised to listen to you at all times. And people pay extra to have it in their house.
@@JamesRPatrick Valid point. However, if I recall correctly, they can be configured to only listen to you when you summon them. I still wouldn't buy one, though.
Lol they wouldn't want your essentials to last for decades for your 'safety' (you safely putting more money in their pockets for products that lasts as long as a cereal box exasperation date!)
This video is sloppy, but I do agree with the sentiment. Even in the glory days of repairable electronics, executing a fix involved reading the manufacturer provided schematics and soldering replacement parts. The speaker wire isn't a barrier. The barrier is the lack of documentation and replacement parts. We desperately need laws to address that.
Its especially the lack of replacement parts, less the lack of schematics (at least for cheapish IoT products, etc). I found it relatively entertaining that they mentioned Apple as a "better" company, considering the past experiences with the butterfly keyboards on the MBP, the lawsuits against the third party ("unauthorized") repair shops, and the lobbying against right-to-repair laws everywhere around the world. Granted, some Apple hardware is pretty long-lasting, but they're still basically trying to sell you a new MBP as soon as you LCD cable disconnects.
Though Apple’s products are hard to repair, at least they are modular and are supported for much longer than their competitors. Specially phones and tablets.
Exactly. The length of time they provide feature and security updates for on both Macs and their mobile devices is almost unfathomable in the Android world. Now to get them to offer *all* repair parts for current or reasonably recent devices.. even if only through their dealer network, that would be a huge step in the right direction.
lets not forget that as the device gets older the newer software makes it slower. not to mention the batteries are pushed to the max for the first year to make it seem fast then it decliens in performance because the battery loses its ability to keep up. updates =/= better. updates can break or ruin things. i have an android phone that is on android 7.1.1. the only issue it has is that the hardware is like 5 years old and wasnt the best of the best even when it came out. as far as software goes android 7 is still very usable.
the problem is that today's society is led to believe they need everything for cheap and stuff will eventually break so they get the newer more expensive thing
Shaiyan Hossain It certainly doesn’t help that so many people are forced to live from paycheck to paycheck. It makes a cheap purchase now much more enticing than an expensive product that will last...
What should customers do about it (in no particular order)? 1. Do not always want to go for the cheapest (we Dutchies say "Goedkoop is duurkoop" - "A cheap buy is an expensive buy"). Cheaper stuff often gets an EOL faster or gets unresponsive (or "slow" as people tend to call it) and thus "requires" (read: "people want to") an upgrade faster (just as you see with the Amazon tablet in this video). Check within your budget to see if there's anything better you might get, often, for just a few bucks more, you can get something way better. 2. Check second-hand products, there are often pretty nice deals available if you can make do with not having the latest and greatest. I've gotten around with this for years, yes, it sometimes caused problems but generally, if you buy something that was solid, to begin with, it should last you a while as well. Some webshops in The Netherlands actually buy back used (non-consumable) products (like phones, tablets, computers, musical instruments etc.) and sell them as "B-stock" or "second chance" products. 3. Make do with what you need, not with what makes you look best (buy things because of their function, not because of their "social status"). I mean, do you really need the latest and greatest iPhone 11 with 4 "amazing" cameras (I think it was 4?) when all you do it check WhatsApp, your email and maybe look something up on Google? And does your 8 year old kid really need said iPhone to let you know that he needs to pick you up from his friend's place? I currently still rock a Nexus 5X which is horribly outdated and pretty unresponsive at times, but unless this thing physically breaks, I don't see a reason to replace it, it does what I need to do. 4. Try to check whether something is repairable before you buy it (eg. can you take it apart without destroying it and replace parts without destroying it and can you get a replacement part). Chances are, you will break it at some point (phones get dropped, wired headphones will get cable breaks, batteries go bad), so check whether it's repairable before you buy something. Even if you might be unable to repair it by yourself, a repair shop might be able to get it repaired for you if you checked this beforehand. I've had my phone screen damaged pretty badly multiple times but managed to swap the screens relatively easily because they were pretty repairable. And so often had I break the cable in my headphones that I needed to replace them (luckily, I now bought a pair that has detachable - and thus replaceable - cables). 5. Finally, realize that what you buy might go far beyond what you are buying at that specific moment. In this world, you vote with your wallet, if you keep saying "yes" to products even though they might be inferior, you are setting a standard. I want to take Apple (but there are many companies like it) as an example. They are making a lot of their products less and less functional and repairable, but people will buy it anyway, often wipe any arguments against it with "it's my money, I can buy what I want". What people often don't understand is by doing so, they are starting to reward a company for this. When you buy a product that is less repairable than it's predecessor, you are telling the industry: "I don't care much for repairability", low and behold, more and more companies are making their phones more difficult to repair, up to a point where every product becomes basically disposable. If a product doesn't sell much, the company has to step up their game again or lose profits.
Great video, thank you. Someone needs to call them out for this bullshit. People actually think cheap stuff like this is a benefit of their membership... and it's a huge problem.
amazon is not the only ones doing this, that is why I fully support the right to repair. I fallow several repair post on you tube including Rossman repair and Ipad Rehab. I am a firm believer in Diy.
Amazon devices are “loss leaders” which means they’ll sell it to you at a loss in exchange for luring you into the door to spend more. The discounted kindle fire tablets & ebook are subsidized by serving ads on lock screen. If you don’t want ads you’ll have pay more to buy the device.
When we talk about that we refer to how their business model works (you can find more info here: th-cam.com/video/ojGveiE51Hk/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=TechAltar )
I find so many electronics that don’t even need repairs when is time for “bulk trash pickup” to pass around my neighborhood. Is crazy the stuff some people throw away instead of giving away or donating.
this is the reason i built my new PC exclusively from aftermarket parts. i can mess and upgrade all i want, and i know some parts of it will last at least 20 to 50 years. (of course there is stuff that i will need to swap much sooner, but hey... at least i can open at swap stuff easly)
@@maxpowers2168 Yes you can and I have done just that. Raspberry Pi and other devices are the way. You'll need to learn to code and solder a few things, but nothing is impossible if you have the will.
@@Leetfin so? When it comes to just about any part besides a motherboard it literally doesn't matter. If anything it makes it cheaper to repair devices than if Amazon had licensed repair parts for sale
This is not only a problem that Amazon is facing (or not). Hundrets of companies are doing stuff like this. If someone wants to google it, type in "planned obsolescence". Nearly every piece of tech, even seemingly good companies like Yamaha are producing electronic devices that will somehow break after the warranty expires. As an electrical engineer I'm trying my best to revive and fix such electronics. But in my last case I had a broken Yamaha subwoofer from a family member.(that's why I mentioned them above) After opening it up which was rather simple (also a rarity) I couldn't figure out what was broken. After some tests I figured out that maybe a relay was broken and I swapped it out for a new one. I did this because the (I will call it) "mainboard" looked fine to me, no blown capacitors, no burnt resistors or transistors, hell even the potentiometers worked just fine. I couldn't figure out what was broken therefore with a bit of sadness and frustration I had to throw it away. It was probably the chip.... But my main point here is that it is pretty hard to fix rather small electronics these days and this needs to stop if we want to somehow save our planet and get a grip on our pollution problem.
You could add your contact details to it which would allow you to quickly send them via NFC. Ooh or put your wifi details on it that saves getting the password off the back of the router. Or you could get an RFID door lock for a house, safe or fridge or something along those line.
@@CaffeinatedFrostbite Caffeinated Frostbite Hello! Thats also true, to each their own. It was a question of function that I tried to answer with a bit of positivity. I personally am all for recycling tech, I maintain as much of my own stuff as I can and I always try and buy things that last. The OP said a smart ring sounds pointless, RFID and NFC have so many uses and are the future of wearable tech, all it takes is someone creative to think outside the box.
This reminds me of how Spectrum went against it's promise to customers & is closing the security systems it purchased rights to when it aquired Time Warner, but refuses to open the firmware for people to repair or reuse it... So now it's forced to become e-waste. Just awful.
