[HN Gopher] Samsung Upcycle Promise
___________________________________________________________________
Samsung Upcycle Promise
Author : 1970-01-01
Score : 162 points
Date : 2026-02-23 17:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.xda-developers.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.xda-developers.com)
| npodbielski wrote:
| > In other words, there was no clear way for Samsung to make
| money from Galaxy Upcycling. And for a company that ships
| hundreds of millions of phones per year, that's likely a death
| sentence for an internal project
|
| How about good PR. This is what is problem with those big
| corporations: the only thing that matters is money.
| bigwheels wrote:
| Even good PR is an investment in the brand which can be
| profitable.
|
| The real problem is the shortsightedness, where the top dogs
| only care about money coming in the next 3-12 months. Even this
| is more a reflection of the system that consistently produces
| companies which operate this way. Which is a reflection of..
| joe_mamba wrote:
| _> How about good PR._
|
| They already got that good PR when they made those
| announcements.
| npodbielski wrote:
| And more bad PR. I am not sure it was worth it.
| jajuuka wrote:
| Fine, I'm just a dumbass. Samsung BAD.
| titzer wrote:
| > Welcome to capitalism?
|
| Well, judging from the tone of your comment, you said this
| without a hint of irony or larger awareness, as if just
| chucking things in a hole, environment and everything be
| damned, was just sort of inevitable.
|
| > It's just not very practical to throw all that money and
| time away for such a small use case. It's a literal money
| pit. Throw money in and get nothing back.
|
| Huh? Saving consumers money by reusing and repurposing
| perfectly good devices, save energy use, raw materials,
| distribution, and waste disposal and recycling of perfectly
| good devices. Those things save the economy and consumers
| money _overall_!
|
| We get this not because of capitalism but because of
| _growthism_. We get this because big corporations gotta keep
| generating that profit, regardless of whether they have
| solved a problem or not. Gotta grow that market, gotta jack
| that stock.
| npodbielski wrote:
| You wrote that like there is no other way. Yes there is. For
| example I would not consider a job that would consist of
| writing a malware But I have conscience and doing something
| like that would make me uncomfortable. Even when I think
| about myself as more capitalist than socialist.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Well the theory is the market will offer alternatives that
| allow consumers to choose the best products.
|
| But in reality capitalists get to choose the products and
| use advertising to brainwash us into wanting whatever shit
| they're shoveling.
|
| Capitalism is supposed to optimise production for
| efficiency. In reality the people holding the principal
| capital use it to optimise for profit and we're largely
| impotent to do anything because they'll just lean more on
| the 'brainwash' aspect of profitability... Maybe go so far
| as to sway elections, to put in fascists so they can
| exercise larger handles of control... all to get a
| favorable tax regime when they've already got more money
| than they can spend.
|
| Ho-hum.
|
| I think there's a way out, through cooperatives, possibly,
| but it's a multi-generational path before you can really
| start to make change.
| themafia wrote:
| If you want to live in a binary world. Meanwhile for the rest
| of us "not good" isn't the same as "bad."
| jajuuka wrote:
| I'm really sorry okay? Samsung not good. Please stop.
| hamdingers wrote:
| Seems like a lack of creativity, plus painting themselves into
| a corner by promising unlocked bootloaders.
|
| Samsung owns SmartThings, a smart home platform. They could've
| come up with a suite of apps for turning your phone into a
| SmartThings-connected camera, or motion detector, or remote
| control, or button panel, or a dashboard, etc. Either charge a
| little for the apps, or trust that sucking people into the
| SmartThings ecosystem will cause them to buy hubs and other
| devices.
|
| Users might be more willing to upgrade their phone if they can
| turn the old one into a baby monitor vs getting scammed on a
| trade-in or letting it sit in a drawer.
| maxloh wrote:
| Although I don't agree with the FSF's way of advocating it [1], I
| do believe that unlocking the bootloader should be a customer's
| basic right. You don't truly own your device if you cannot
| control the software you run with it.
|
| [1]: Linus Torvalds argues that the FSF tried to "sneak in" an
| additional clause to prohibit hardware locking. Since Linux was
| originally licensed with an "or later version" variant of GPL v2,
| that would've created a situation where Linus could not merge
| other people's work into the kernel without relicensing the
| upstream project to GPL v3. To prevent this, he later explicitly
| relicensed the kernel as GPLv2-only. https://youtu.be/PaKIZ7gJlRU
| ACCount37 wrote:
| One of the very few genuinely bad takes Linus had.