Since Apple does not support owners repair or even repair at shops they are even worse than Amazon. Having grown up building my own PC and being to repair them I think most Chinese manufacturers are terrible.
snintendog They only confiscate the parts if it has the Apple logo. It has nothing to do with copyright laws or the fact that the parts originated from outside the country. It has more to do with them trying to combat counterfeit parts from going into their products. Not saying that I agree with how Apple handles the issue, but hey, at least you can get Apple products fixed, and they are taking steps to make this easier.
I often encounter really "woke" young people that proudly reposts everything Greta Thunberg says (which is a good thing) but at the same time they're shopping disposable electronics, often from Amazon, like there's no tomorrow.
@@danithaman4610 who knows? All I see when I look at Greta Thunberg and her message is an uneducated child being manipulated to spread a globalist message. I'm happy to reduce reuse and recycle , but she is literally suggesting we stop all consumption of carbon based fuels. That would literally cripple the entire global economy. Every sane person who knows a little bit about economics knows this. They all know that nothing Greta Thunberg says is realistic but they use her age as a shield to advance their political agendas. Do I seriously think 99% of those who claim to support her agenda actually want to stop driving cars or using almost any form of stored energy? No! Sorry to dump on you like this, I just really would prefer to see her get an education on the subjects at which she wishes she was an expert before attempting to radically alter developed life as we know It.
@@danithaman4610 It's good because she's right. And Nadaz, I don't think you have ever listened to anything she actually said. You're the one repeating nonsense.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Note the order those are in. That's in order of importance. Recycling is one step above the landfill, and should almost be a last resort in one's plan. If you're leaning on Recycling at the expense of Reduction and Re-use, you're doing more harm than good. Recycling isn't "green" it's just a slightly less bad option than landfills.
Randomly guessing, 80% of the landfill electronics might be perfectly usable and as outdated as it seems to us, people/families with economic struggles could use many of these devices. Amazon and other big companies have the money, the means and the power to make whole factories specialized in re-combining those device's pieces to make them work again and re-sell them for a fraction of the price to people with large economic struggles. One team disassembles the tablet, the other separates the good/damaged parts, the other reassembles the tablet, etc. * A mid-range notebook from 2012 (like mine) isn't fit to run games or heavy software, but it is perfectly suited for Microsoft Office, Browsing, TH-cam, Music/Movie Streaming, and Skype as long as it's cooling capabilities are still ok and the CPU was not massacred through the years. Many struggling families could enjoy that by buying it for as low as $50 or whatever. Other families could use it as a media center. Tech shops could use them as temporary laptops for clients who took theirs to repair/clean.
Who cant solder 4 wires? A modern day technician.. If this is the only obstacle to repair; its not an obstacle. You need to learn to solder. Like any real technician. I do see your point and I believe in the right to repair (my thing is ole gaming consoles), but if you are trying to make it seem as if soldering is what make a(ny) device un-repairable, you are trying to make a non-issue into a problem.
@Taylor Dixon The cost of a no-name brand soldering iron is about 15$, same goes for a heatgun, which you will need anyway if you ever have a cracked screen that needs replacement, so for a total of 30$ you’ll become equipped with the basic tools of a technician. I do support the right to repair and I am an avid watcher of Louis Rossman’s youtube channel. But in a world where everyone expect any spare parts they buy offa’ amazon to come with tools; a 30$ investment that will equip you with the basic tools to further your ‘repairability’ range, wether you are a professional or a diy’er and its not a big price considering what you’ll be able to do with your newly acquired basic tools. There is a lot of examples of what you are trying to say (apple new range, the earbuds, lots of cheap german tablets, ect - i believe you did a video on worst of 2019 recently), but in this case its four solderings and a wire glued to plastic; not fragile electronics. Thats why I find that this device is not the best vessel to convey your message with. ;)
@Taylor Dixon You’re welcome! Keep up the good work - I really love what you guys are doing and I use iFixit frequently, since it makes my sidejobs a lot easier (I rather someone else make the first mistakes, than me having to repair something I broke on top of what Im supposed to fix;); some new electronics is frustratingly put together! :)
Companies should be required to have spare parts available for let's say, 5 years after end of production. I would rather pay more for a device knowing that I can get spare parts and that the device can be opened by normal people.
I have to say my daughters amazon kids tablet is still going strong after 3 years, the battery life is still enough to let her use it for the limits we set. Lets be honest after 3 years who would not be upgrading a tablet? As for replacement parts they can be found on ebay and other sources, they may not be amazon sanctioned but they will work.
One problem I've seen is, parent's don't teach their children to fix things anymore. Heck, many parents can't fix things themselves. I've had many friends come to me for help for the most medial of things, because they don't understand basic items.
lol iFixit thinks smartphones should have upgradeable cpu's and ram. Of course they want devices to be upgradable, otherwise they wouldn't exist. It's good for the environment but no one would bother repairing a cheap device.
Laws should exist for this. Prohibiting such manufacturing. All products should come with a 5 years mandatory warranty and repair availability. No product should ever have to be thrown away.
My girlfriend still uses her Amazon tablet from 2013 with no upgrade reason in sight. A lot of your typical users don't replace or upgrade, especially if they already have a smart phone
I think that while sure, Amazon is pretty bad on recycling and whatnot, I also feels that it's incredibly misleading to say other companies are doing any better. This is a problem with the entire industry, so much that I don't feel that Amazon needs to be singled out - it's just part of a bigger problem. Apple certainly isn't any better and is arguably way worse in several aspects, as are others like Samsung, Google and Microsoft.
It wouldn't be very productive to say "Well, just tell every company in the world to stop doing bad thing X". It's better, I think, to call out specific brands on specific things.
This video builds its case beautifully. Clear points: what is what's wrong and what we want to see. Well-produced video about the "eco-system hole" tech companies are digging as they manufacture millions of devices without an end of life or disposal strategy. (I know I'm quoting Kyle Wiens here) The young man presenting is very effective too! We'll be sharing this widely.
I’m happy this was brought to my attention. And I think they should make their electronics as simple to fix as possible. With that being said, I can imagine them becoming some sort of warehouse for part to build custom electronics for hobbyists.
Amazon isn't the first nor last one to do that. There are trash electronics of this type for decades. Customer demands, companies deliver. Don't want things to be like that, don't buy those, pay premium for products that last much longer. But then again having a premium product won't guarantee that replacement parts will be available.
This is why I don't buy any Amazon branded products. When I do it's usually a cord or something small. I only bought a tablet and that is being used for my daughter and completely modified.
Well all i can say to this is that i've used a fire tablet for more than five years now and it doesn't even have a scratch. Its still as fast as it was the first day and i can run everything i want to run on it. I've never had to give it to repair simply bc its NOT manufactured to break is my guess. Even the battery is still in good shape while my Laptops battery has lost a large amount of time. I use it mainly to watch videos, read texts for university and to browse the web. Its a cheap and easy device which of course is made to market amazon services like amazon prime to the user. That however doesn't really change much for me bc i was already using amazon services quite heavily before buying it.
Like others have said, most industries design products to have a certain lifespan even if making a longer lasting product wouldn't be that much more difficult. From cars to tech devices... It's especially true with devices like this tablet and smartphones where they are artificially blocked from receiving software updates when the hardware itself is more than capable. Another issue for this specific device is that Amazon locks it into their own ecosystem, which is why I've never considered one even when they sell them super cheap on Black Friday. I honestly think we'd need a huge shift in society to start cherishing the idea of longevity and efficiency. How can we transition away from the idea that production, profit, share price, and growth are the measure of success? I'm not sure because the entire structure of our culture is based on it. It's a difficult situation.
Also wires soldered to a board means nothing in terms of how cheap it is, less connectors for things that dont really need them = cheaper. Lower specs = cheaper. Were talking about a tablet meant for reading books, not for productivity.