|
| Bootloader unlocking should be a basic consumer right, and if
| Linux went GPLv3, it would be closer to reality.
| blell wrote:
| It's not Linus Torvalds' duty to make bootloader unlocking a
| reality.
| ACCount37 wrote:
| It isn't. But he could have contributed massively to it,
| and hasn't, and I can and will hold it against him.
| ivell wrote:
| There will always be more ways for companies to extract
| value without contributing. Linus would have to
| continuously upgrade licenses from GPLV2 to V3 to Affero
| and so on. It is not really practical.
|
| What Linus has contributed is already huge. We can't put
| all the burden of making the world right on him.
| kube-system wrote:
| I think expecting software licenses to enforce your rights
| outside of the realm of software is a pretty bad take. I
| think Linus's take is quite solid: "I give you my source
| code, you give me your changes back, and we're even". There
| are a lot of us who don't think that FOSS should be
| weaponized as a poison pill to enact the authors worldview on
| topics outside of the realm of software alone.
|
| If it should be a consumer right, why limit it only to
| devices certain types of software? Why not consumer
| protection law that applies to all devices? I think software
| licenses are the wrong tool for this problem.
|
| There's a lot of crazy crayon licenses out there that try to
| fix the whole world by tacking on a whole lot of restrictions
| to their software licenses, prohibiting use for a long list
| of reasons... to me it sounds like a bunch of newspeak, as if
| "more restrictions = more freedom"
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Is being able to replace software on the devices I own not
| in "the realm of software" somehow?
|
| "Sure, you can have the sources, you just can't use them on
| your own devices because the vendor that shipped it has
| decided to bar you from doing that with a 2048-bit RSA key"
| just feels like GPL was upheld in letter, but not in
| spirit.
| kube-system wrote:
| Yeah, it is -- you're asking for restrictions on pieces
| of hardware unrelated to the original software other than
| the fact that someone decided to install it on there.
|
| How would you feel if a piece of hardware came with a
| license prohibiting software developers from using
| encryption to secure their systems?
|
| The root of the issue here is that phone hardware
| landscape is effectively a duopoly. It is an antitrust
| issue. Trying to use software licenses to do this 1)
| won't be effective because the duopoly will never use
| them, and 2) is like going around your ass to get to your
| elbow. Even if it did work it wouldn't get to the root of
| the issue. The law needs to fix the fact that almost all
| phones on the planet are controlled either directly or
| indirectly by two companies.
| fph wrote:
| Surely you mean phone _operating system_ landscape? There
| are plenty of phone manufacturers.
| raphinou wrote:
| Am I a fool to think that upcycled devices might not dent the
| sales of new devices, but would be used in new ways that would
| actually be positive for the vendor?
| kimbernator wrote:
| I think any effect on Samsung, positive or negative, would be
| negligible. It would help their PR slightly, but mostly among a
| relatively small part of their customer base.
|
| On the negative side, it would probably have a minor impact on
| the number of new phones sold if old ones were able to be
| "refurbished" in this way. Again, probably not significant, but
| if it's even a penny cash flow negative, why invest their
| resources in it?
|
| Overall the only significant gain to be made is the
| announcement because it can be spun and quoted to the average
| consumer as Samsung being more eco-friendly. It's akin to
| enabling consumerism, and consumers generally don't go to check
| if companies were telling the truth about this stuff.
| caerwy wrote:
| You can go a long way with just Termux. You can upcycle old
| phones by installing or building code in Termux to turn the
| phones into a compute grid, AI inference nodes, file servers,
| compute servers, web servers.
| jayd16 wrote:
| I was actually just going to do that with an old Galaxy S24.
| Seems like there's no easy way to add something like docker.
| Best I can find is to try to use qemu to get a full Linux VM.
|
| Do you happen to know what kind of performance you can expect?
| Or perhaps a better way?
| numpad0 wrote:
| There's an app called Termux that comes with distro sources
| compiled for the Android/Linux. They're not binary compatible
| with regular GNU/Linux, but runs most software through distro
| standard ways.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > AI inference nodes
|
| Are phones any good for that? (I agree with the rest, and I'm a
| big fan of termux, I just wouldn't have thought of a phone -
| especially an old phone - as a useful way to run AI)
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Modern phones pack a good bit of compute, and can run things
| like VLAs decently well.
|
| Of course, that would require today's phones to age out of
| "being used as a phone" bracket, and robotics VLAs to become
| actually useful. But things like the Comma AI autopilot
| hardware use slightly obsolete smartphone chips internally -
| so it's not like it's impossible to run a useful AI on this
| kind of HW.
| anjel wrote:
| https://www.analyticsinsight.net/gadgets/old-android-phone-r...
| kittikitti wrote:
| I really dislike how people consider Android a Linux operating
| system. It's incredibly misleading and serves as more marketing
| than substance. If it were, then the Samsung Upcycle program
| would be ready to go.
| kube-system wrote:
| Because it is. Android runs a modified Linux kernel. There's
| nothing misleading about it at all, unless you think "Linux"
| means something that it does not.
| titzer wrote:
| Why not keep using them as...phones?
|
| Snark aside, why are the entirely functional devices obsolete?
| It's because the growing demands of the endless software bloat,
| web bloat, feature bloat. New wireless technologies and better
| protocols, sure, but I've been using software for 35 years and
| the software contribution to this mess really gets me down.
| 0xC0ncord wrote:
| Part of the reason why Android phones specifically are not
| supported for very long is because the baseband and modem
| firmwares from Qualcomm only receive official support and
| updates for about 2 years.
| floam wrote:
| For everyone? I mean it doesn't seem to apply to Apple, need
| it apply to Google or Samsung?
| thewebguyd wrote:
| My assumption is that Apple has a better contract with
| Qualcomm, being their biggest customer (for now, until they
| completely move over to their custom modems). Apple
| probably also has been abstracting the firmware from the
| start inside iOS, while Android didn't until project
| treble.
|
| Samsung & Pixel are now offering 7 years of updates for
| flagships, so it would seem it's no longer a
| hardware/support limitation and purely a financial decision
| by other android manufacturers, and by Samsung for their
| non S-series of phones.
|
| TL;DR OEMs are deliberately choosing to not support their
| devices, not due to any limitations anymore (thanks to
| project treble).
| ACCount37 wrote:
| Apple only uses Qualcomm chips as modems. Almost everyone
| else uses Qualcomm chips as main SoCs.
|
| Now, could hardware vendors tell Qualcomm to go pound sand
| and run their own support for old SoCs? Yes they could. Do
| they want to? Hell no, supporting old devices doesn't make
| any money.
| jayd16 wrote:
| The screen broke on my S24 but I'd still like to use the
| compute, ram and storage.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| samsung phones can be plugged into an external display and
| used like a computer right?
| dheera wrote:
| Because a person doesn't need to carry 3 phones, but they could
| be 2 security cameras and 1 phone instead?
| user_7832 wrote:
| Slight tangent, but I find it _mind boggling_ that so few phones
| offer bootloader unlocking - which is essential if you _truly_
| want to own your phone.
|
| I was recently in the market for a new phone, and (correct me if
| I'm wrong) the only companies that offer bootloader unlocking is
| Google Pixels, Motorola, Nothing, and OnePlus. Samsung and Xiaomi
| I think both _technically_ support it but it 's a pain in the
| butt practically.
|
| That's... a shockingly small list!? .
|
| In my case, after adding "I want a CPU that isn't crap while
| being expensive" (eliminating Tensor) and "I don't want to pay
| full flagship prices for sub flagship performance" (eliminating
| Nothing), OnePlus and Motorola were pretty much the only two
| options!
|
| Is it _that_ hard to get a phone you can truly own? I don 't
| know, I honestly hope I'm missing something.
| stonogo wrote:
| Does the OnePlus process work for people? They've got a form
| that allows you to beg them to let you unlock your phone, but
| it's never worked for me. Motorola works similarly but it does
| work, which is why I stick with them.
| Nekobai wrote:
| Is this country-specific? I've owned plenty of OnePlus
| devices over the years and the have all being unlockable
| without any issues, or without having to ask anything from
| anyone.
| npodbielski wrote:
| At some point OnePlus announced that they will stop sharing
| firmware blobs. Lineage os team announced that they will be
| dropping the support. Then after another few years they
| were back. I remember because I bought 3 and I was planning
| to stay with that brand because of easy unlock (via ADB),
| decent price and good Lineage support. Probably OnePlus
| reconsidered this at some point. Right now fairly new ones
| have support. Maybe OP was unlucky and bought one of those
| models from this period of time.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| This has nothing to do with the unlocking though.
| Unlocking a OnePlus phone is just standard procedure and
| requires no involvement by the manufacturer.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Meanwhile Pixel doesn't require me to fill out any forms or
| contact anyone which is why I only use those at this point.