I brought a kindle 3rd gen years ago. Woke up one morning and the screen was damaged. I repair tablets, phones etc so I know I didn't break it. After calling Amazon I was able to secure another kindle for 2/3 cost of a new one and I would be refunded some more money when I returned the damaged kindle. I kept reading stories about this liquid crystal display doing exactly what mine did with no impact or pressure damage apparent. I kept the kindle, replaced the screen (I could get one from China back then) and then I had two. One for me and my partner. Both are still working today and they must be 8+ years old. Apart from the screen these devices are durable and I have certainly got value for money. However todays tech trash is definitely planned obsolescence due to the resins used, lack of parts, etc to stifle DIY and repair shops from fixing these devices. It is a sad indictment on the mindset of corporations and can only be changed through legislation. Either make devices repairable or bear the burden of a tax on the manufacturing cost of the product. It may push prices up but if corps pass this on to the consumer then no one will buy them. If no one buys then they stop making them. The self-media spin about e-waste and recycling is sickening with very little proof being shown as to actual numbers of devices being recycled and the percentage of the material. Most of the time it's just shipped to other countries to deal with. Make the coprorations accountable and things will change.
I sell on FBA. They also have what they call "green shipping" where they take any and all items from an order that is at a warehouse and put it in a box with no inner protection. Its real nice when a poster of mine is accompanied by twelve cans of cat food and a gallon of paint. 70% AMAZON! Needless to say Im shipping things myself now.
The idea is to get Amazon devices into your life so that you can better be marketed to. If the price was higher, the average person would be less likely to purchase that first device on impulse. I actually have family members that have done that and now own several devices...I would be as bold to say that all those that would ACTUALLY want to repair their Amazon device are in a very small minority compared to the rest... I do not use Amazon smart devices because I do not agree with Amazon's privacy policy.
expecting to repair electronic gear without a soldering iron is like expecting to repair your car without a wrench... the fact is, most folks are not competent to use either and prefer cheap disposable stuff... ☹☹☹ a fact that frustrates me to no end... 😐😐😐
I’m still using my Commodore Amiga computer, Citizen dot-matrix printer and my Ericsson A2618s mobile phone. I don’t have a MP3 player. I still use cassettes for recording and playback. And lastly, I drive a 1967 Morris Minor. No computer crap. All mechanical.
I thing a recycling program isn’t the only marketing move to get people to responsibly dispose of electronics. Trade-in programs by phone carriers give people an artificially low price on the new phone they want, while also getting them to dispose of old electronics properly.
What do you think of Amazon's disposable tech? Have you ever repaired an Amazon device?
I successfully repaired an out of warranty 2nd gen Echo. The tweeter had blown and what looks like a propriety speaker (tweeter), I've managed to find one in similar shape and size. Removed the old one and soldered the new one and used some hot glue to secure the new one. The speaker is as good as new!
Any tech company willing to make as much money as Apple does, will do this kind of disposable tech.
It is not the product that is garbage, is the company.
I have basically a drawer full of broken kindles and stuff that I couldn't fix and couldn't get rid of.
@@JavoCover apple is one of the worst offenders
Hytekrednek Bama funny joke
I hate seeing footage of e-waste disposal, knowing that most of the devices in there are easily repairable if the manufacturers gave us parts and diagrams. Sad, really
We're not even asking for free stuff, independent repair will pay for the components and even schematics if they have to
Most of it is outdated garbage like Amazons tablet.
A 150 usd tablet out side warranty will never ever be economical to get repaired.
@@Lilljehook btw I use arch
The thing is many of the devices that end up in landfills dont even need repairs cause they aren't broken. People have garages full of perfectly working tech that's just old and when there is no place near to recycle it it ends up dumped curbside.
@@Lilljehook yep . not the correct way to do but this is what we have turned into ...
Same, if I'm not mistaken I haven't thrown away a single electronic thing, broken or not it stays with me
We live in a throw-away world. Nothing is built to last anymore, everything has an expiry date. :/
That´s capitalism and that´s how these companies work. Imagine you buy wash machine that will work 20 years from purchasing. Not just you but many others. How that company will sell other wash machines if your one doesn´t break. That´s how they keep their business. This is just an example, not a great one, but still relevant.
Also for some products that are cheap, some parts that needs to be replaced, price can be a bit too high or close to the end product. Take for an example low end samsung phones that have amoled display, its just not worth it, most of the time the display is half of the price of the new phone.
SomeRandomGuy capitalism certainly has its down sides.
When it's something with moving part, it's understandable.
When it's something like a battery that decay over time because of a natural degradation, it's understandable.
But when a companie like Apple purposefully update Os to make the older I-phone run slower, that is where *throw-away world* come from.
We live in a world with company (especially electronic) tend to make designs that will decay overtime and make the user buy more of their stuff.
*AND i'm pretty sure companies that put Lithium battery wouldn't be happy if scientifist would manage to make a Solid-Carbon-glass battery that last 9001x more.*
That’s more of the nature of online retail. Yes, planned obsolescence is not good and a driving factor. The fact of the matter is it’s cheaper to send out cheap, semi disposable products than it is to do the paper work for repairs or warranties. That doesn’t excuse the lack of repair ability but there’s a lot of legal over head in repair industries. Which is why Ifixit is great though there’s no transfer of property and you’re responsible for your own repairs.
the most disgusting example of this are those "festival phone chargers" that you cannot recharge. They have a Lithium cell inside (so CAN be recharged) but sold as a disposable device... Yuck! The amount of waste...
Who would have thought rare earth metals would have a shelf life of a box of cereal
I would pay a dollar, but for the box of cereal.
@@technicalthug It will be a great mineral deposit again in 100,000 years for a future race on this planet.
@@johnchase7667 Yep. I've been saying this for 20 years: "the landfills of today are the mines of tomorrow." All kinds of good stuff in one highly concentrated place. It just happens to be mixed in with a lot of toxic, smelly, and/or truly unusable stuff. Some smart company is gonna make a lot of money when they finally perfect some robotic landfill refinery technology.
floobertuber it won’t be that toxic or smelly in a thousand years underground
@@FlorenceSlugcat or 100 or even 20
Oil companies: does CO2 stuff
Tech company: laughs while hiding their own problems.
Petroleum does make up most of plastic products including many parts made for electronics
Do you mean automotive companies?
To be fair, an Internal Combustion Engine is far more environmentally safe than a electric engine. The Li-ion battery is difficult to recycle, then you have all the rare earth elements to dig up and charging it still takes fossil fuel. A regular engine is recyclable at the end of its life cycle, and repair it making it far more eco friendly.
quick strike Combustion engines use more inherently harmful products and produce more inherently harmful waste than an electric vehicle. Recycling a combustion engine is similarly hard to a battery and a battery also has a second use life potential as large scale low energy density storage, unlike a combustion engine. Electric vehicles drivetrains require less repairs than a combustion engine too, which is the best option.
@@cjeam9199 THANKYOU
Step 1. Dont buy amazon tablets
Step 2. Spend a reasonable amount of money on a product that isn’t already ewaste when in leaves the factory.
Better idea: BUY 2ND HAND WHEN YOU CAN and always SELL your old tech (if is still be useful) is better for you (i mean money to buy something to replace it), for the one buying it (they won't spend more money in something they don't need) and the environment obviously
@Kevin B This is actually how I've gotten most of my stuff.
My laptop was literally found in a dumpster (and still lasted me 5 years before I wanted to upgrade... it's not even broken, I just repurposed it as a little Grafana server), I have gone years with the old phones of my dad and my servers are literally bought for like 10-20 euros off Marktplaats (the Dutch craigslist).
Nowadays, I tend to look at second hand first, I even got an "old" graphics card off Marktplaats for 1/4th it's original price, that still had 1 year warranty and is still really great for what games I play... just because the previous owner wanted to get an 8% increase on performance by buying a new one...
I only buy new if absolutely needed now. Most computer related stuff I get through ebay, secondhand. Ipads, iphones, laptops and desktops. If I need a monitor, Goodwill has them cheap.
I even have a full video production setup based on iphones and ipads, that cost me less than $300, capable of multi camera (4), 1080p video output. That is more than people need anymore. And I have used it to produce professional paid for product.
I usually also try to buy used if I can. But in the cases its not possible, I think its better to spend a little more on a product that will last a long time and can eventually be resold, then getting the cheapest thing that will do the trick for now but is broken or obsolete in a short period of Time.