| IIRC in at least some cases the initial flip of the toggle
| requires internet access but that doesn't really bother me.
|
| If the process requires anything beyond "internet access" I'm
| not purchasing the device.
| matthewkayin wrote:
| To take this a step further. I want a phone that is small
| (doesn't have to be tiny, just iPhone SE 2020 or smaller,
| please), has a replaceable battery, has an unlocked bootloader,
| has a headphone jack, and costs $400 or less.
|
| It doesn't need to have a cutting-edge processor or tons of RAM
| and storage space or a 120hz screen or razor-thin bezels or a
| studio-worthy camera, yet somehow all these things are
| prioritized on the market over a basic, reliable phone.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Most 2012 era used phones will work here. Pick one off eBay.
| progbits wrote:
| Batteries will be in bad shape.
|
| Can we do 2010s phones with 2020s battery tech and modems
| please?
| mrkstu wrote:
| 'replaceable battery'
| fsflover wrote:
| "chart of phones with replaceable batteries":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47099020
| solnyshok wrote:
| it is very difficult to find good (as in "good
| condition") battery for a 5+ old gadget. even if you find
| original one - it could be expired and DoA. but more
| often you get "compatibles" which die in 3-6 months.
| hamdingers wrote:
| Wouldn't work very well as a phone though. The networks a
| 2012 phone support no longer exist. 2G and 3G are both
| fully shut down where I live. Even if you specifically got
| a 4G phone from 2012 it might not support VoLTE, so you'd
| be unable to make calls.
|
| As a wifi internet device it would work but I'm not sure
| that's what OP is going for.
| PlatoIsADisease wrote:
| Have you looked at Motorola? I'm not sure they have all of
| those features, but me and you think similarly and when I did
| research, I ended up choosing their $130 phone for my
| contractors.
|
| But I main the $900 pixel.
|
| They are so similar its weird, but Motorola was slow with
| snapchat and the keyboard some time.
| zb3 wrote:
| Is there an up-to-date list of their phones which allow
| bootloader unlocking? Not all of them do..
| 0_____0 wrote:
| I guarantee you that, given your requirements, this will
| never be a product that you can buy.
|
| Hardware projects live and die on scale. The engineering and
| tooling costs are a similar order of magnitude whether you
| make 1000 phones or 1,000,000. If you can guarantee that you
| have an accessible market for a million devices, then you're
| starting to get into the region of scale where this would be
| an OK idea.
|
| Mind you, that's a million users who are cool with all the
| design tradeoffs you had to make to ingress protection,
| software performance with modern android, and form factor in
| order to get your desirable characteristic.
|
| The Punkt MP02 is at roughly the price point and "niche-ness"
| as the product you describe here, and that sold for almost
| $400. They could afford to build in about the same amount of
| functionality as a Nokia brick of yore (but with 4G radios!)
| for that price.
| rabf wrote:
| The motorola razr flip phones are great in my opinion.
| protoman3000 wrote:
| You should check the phones from Unihertz, "the worlds
| smallest smartphone"
| iberator wrote:
| there are websites made for you with millions of parameters
| to find the phone you need. not amazon or ebay
| dvdkon wrote:
| Filtering for GP's requirements on GSMArena.com, I only see
| a handful of recent phones. Some of them do have an
| unlockable bootloader, but all of those are made by GPL
| violators, so you won't get the source code necessary to
| really make use of that unlocked status.
|
| EDIT: I forgot to check the "removable battery" checkbox;
| with it you get _zero_ matching phones. Maybe you should
| 've checked that before assuming GP just can't search.
|
| Not to end on such a negative note, foregoing a maimum
| height and the removable battery, Sony's Xperia 5 and 10
| fit the rest of the requirements and are very good phones.
| Hard to find for sale in the last few years, though.
| iberator wrote:
| hehe so just kinda made Perfect non existent product. free
| niche :)
| izacus wrote:
| Whenever someone tries to build a phone that even tries to
| tick those boxes y'all just find new excuses to not actually
| pay for it.
| zb3 wrote:
| Motorola? Is there an up-to-date list of devices where they're
| "so kind" as to allow bootloader unlocking? Because it's a
| lottery to me..
| m132 wrote:
| It's always a hit or miss with Motorola, but this should up
| your chances:
|
| https://github.com/zenfyrdev/bootloader-unlock-wall-of-
| shame...