Buy a samsung tablet?
what next? disposable tools? yep, amazon has that too. Amazon takes your disposable income and converts it into disposable junk you probably did not need to start with. Ifixit has the right idea, and it is far from a new idea... fix what is broke! You do not amputate an arm because you broke a finger. The item we own should be no different. Plus, fixing it yourself is fun and interesting. It makes you proud to turn a broken item back into a very useful and functional thing.
agreed.
In the german language there is a nice saying:
who buys cheap, buys double
Unfortunately, the “disposable product” is happening everywhere. You could fix your own car but with how modernized cars are now, you can’t. You could fix your own phone but as of recently, it’s almost impossible by yourself. Soon not even building a house will be something you could do without automation. It’s just sad in a way. I get that the future is moving forward to make our lives “easier” but at the price of having no control over anything. It makes us not appreciate anything. Like spoiled rich brats that buy a new car every time they crash then.
Have you ever used the tools included with parts for smart phones? They are so bad you dispose of them before you use them
Amazonbasics tools are indeed crap.
@@DragonBuilds I beg to differ, I got a hammer from them for my dad as it was just basic needs, very good quality. Don't tarnish and the entire product line for items, and if it was crap then return it.
Easy: don’t buy their cheap crap. Demand the company to make it better, long lasting and what not
Easier said than done; the problem is that expensive things are still crap, and companies don’t give a crap. They make things break faster, they earn more money.
Nopparuj yes exactly, and if you don’t buy their products they will start wondering oh jeez sells are dopping down what could it be? They should realize why customers don’t buy anymore
@@fayenotfaye most of the times it's more expensive to buy cheap products, but yea i understand i would rather spend my money elsewere
Nothing exists in technology that's long lasting. Even top of th line electronics are obsolete within 3 years.
I've used Amazon products for longer than 5 years because I know what to expect when I buy them and all my Amazon products still run the Amazon services I bought them for.
Amazon products are built to last the test of time. They aren't however built to have continuous updates to the latest and greatest and no hardware is.
@@fayenotfaye When the current baseline for what is good graphics performance levels is 4K, 1080p at 100fps is obsolete.
May as well claim 1080p TVs aren't obsolete either.
This is why right to repair is so important if a product makes more then 1 million in sales or projected sales the company should be required to sell parts if they themselves repair or have authorized personnel repair their products.
Well... tbf, skip that "or have authorized personel repair their products"...
This kinda goes against the "right to repair" because if that happens, the company can just charge a load of cash or say they need to replace a crap tonne of stuff after which "it's not worth it anymore"...
(Yes, I'm looking straight at Apple with this one)
@@FinlayDaG33k on the other hand if its profitable some other company can make knock off brand batteries or chips which they often do. the real issue is cryptographically signing components which is fucking bullshit. the signing keys should be freely available to everyone if security at the component level is a real issue and you have to have chip level encrypted communication. that being said just dont buy from them.
@@FinlayDaG33k I think what Evan meant was just that if repair is possible then the parts should be available for purchase. Another phrasing would be "If the company or a third party currently performs repairs, the company should be required to make the parts available for purchase".
And that's why we have Luis rossman
@@kusucks991 On second inspection, yes, you're right : >
"many amazon devices are used over 5 years". "many" is one of those magic words like "almost" or "natural": impossible to measure, so nonspecific its meaningless.
I'll say though their switch cases aren't bad and can probably be used for quite a few years I slipped on some water or ice or something can't remember 6 months to a year ago and it kept my switch nice and safe
Got a 2 Kindle fire 7s from 2015 that work just fine for watching videos and reading books.
@@gman3563 not criticizing the hardware or sentiment, just the vague p.r. speak. "many" is not a measurable term. i'm sure some of their products do have longevity.
How about this then?
Amazon will keep providing software updates even after 3-4 years.
Anyone who is fixing tablets should have a soldering iron, and those solder points are massive. It would not be hard at all to replace a speaker imo.
For my own personal device I probably wouldn't even give enough of a crap that they work at all, I might be fine just leaving those wires disconnected anyway
The solder pads aren't bad, it's the fact that they've epoxied the wires to the chassis.
The Garden of Eatin honestly just grab a Dremel or a wire cutter. If you’re replacing the speaker damaging it wouldn’t matter and you could replace the epoxy with hot Glue after the repair. There’s no excuse to not be able to fix this tablet imo. Smart phones are where the real difficulty is starting to appear.
@@RATsnak3 Yeah. The way he was awkwardly picking away at that dab of glue was pretty frustrating, as much as i agree with the overall message.
I'm currently trying to change the battery in a jbl flip 3 speaker. The whole battery is glued into it's own orifice within the moulding. I'm cutting away and attempting to redesign the damn thing because i don't want to throw away a great speaker.
Surely he could have picked a better example than that tablet lol.
yeah i was also thinking a soldered speaker really ain't bad
The right to repair bill needs to be implemented soon. Hopefully it gets through.
Im waiting to see samsungs excuse in 2 years when the s10 wont recieve update even though it has 8gb ram and 128gb storage
Carriers, pretty simple. Most consumers don't seem to care, and core Android apps are updated via the Play Store anyway (unlike entire updates in iOS) so being a version or two behind doesn't really matter outside minor UI changes.
@@johnm91326 well security updates are important. plus newer android versions really do improve a lot.
Or they get updates, just that they're like 5 gb updates
Samsung is the worst. Had a surround sound system which lasted 6 months before crapping out. Even though it was only 8 months old (by manufacturing date), with a 1 year warranty, they wouldn't repair it because I threw the receipt away. A few years later, I bought a 12.2" Samsung tablet only to have Samsung stop providing updates just a year later. 5 years later, bought a Samsung TV, only it will not stay connected to wifi requiring it to be unplugged at least once a week. 12 years later, I will never buy another Samsung device. Amazon, I'm okay with. Their tablets and e-readers are supported for a decent period of time. When my Fire TV stopped working, they replaced it.
@@dennisjoslin I have a Samsung J7 Prime (2016), there are still occasional security patch updates, but recently after a recent patch update the system UI crashes every so often, had to reboot just to fix it and hours later it will happen again. Even tried rolling back to a previous patch update, but the damage has already been done, even with a rolled back patch update, the system UI still crashes. SOLUTION? -Don't buy a Samsung device again- Rooted it, and flashed a custom OS. Basically start anew. Been happy ever since :) No need to buy a new phone.
I remember the good old days when you didn't have enough fingers to count your I/O, laptops didn't have soldered ram and storage and the battery (which inevitably degraded within roughly 2 years to a full charge lasting 30 min) was easily replaced by 2 sliding locks, no teardown needed, jeez those was the days.
what should consumers do? purchase with your brain turned on ...
1) consider what you really need - and what product fulfills this need. In most cases, people do not require new products - they can do with their old ones for much, much longer without loosing productivity.
2) be conscious of what you buy. Inform yourself before a purchase and read up from 3rd party assessments, especially in regards to sustainability
3) do not be greedy and actually pay for a sustainable product. Many people talk the talk on the internet, but when it comes to actually buying .. they choose the features and flashy tech over sustainability - but while tech ages quickly .. sustainability is a much longer lasting benefit.
4) take care of your devices
4*) that one especially for parents ... do your kids really need all the plastic electronic garbage? Kids can do without a smartphone until they can buy it themselves.
If you care for the above, you will automatically screen out those Amazon products that pay for themselves by being "smart" (which only translates paying by allowing data collection, advertisements and applications even if you do not want those)
I hope you don't have kids
So many things are designed to be thrown away.
It’s infuriating, and irresponsible.
At work we still manage to get discrete components replaced on circuit boards from the 90s
Time to send filthy frank to Amazon with the big clock.
IT'S TIME TO STOP
It's time to staaahp
Rip papa franku
*I'm gonna call child protective services, it's TIME TO STOP*
I pick parts from electronics recycling and I gotta say, it's definitely surprising knowing that most stuff that's thrown away is mainly just older equipment being upgraded. I was handed in person a high end vga projector for this same reason. 80% is perfectly good electronics, while out of the remaining 20% I would say half of that is still usable for parts. What I have may be crap, but at least it's long lasting crap that I don't see breaking anytime soon.
I try NOT to buy any Amazon products for this reason and none of their products last!
I mean their echo speakers and their tv sticks aren't bad, but I would never buy anything else from them.
It's bad they screw you over with repairs but some of their stuff definitely lasts. I've had my kindle fire HDX since 2013. I even installed a custom rom recently which has extended its use for me.
I stopped my sister from buying one of those devices...... I’m glad I did.
Their cables are pretty decent lasts longer than the original iphone cable that came with my phone.
I bought a laptop yesterday because it was better that the ones in walmart, but other then that, i don't like to buy from them. I bougth a samsung tablet for $350 in 2017 and still work .
Amazon is probably gonna end up like Buy N Large company like in Wall-E movie.
Very likely
Oh god. You just spoke it into existence.
Also, it's *Buy 'n' Large*
@@HandledToaster2 was it? I gotta like watch it again when I get the chance
@@tydshiin5783 yup, I just watched it for the thousandth time last week! I absolutely love this movie you should definitely rewatch it
Amazon could build a prompt into its suggestions page when you buy a new Amazon device asking you if you’d be interested in recycling the old device, then automatically filling the recycling form. A simple prompt would likely massively increase uptake... which might be the point of the poor form come to think of it.
The landscape has changed so much in the last twenty years & everything is working against the average consumer. Even getting laws passed has become pay-to-play. We literally have to rebuild the repair economy.
tfw my heavily used gen 1 echo dot still going strong since 2016 tho. By the will of my soldering iron and 64bit driver kit, it's not going to eWaste until i've given it a fair shot.
As companies clearly have no incentive to be environmentally responsible or indeed consumer-friendly after the date of purchase, other than some cheap PR efforts, we urgently need regulation along the lines of the following:
- All devices should come with a 2-year warranty
- Devices sold for $25 or more should come with a 5-year warranty
- Companies should provide replacement parts at little to no markup as well as repair guides to all their products
- Products sold for $1000 or more should come with a mandatory 10-year warranty
- All companies should provide well-regulated recycling programs for all products sold
Consumers have rights, not only corporations!
Amazon? A bad company? Who would’ve thought?
In all seriousness, this is why I can’t support them anymore. They don’t seem to care about their employees or the environment, and frankly I won’t tolerate it.
You could join the communist party
Simply put, I don't purchase something I don't expect to own for years to come, if it breaks, I fix it. In other words, if I know I won't be able to fix it, I don't buy it. I suggest that others do the same. But, another suggestion I have, is just respect the items you own.
This is why I own exactly Zero Amazon products
*Jeff Bezos wants to know your location*
Sir Terry Pratchett's character Sam Vimes sums this up nicely: (from "Men at Arms")
"The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness."
It's time to stop making excuses for *THE WHOLE INDUSTRY'S* disposable tech!
I do have soldering equipment (everyone should these days) but I do find a problem with glue.
Glue, in my opinion, should be only used to fix things permanently in places you don’t need fixing afterwards i.e. placing a loose tile in its place or gluing a vase back together. Glue doesn't belong in things like electronics.
When ever a company manifacturing electronics and using glue to do it, employes me, I'll make sure the glue is replaced with goo that doesn't conduct electricity or stick to anything but rather just look like glue to the people who have the job to glue things together.
Hot glue while messy do have it's place, to provide some mechanical protection, gone are the days wires are soldered through hole (and looped around itself), it's all surface soldered and the only thing holding the wire in place is the solder pad...
@@daijoubu4529 And some sound emitting devices who are not supposed to make sound. I mean pitchy sounds from voltage regulators as I heard that motherboards will have them instead of the power supply unit.
There are plenty of times a bit of glue makes a lot of sense. It can be good for strain relief and allow inexpensive connectors to hold as well as resource intensive connectors. There are plenty of times when a bit of glue will make a device much more environmentally friendly than a glue free device.
As long as the glue is relatively easy to remove and replace then glue can be a way to reduce the environmental impact of a device.
The same holds true for soldered connection. Soldering wires directly to a board uses few resources than making a mating set of connectors. Adding rarely used connectors to a device, unnecessarily increases the environmental impact of the device.
As a person working in a company which very much designs and manifactures electronic devices and smaller pcb layouts, I know glue is a poor solution to anything. It gives the device a cheap feel and lowers the credibility of the company that the company has hard worked on to achieve.
*Glue is the last resort, when there's absolutely nothing else to do to keep components together. *
I get what you all are saying and understand what you know is a good solution - but so long as nothing is permanent or as long as we want (at least in our company) our customers to get the best and most durable solutions for their devices (which means no cheap parts or cutting corners), it is best not to grab onto the hotglue to glue things there onto their place.
While fixing the products unprofessionally or to your own use, I think hot glue is not the furthest solution. Still you need to keep in mind if you ever have to change the very parts again.
@@erwinjitsu_3706 Absolute hogwash. Glue is used all the time in excellent products. Glue and soldered wires can reduce the part count of a device which both reduces the cost of the device and environmental impact of the device.
I have an aversion to using glue in products I design (my day job) but it's mainly because I have to take the product apart so many times as I test the various components. I recently took apart a competitor's product and realized I'm much too adverse to using glue since the competitor's product had made wise us of it in several places.
Glue and directly soldering wires is one way to reduce the environmental impact of devices. Glue and solder do not necessarily prevent a device from being easy to repair.
If you watch EEVLOG, you see many teardowns where Dave praises the use of silastic for to reinforce connections. Judicial use of silastic or hot glue can greatly improve the durability of a product.
Bruce of RCModelReviews also often praises the use of hot glue in RC products.
Guys the background noise is horrible
@@merlinwhitworth1022 American productions use music way too much
I thought I was the only one. Completely takes away from the video.
All that info that can alter your very future and that's what you take away from the video? Dang people are so senile but its crazy because it only applies to old people but I bet you're in your 20s~30s but yet many are not all there in the head because their brain raped by society and at the same time claim to be sane individuals.
whilst I agree that right to repair is important, and would love to see the fire tablets improve in that regard...
amazon did promise that they would provide updates for devices up to 4 years after the device was last available for purchase. considering most devices are available for at least 2 years, that means they're providing updates for at least 6 years, rivaling apple, and beating google/samsung (who state they'll only provide updates for 5 years after release day).
that and, those big, labelled solder pads for the speakers are less threatening than the adhesive glass backs required for any component of a modern smartphone, makes this feel more like a hit-piece than anything else.
Yeah, it does suck having to tell customers "i'm sorry, even if I could source reliable parts, it's just cheaper to buy a new one"
@Hitogokochi
Apple is arguably worse than Amazon in some respects...like bricking devices that had thier screens replaced with an update...and then blaming 3rd party repair outlets.
Hanro50 wordy
@@hanro50 Nah I disagree. Apple at least repairs their devices at all.
@@funkemunky
At best they just swap out your phone for a new one.
Often nowadays, they'll just replace the whole board and even if it's available, it's going to cost you probably more than buying new, especially factoring in the labor... it's not just Amazon, most electronics nowadays are throwaway. Repairing small SMD multilayer PCBs with a whole bunch of small package ICs is no small task, unless there's valuable data to recover... people won't pay up just to reduce e-waste sadly
This video would have been much better and more persuasive if it answered some obvious questions about the financial burden of making these products more reparable. e.g. Would making these devices more repairable be expected to significantly increase manufacturing costs and prices paid by consumers? Is Amazon taking deliberate steps to thwart device disassembly and repair or are they just not making an effort to support repairability?
We are talking about fairly inexpensive electronics after all, and not many people would be willing to pay a premium for light bulbs that could be disassembled and repaired or would expect light bulb manufacturers to even offer this.
What should consumers do to hold them accountable? Don't buy them!! Lol..
I'm studying industrial design and I can tell this shit is going to change. It has to
step 1: buy amazon tech
step 2: watch linus tech tips, to upgrade it, and make it last
Thank you for addressing this problem and calling out Amazon on it.
The best way to recycle the product or component is to reuse them and not waste time and money breaking them apart and filling up landfills.
And to the people saying "don't buy cheap crap": the problem is ALL the companies are selling cheap crap and some are selling expensive crap. At the end you will have to buy something and you would go for a cheap option for the price.