| fsflover wrote:
| > (correct me if I'm wrong) the only companies that offer
| bootloader unlocking is Google Pixels, Motorola, Nothing, and
| OnePlus
|
| Pinephone and Librem 5 (my daily driver) do not have a locked
| bootloader in the first place. They are just little (GNU/)Linux
| computers.
| craftkiller wrote:
| The Librem 5 would be eliminated by the additional
| requirements of:
|
| > "I want a CPU that isn't crap while being expensive"
|
| > "I don't want to pay full flagship prices for sub flagship
| performance"
|
| Adding my own experience: the battery life is also
| atrocious[0] and simply running a software update on a
| completely stock librem 5[1] managed to send it into an
| infinite boot loop that I was only able to recover from by
| flashing the factory image.
|
| [0] Sitting on a shelf, with the screen off, not connected to
| cellular networks, not being used at all except to check the
| battery % periodically throughout the day: I got ~11 hours of
| battery life. My pixel 10 has been operating under the same
| conditions for 4 days and is still at 71% battery life (I'm
| intentionally draining it down to ~50% for long term storage
| while I wait for the bootloader to unlock in 2 years).
|
| [1] The phone had been sitting on a shelf gathering dust for
| years. No software had been installed, no accounts had been
| set up, it had never actually been used as a phone. Could not
| get more "stock" than that.
| fsflover wrote:
| > "I don't want to pay full flagship prices for sub
| flagship performance"
|
| First, it _is_ a flagship GNU /Linux phone. Second,
| https://puri.sm/posts/the-danger-of-focusing-on-specs/
|
| > I got ~11 hours of battery life
|
| Looks like you didn't enable the suspend. Later updates
| brought it to >20 hours.
|
| > simply running a software update on a completely stock
| librem 5[1] managed to send it into an infinite boot loop
| that I was only able to recover from by flashing the
| factory image.
|
| When was it? I never experienced this. It could be a
| problem in the first years though. Current PureOS Crimson
| is stable.
| craftkiller wrote:
| > Looks like you didn't enable the suspend
|
| This was with the default settings after flashing Crimson
| (which I did to recover from the infinite boot loop), so
| if there is some active step that needs to be taken to
| enable suspend, then I had not done it.
|
| > When was it?
|
| This was within the past month. I see two possible
| reasons you didn't run into it:
|
| 1) You have been applying the updates as they come out,
| whereas I took a dusty phone that hadn't been turned on
| in years and ran the update.
|
| 2) You were already on crimson, so maybe they only broke
| byzantium (or whatever version it was on from years of
| sitting unused and then hitting update in the software
| center).
| fsflover wrote:
| > This was with the default settings after flashing
| Crimson
|
| This is strange. See this post concerning the battery
| life: https://puri.sm/posts/librem-5-battery-life-
| improved-by-100/. Have you updated the modem firmware?
|
| You are right, I have case 1). It is quite likely that
| Byzantium is (was) much less stable, as it required a lot
| of hacks and relied on a very old Debian version.
| ravetcofx wrote:
| And Fairphone!
| rainingmonkey wrote:
| FxTec Pro1 comes with an unlocked bootloader, and a slide-out
| keyboard for the true 2010 experience!
| dheera wrote:
| I just want Google to remove that SafetyNet crap.
|
| Banks don't need to know if I unlocked my bootloader.
|
| I can't even use the Waymo app either.
| yoavm wrote:
| I'd argue that banks DO need to know that you've unlocked
| your bootloader, but they should present you with a "Your
| phone bootloader is unlocked. If you don't know what it means
| or you didn't do it yourself, exit the app now and contact
| customer support."
|
| The problem is that app makers are lazy.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| So if I call in on the phone do they need a video feed of
| my surroundings to verify that I'm not being extorted?
| Perhaps if I come into a branch in person to make a large
| withdrawal they need a drug test to ensure that I'm not
| intoxicated?
|
| They absolutely do not have any _need_ to know anything
| about my bootloader or OS version or safety net or
| otherwise. It 's certainly true that it is within the realm
| of physical possibility for them to put that information to
| good use in a responsible manner if they had access to it.
| But being able to make use of something is not the same as
| a legitimate need.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I can see a future where a video from a hardware/software
| stack verified by Apple/Google is a required mechanism
| for authentication.
|
| For example, you have to say or otherwise signal that you
| authorize the transaction to x person for y amount on z
| date.
|
| I kind of do it with my tenants when I record a video
| walk through at the beginning and end of the lease to
| serve as proof of damages. I could use a checklist on
| paper and a signature, but I feel like a video is better
| evidence for me.