Where do I sign to support this change? I agree with you.
Go to Louis Rossman TH-cam channel and watch some videos about right to repair if you're US citizen. You can support these bills by providing testimonies for example.
@@mareksendecki5695 mhm
We are disposable as well.We can turn into crude oil as well.
"by 2040" LUL wat. Will Amazon even exist by then?
Amazon will be the only company to exist in 2040.
@@ralphramirez7815 They built a server in my city in Sweden. So yeah, they are taking over the world soon.
Amazon will have their own country by then, with it's own president, on mars
@@maorismurfnz I think they Bezos is more hell bent to rule Earth and make everyone a slave.
Sounds like Big and Large company in Wall-E movie.
I think this is a very important call, and would like to see more calls of other big hardware manufactures.
My quibble is how much this will affect accessibility and price.
I think that those cheap electronics are really a waste of resources. It dosen't matter if you are talking about laptops tablets phones or headphones. If you don't have a lot of money you sould buy used stuff wich is ofter cheaper and sometimes even last longer.
It's actually good for people who have a tight budget, the only thing they need to change is their repairability and how they get their materials like Fairphone...
@@平和-v1z The problem is the performance. When you buy a 200$ laptop on amazon they have 4gb of ram and in the worst case a solderd ssd. I have a Thinktad L440 with 8gb of ram and 120gb ssd full hd display and I paid 175€ a 1.5 years ago. It has been used for over 6 years now, but a 200€ laptop is probably obselete in 2 years.
@@markus98sb Yeah, modularity is very important. It should be enough for Media consumption and lightweight tasks like office stuff etc.
@@markus98sb I think the problem is that people doesn't inform themselves before purchasing an item. When comes to electronics, people tend to think that a newer device is always better; the same goes with car. As you mentioned, there's going to be people that go to Walmart or Best Buy to get a new laptop without even knowing what they want from it. That's when a seller easily convince them to get an expensive laptop, which lack of any upgradability. After a couple of years, they will toss it away because it doesn't performance good. I own a Lenovo Thinkpad X230 that costed me $120 on eBay. I put a SSD and 8GB of RAM, and it works great, especially running a Linux distribution as its OS. Another example would be people buying MacBook just because they own an iPhone. I know all Apple products are designed to work flawlessly within the Apple ecosystem, but I know people that waste money buying a MacBook just to use Word.
I just outright avoid Amazon entirely. I needed a FireWire 400 to 800 cable the other day and I payed almost twice as much to buy it from B&H. Amazon is an appalling company.
I brought an Amazon tablet for my Son, he was 3 at the time, now almost 3year later it's working well, had been updated twice, yes small, and little memory, but for him it's great.
The cost was less than the twice repaired iPad I had to fix when he threw it on the floor after angry birds adverts made him cry.
We live in a world of consumerism and built-in obsolesce into many products. You should look at the really poor crap coming in on mass from china that's doing the most damage.
*_T A B L E_*
most of amazons shit comes from china and your fucking 3 year old dont need a tablet now stop defending your poor use of money with shitty reasoning's
you HAD to fix an ipad he threw on the floor? Id say fuckhim if my kid cant take care of things he wont have them
@@chrism6952 Yes, I would rather encourage my son at a young age to be happy to use technology. Glad to say he has never done again and is a good boy. Now a big Apple Arcade fan. (in moderation of course)
Totally agree, we need fair servicing of electronic devices, and products should be made to last!
You'll have a hard time convincing the type of consumers who pay money to put a wiretap in their house.
We all do, in a way. Smartphones are a thing.
@@thearousedeunuch The difference is that the "digital assistant" devices are explicitly advertised to listen to you at all times. And people pay extra to have it in their house.
@@JamesRPatrick Valid point. However, if I recall correctly, they can be configured to only listen to you when you summon them. I still wouldn't buy one, though.
@@thearousedeunuch They are always listening, how else would they respond to you?
We essentially pay to be spied. That's why I avoid their smart home products at all cost.
My washer that I own last lasted 20 years plus the new one I purchased 2 years in and it's going crazy
Lol they wouldn't want your essentials to last for decades for your 'safety' (you safely putting more money in their pockets for products that lasts as long as a cereal box exasperation date!)
Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes!
Repair-Reuse-Recycle in that order!
$150? You can get the 7" for $29.99
This video is sloppy, but I do agree with the sentiment. Even in the glory days of repairable electronics, executing a fix involved reading the manufacturer provided schematics and soldering replacement parts. The speaker wire isn't a barrier. The barrier is the lack of documentation and replacement parts. We desperately need laws to address that.
Its especially the lack of replacement parts, less the lack of schematics (at least for cheapish IoT products, etc). I found it relatively entertaining that they mentioned Apple as a "better" company, considering the past experiences with the butterfly keyboards on the MBP, the lawsuits against the third party ("unauthorized") repair shops, and the lobbying against right-to-repair laws everywhere around the world.
Granted, some Apple hardware is pretty long-lasting, but they're still basically trying to sell you a new MBP as soon as you LCD cable disconnects.
Though Apple’s products are hard to repair, at least they are modular and are supported for much longer than their competitors. Specially phones and tablets.
Exactly. The length of time they provide feature and security updates for on both Macs and their mobile devices is almost unfathomable in the Android world. Now to get them to offer *all* repair parts for current or reasonably recent devices.. even if only through their dealer network, that would be a huge step in the right direction.
lets not forget that as the device gets older the newer software makes it slower. not to mention the batteries are pushed to the max for the first year to make it seem fast then it decliens in performance because the battery loses its ability to keep up. updates =/= better. updates can break or ruin things. i have an android phone that is on android 7.1.1. the only issue it has is that the hardware is like 5 years old and wasnt the best of the best even when it came out. as far as software goes android 7 is still very usable.
the problem is that today's society is led to believe they need everything for cheap and stuff will eventually break so they get the newer more expensive thing
Shaiyan Hossain It certainly doesn’t help that so many people are forced to live from paycheck to paycheck. It makes a cheap purchase now much more enticing than an expensive product that will last...
@@rileyrobin2 not every thing expensive is durable
Still better than taking apart an apple though
Don't buy their disposable products !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What should customers do about it (in no particular order)?
1. Do not always want to go for the cheapest (we Dutchies say "Goedkoop is duurkoop" - "A cheap buy is an expensive buy").
Cheaper stuff often gets an EOL faster or gets unresponsive (or "slow" as people tend to call it) and thus "requires" (read: "people want to") an upgrade faster (just as you see with the Amazon tablet in this video).
Check within your budget to see if there's anything better you might get, often, for just a few bucks more, you can get something way better.
2. Check second-hand products, there are often pretty nice deals available if you can make do with not having the latest and greatest.
I've gotten around with this for years, yes, it sometimes caused problems but generally, if you buy something that was solid, to begin with, it should last you a while as well.
Some webshops in The Netherlands actually buy back used (non-consumable) products (like phones, tablets, computers, musical instruments etc.) and sell them as "B-stock" or "second chance" products.
3. Make do with what you need, not with what makes you look best (buy things because of their function, not because of their "social status").
I mean, do you really need the latest and greatest iPhone 11 with 4 "amazing" cameras (I think it was 4?) when all you do it check WhatsApp, your email and maybe look something up on Google?
And does your 8 year old kid really need said iPhone to let you know that he needs to pick you up from his friend's place?
I currently still rock a Nexus 5X which is horribly outdated and pretty unresponsive at times, but unless this thing physically breaks, I don't see a reason to replace it, it does what I need to do.
4. Try to check whether something is repairable before you buy it (eg. can you take it apart without destroying it and replace parts without destroying it and can you get a replacement part).
Chances are, you will break it at some point (phones get dropped, wired headphones will get cable breaks, batteries go bad), so check whether it's repairable before you buy something.
Even if you might be unable to repair it by yourself, a repair shop might be able to get it repaired for you if you checked this beforehand.
I've had my phone screen damaged pretty badly multiple times but managed to swap the screens relatively easily because they were pretty repairable.
And so often had I break the cable in my headphones that I needed to replace them (luckily, I now bought a pair that has detachable - and thus replaceable - cables).
5. Finally, realize that what you buy might go far beyond what you are buying at that specific moment.
In this world, you vote with your wallet, if you keep saying "yes" to products even though they might be inferior, you are setting a standard.
I want to take Apple (but there are many companies like it) as an example.
They are making a lot of their products less and less functional and repairable, but people will buy it anyway, often wipe any arguments against it with "it's my money, I can buy what I want".
What people often don't understand is by doing so, they are starting to reward a company for this.
When you buy a product that is less repairable than it's predecessor, you are telling the industry: "I don't care much for repairability", low and behold, more and more companies are making their phones more difficult to repair, up to a point where every product becomes basically disposable.
If a product doesn't sell much, the company has to step up their game again or lose profits.
My Echo Show developed banding on the screen after 9 month, Amazon told me “tuff, no solution”.
JasonFiske
Does it not have a 1 year warranty? I have about 3 months now on my echo show 8”.
Great video, thank you. Someone needs to call them out for this bullshit. People actually think cheap stuff like this is a benefit of their membership... and it's a huge problem.
Sad part is im literally watching this on the kindle fire hd 10 and it doesn't even have a working sd card mount and it glitches occasionally
amazon is not the only ones doing this, that is why I fully support the right to repair. I fallow several repair post on you tube including Rossman repair and Ipad Rehab. I am a firm believer in Diy.
"Artificially low prices" what? Are they low compared to competition or not?
lower than normally found in the nature
They're known to run competitors out of business if they won't sell their company to them.
Amazon devices are “loss leaders” which means they’ll sell it to you at a loss in exchange for luring you into the door to spend more. The discounted kindle fire tablets & ebook are subsidized by serving ads on lock screen. If you don’t want ads you’ll have pay more to buy the device.
When we talk about that we refer to how their business model works (you can find more info here: th-cam.com/video/ojGveiE51Hk/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=TechAltar )
I find so many electronics that don’t even need repairs when is time for “bulk trash pickup” to pass around my neighborhood. Is crazy the stuff some people throw away instead of giving away or donating.
this is the reason i built my new PC exclusively from aftermarket parts. i can mess and upgrade all i want, and i know some parts of it will last at least 20 to 50 years. (of course there is stuff that i will need to swap much sooner, but hey... at least i can open at swap stuff easly)
Can you build your own tablet or phone ???
given modular aftermarket pieces, Yes. the problem is find them.
@@marcossonicracer So you can't...
@@maxpowers2168 Yes you can and I have done just that. Raspberry Pi and other devices are the way. You'll need to learn to code and solder a few things, but nothing is impossible if you have the will.
In Europe it mandated that the manufacturer take back all it's products for recycling
"no replacement parts offered!"
>goes on ebay and types hd fire 10 battery
Oh hey look, 10 bucks
It's not official though
@@Leetfin so? When it comes to just about any part besides a motherboard it literally doesn't matter. If anything it makes it cheaper to repair devices than if Amazon had licensed repair parts for sale
This is not only a problem that Amazon is facing (or not). Hundrets of companies are doing stuff like this.
If someone wants to google it, type in
"planned obsolescence". Nearly every piece of tech, even seemingly good companies like Yamaha are producing electronic devices that will somehow break after the warranty expires. As an electrical engineer I'm trying my best to revive and fix such electronics. But in my last case I had a broken Yamaha subwoofer from a family member.(that's why I mentioned them above)
After opening it up which was rather simple (also a rarity) I couldn't figure out what was broken. After some tests I figured out that maybe a relay was broken and I swapped it out for a new one. I did this because the (I will call it) "mainboard" looked fine to me, no blown capacitors, no burnt resistors or transistors, hell even the potentiometers worked just fine.
I couldn't figure out what was broken therefore with a bit of sadness and frustration I had to throw it away.
It was probably the chip....
But my main point here is that it is pretty hard to fix rather small electronics these days and this needs to stop if we want to somehow save our planet and get a grip on our pollution problem.
What would I do with a smart ring? That sounds pointless.
You could add your contact details to it which would allow you to quickly send them via NFC.
Ooh or put your wifi details on it that saves getting the password off the back of the router.
Or you could get an RFID door lock for a house, safe or fridge or something along those line.
@@oliverjeffries8532 or.... we could keep doing all those things and stop wasting time, money, and resources on cheap and short-lived conveniences.
@@CaffeinatedFrostbite Caffeinated Frostbite Hello! Thats also true, to each their own. It was a question of function that I tried to answer with a bit of positivity.
I personally am all for recycling tech, I maintain as much of my own stuff as I can and I always try and buy things that last.
The OP said a smart ring sounds pointless, RFID and NFC have so many uses and are the future of wearable tech, all it takes is someone creative to think outside the box.
This reminds me of how Spectrum went against it's promise to customers & is closing the security systems it purchased rights to when it aquired Time Warner, but refuses to open the firmware for people to repair or reuse it... So now it's forced to become e-waste. Just awful.
Since Apple does not support owners repair or even repair at shops they are even worse than Amazon. Having grown up building my own PC and being to repair them I think most Chinese manufacturers are terrible.
You can repair it by yourself mate
Apple acually impounds any replacement parts made outside of the US via customs saying they are infringing on apples BS copywrite.
snintendog They only confiscate the parts if it has the Apple logo. It has nothing to do with copyright laws or the fact that the parts originated from outside the country. It has more to do with them trying to combat counterfeit parts from going into their products.
Not saying that I agree with how Apple handles the issue, but hey, at least you can get Apple products fixed, and they are taking steps to make this easier.
you know that is BS the apple logo has been proven to be nowhere on these parts.
Nothing is built to last... Not even my relationships...
But... you're ForeverMan...
I often encounter really "woke" young people that proudly reposts everything Greta Thunberg says (which is a good thing) but at the same time they're shopping disposable electronics, often from Amazon, like there's no tomorrow.
This comment made me sad. This is so true.
How is reposting what she says a good thing?
@@danithaman4610 who knows? All I see when I look at Greta Thunberg and her message is an uneducated child being manipulated to spread a globalist message. I'm happy to reduce reuse and recycle , but she is literally suggesting we stop all consumption of carbon based fuels. That would literally cripple the entire global economy. Every sane person who knows a little bit about economics knows this. They all know that nothing Greta Thunberg says is realistic but they use her age as a shield to advance their political agendas. Do I seriously think 99% of those who claim to support her agenda actually want to stop driving cars or using almost any form of stored energy? No!
Sorry to dump on you like this, I just really would prefer to see her get an education on the subjects at which she wishes she was an expert before attempting to radically alter developed life as we know It.
@@danithaman4610 It's good because she's right. And Nadaz, I don't think you have ever listened to anything she actually said. You're the one repeating nonsense.
@@danithaman4610 Yean, I thought the same thing.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Note the order those are in. That's in order of importance.
Recycling is one step above the landfill, and should almost be a last resort in one's plan. If you're leaning on Recycling at the expense of Reduction and Re-use, you're doing more harm than good.
Recycling isn't "green" it's just a slightly less bad option than landfills.
Randomly guessing, 80% of the landfill electronics might be perfectly usable and as outdated as it seems to us, people/families with economic struggles could use many of these devices.
Amazon and other big companies have the money, the means and the power to make whole factories specialized in re-combining those device's pieces to make them work again and re-sell them for a fraction of the price to people with large economic struggles.
One team disassembles the tablet, the other separates the good/damaged parts, the other reassembles the tablet, etc.
*
A mid-range notebook from 2012 (like mine) isn't fit to run games or heavy software, but it is perfectly suited for Microsoft Office, Browsing, TH-cam, Music/Movie Streaming, and Skype as long as it's cooling capabilities are still ok and the CPU was not massacred through the years.
Many struggling families could enjoy that by buying it for as low as $50 or whatever.
Other families could use it as a media center.
Tech shops could use them as temporary laptops for clients who took theirs to repair/clean.
Who cant solder 4 wires? A modern day technician.. If this is the only obstacle to repair; its not an obstacle. You need to learn to solder. Like any real technician.
I do see your point and I believe in the right to repair (my thing is ole gaming consoles), but if you are trying to make it seem as if soldering is what make a(ny) device un-repairable, you are trying to make a non-issue into a problem.
@Taylor Dixon The cost of a no-name brand soldering iron is about 15$, same goes for a heatgun, which you will need anyway if you ever have a cracked screen that needs replacement, so for a total of 30$ you’ll become equipped with the basic tools of a technician. I do support the right to repair and I am an avid watcher of Louis Rossman’s youtube channel. But in a world where everyone expect any spare parts they buy offa’ amazon to come with tools; a 30$ investment that will equip you with the basic tools to further your ‘repairability’ range, wether you are a professional or a diy’er and its not a big price considering what you’ll be able to do with your newly acquired basic tools. There is a lot of examples of what you are trying to say (apple new range, the earbuds, lots of cheap german tablets, ect - i believe you did a video on worst of 2019 recently), but in this case its four solderings and a wire glued to plastic; not fragile electronics. Thats why I find that this device is not the best vessel to convey your message with. ;)
@Taylor Dixon You’re welcome! Keep up the good work - I really love what you guys are doing and I use iFixit frequently, since it makes my sidejobs a lot easier (I rather someone else make the first mistakes, than me having to repair something I broke on top of what Im supposed to fix;); some new electronics is frustratingly put together! :)
Fucking hell, didn’t know it was THAT bad
Companies should be required to have spare parts available for let's say, 5 years after end of production. I would rather pay more for a device knowing that I can get spare parts and that the device can be opened by normal people.
WE NEED RIGHT TO REPAIR TO PASS!!!
Glad to see you guys are calling out companies on some of their bull shit
I have to say my daughters amazon kids tablet is still going strong after 3 years, the battery life is still enough to let her use it for the limits we set. Lets be honest after 3 years who would not be upgrading a tablet?
As for replacement parts they can be found on ebay and other sources, they may not be amazon sanctioned but they will work.
My wishlist for a tablet upgradable MB i am so sick of not being able to have a tablet just being upgradeable modular design is the way to go.
One problem I've seen is, parent's don't teach their children to fix things anymore. Heck, many parents can't fix things themselves. I've had many friends come to me for help for the most medial of things, because they don't understand basic items.
lol iFixit thinks smartphones should have upgradeable cpu's and ram. Of course they want devices to be upgradable, otherwise they wouldn't exist. It's good for the environment but no one would bother repairing a cheap device.
Laws should exist for this. Prohibiting such manufacturing. All products should come with a 5 years mandatory warranty and repair availability. No product should ever have to be thrown away.
oh hello
My girlfriend still uses her Amazon tablet from 2013 with no upgrade reason in sight. A lot of your typical users don't replace or upgrade, especially if they already have a smart phone
I think that while sure, Amazon is pretty bad on recycling and whatnot, I also feels that it's incredibly misleading to say other companies are doing any better. This is a problem with the entire industry, so much that I don't feel that Amazon needs to be singled out - it's just part of a bigger problem. Apple certainly isn't any better and is arguably way worse in several aspects, as are others like Samsung, Google and Microsoft.
It wouldn't be very productive to say "Well, just tell every company in the world to stop doing bad thing X". It's better, I think, to call out specific brands on specific things.
This video builds its case beautifully. Clear points: what is what's wrong and what we want to see. Well-produced video about the "eco-system hole" tech companies are digging as they manufacture millions of devices without an end of life or disposal strategy. (I know I'm quoting Kyle Wiens here) The young man presenting is very effective too! We'll be sharing this widely.
So what do you think of Amazon
Just that Jeff Bezos will be the first trillion-ere
In a collapsed world, figures on a bank account worth nothing.
I’m happy this was brought to my attention.
And I think they should make their electronics as simple to fix as possible.
With that being said, I can imagine them becoming some sort of warehouse for part to build custom electronics for hobbyists.
This host makes me want to fall asleep for some reason
Amazon isn't the first nor last one to do that.
There are trash electronics of this type for decades.
Customer demands, companies deliver.
Don't want things to be like that, don't buy those, pay premium for products that last much longer.
But then again having a premium product won't guarantee that replacement parts will be available.
This is why I don't buy any Amazon branded products. When I do it's usually a cord or something small. I only bought a tablet and that is being used for my daughter and completely modified.
Well all i can say to this is that i've used a fire tablet for more than five years now and it doesn't even have a scratch. Its still as fast as it was the first day and i can run everything i want to run on it. I've never had to give it to repair simply bc its NOT manufactured to break is my guess. Even the battery is still in good shape while my Laptops battery has lost a large amount of time. I use it mainly to watch videos, read texts for university and to browse the web. Its a cheap and easy device which of course is made to market amazon services like amazon prime to the user. That however doesn't really change much for me bc i was already using amazon services quite heavily before buying it.
Like others have said, most industries design products to have a certain lifespan even if making a longer lasting product wouldn't be that much more difficult. From cars to tech devices... It's especially true with devices like this tablet and smartphones where they are artificially blocked from receiving software updates when the hardware itself is more than capable. Another issue for this specific device is that Amazon locks it into their own ecosystem, which is why I've never considered one even when they sell them super cheap on Black Friday. I honestly think we'd need a huge shift in society to start cherishing the idea of longevity and efficiency. How can we transition away from the idea that production, profit, share price, and growth are the measure of success? I'm not sure because the entire structure of our culture is based on it. It's a difficult situation.
Also wires soldered to a board means nothing in terms of how cheap it is, less connectors for things that dont really need them = cheaper. Lower specs = cheaper. Were talking about a tablet meant for reading books, not for productivity.
I brought a kindle 3rd gen years ago. Woke up one morning and the screen was damaged. I repair tablets, phones etc so I know I didn't break it. After calling Amazon I was able to secure another kindle for 2/3 cost of a new one and I would be refunded some more money when I returned the damaged kindle. I kept reading stories about this liquid crystal display doing exactly what mine did with no impact or pressure damage apparent. I kept the kindle, replaced the screen (I could get one from China back then) and then I had two. One for me and my partner. Both are still working today and they must be 8+ years old. Apart from the screen these devices are durable and I have certainly got value for money. However todays tech trash is definitely planned obsolescence due to the resins used, lack of parts, etc to stifle DIY and repair shops from fixing these devices. It is a sad indictment on the mindset of corporations and can only be changed through legislation. Either make devices repairable or bear the burden of a tax on the manufacturing cost of the product. It may push prices up but if corps pass this on to the consumer then no one will buy them. If no one buys then they stop making them. The self-media spin about e-waste and recycling is sickening with very little proof being shown as to actual numbers of devices being recycled and the percentage of the material. Most of the time it's just shipped to other countries to deal with. Make the coprorations accountable and things will change.
All company’s denying offering electronic replacement parts. If it’s not a standard component your doomed.
I sell on FBA. They also have what they call "green shipping" where they take any and all items from an order that is at a warehouse and put it in a box with no inner protection. Its real nice when a poster of mine is accompanied by twelve cans of cat food and a gallon of paint.
70% AMAZON! Needless to say Im shipping things myself now.
The idea is to get Amazon devices into your life so that you can better be marketed to. If the price was higher, the average person would be less likely to purchase that first device on impulse. I actually have family members that have done that and now own several devices...I would be as bold to say that all those that would ACTUALLY want to repair their Amazon device are in a very small minority compared to the rest... I do not use Amazon smart devices because I do not agree with Amazon's privacy policy.
expecting to repair electronic gear without a soldering iron is like expecting to repair your car without a wrench...
the fact is, most folks are not competent to use either and prefer cheap disposable stuff... ☹☹☹
a fact that frustrates me to no end... 😐😐😐
I’m still using my Commodore Amiga computer, Citizen dot-matrix printer and my Ericsson A2618s mobile phone. I don’t have a MP3 player. I still use cassettes for recording and playback. And lastly, I drive a 1967 Morris Minor. No computer crap. All mechanical.
When iFixit delves into investigative reporting
I thing a recycling program isn’t the only marketing move to get people to responsibly dispose of electronics. Trade-in programs by phone carriers give people an artificially low price on the new phone they want, while also getting them to dispose of old electronics properly.