| izacus wrote:
| This is a regional thing - a lot of manufacturers offer
| bootloader unlocking in EU when they don't in US for example.
| US especially is a nasty carrier monopoly where carriers are
| allowed (and actively defended) when they do henous lockin.
| snowhale wrote:
| Fairphone does it properly -- unlockable bootloader,
| repairability-first design, 10-year software support
| commitment, and they actually ship security updates on time.
| the catch is it's Europe-only and the hardware specs are mid-
| range. if you're in Europe and don't need flagship performance,
| it's genuinely the right answer to 'can I own my phone'. also
| LineageOS official device support (lineageos.org/devices) is
| broader than most people realize -- lots of Motorola and some
| Xiaomi devices are on there, and the unlock process for those
| is usually just a fastboot command.
| e12e wrote:
| Sony used to be surprisingly good on this - but I'm uncertain
| what the current status actually is:
|
| https://developer.sony.com/open-source/aosp-on-xperia-open-d...
|
| > Note: New devices XQ-CT62 (1IV US variant) and XQ-CQ62 (5IV
| US variant) do not support bootloader unlock.
|
| https://xdaforums.com/t/unlock-bootloader-and-root-guide-xpe...
| haunter wrote:
| Why are korean tech companies so toxic? Samsung, LG, SK etc all
| the same. Doesn't matter if they sell you a phone, a TV, or a
| refrigator there is something inherently wrong how korean
| companies are treating the customers.
| stackghost wrote:
| Are Korean tech companies more toxic than, say, American tech
| companies?
|
| Doubtful. I can't think of a company that clearly hates its
| users more than Microsoft or Meta.
|
| I'd say it's the tech industry as a whole that's toxic. And
| long overdue for a reckoning.
| encom wrote:
| I can't really think of a tech company that does not hate its
| users. Yes of course there's Framework, but I mean large tech
| companies. It's all glued shut, proprietary, planned
| obsolescence, AI slop-ified, privacy invasive and over
| priced. Feel free to add to the list.
|
| Related anecdote: My old washing machine is about to die, and
| I was discussing this with a co-worker the other day. He told
| me, with much excitement, about his new washing machine with
| AI, and a smartphone app where he can program his own washing
| cycles. I... just don't feel like I belong on the same planet
| as this person. It's the polar opposite of what I want.
| anjel wrote:
| Flip Phones are gaining in popularity. Though I imagine the
| mfrs get as much of the same offenses them as the simpler
| devices will afford them.
| nickorlow wrote:
| Most handset manufacturers are like this, don't think it's
| specific to samsung
| mhitza wrote:
| When Samsung accounts for almost 25% of South Korea's GDP they
| are allowed to do whatever they want, and they will set the
| tone and consumer approach.
|
| Good reminder that companies so large are never a good thing.
| htx80nerd wrote:
| Same thing with Verizon wireless, who dominated the US cell
| phone market. Openly hostile "customer service".
| g947o wrote:
| This question hinges on the fact that they are the dominant
| brands in the US and some other markets, which is not true when
| you look at China or India. They benefit from lack of
| competition.
|
| Now, if you ask me why there is a lack of competition of phone
| brands in the US, I have a TED talk to give...
| alias_neo wrote:
| I'm almost certain this was to win some sort of grant, award,
| subsidy, exemption, green credentials....something, and then once
| they had it, immediately forgotten.
|
| I've seen this happen plenty where companies start campaigns for
| reasons and then ditch it as soon a they've achieved the thing
| from the list above.
| artisin wrote:
| My guess, is it boils down to legal liability. Every time I look
| into repurposing my old smartphones, I inevitably go down the
| "well, it probably won't burn my house down... but. " It's the
| same reason why I don't use Molex-to-SATA power adapters, even
| though I could save a few bucks. Regardless, Samsung ghosting
| iFixit is inexcusable.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| If you remove the battery and power it externally (which you
| should if you're expecting to run it 24/7) what's the house-
| burning risk?
| Peteragain wrote:
| I think they missed a trick. This phone could be replaced - I
| think it might be time - but it works fine. I won't replace it
| now, but if I could use it for something else then I would likely
| go okay, if I get a new phone I also get a baby monitor!
| zb3 wrote:
| And then they completely removed bootloader unlocking with OneUI
| 8, in many cases increasing the anti-rollback version so you
| can't even downgrade.. I can't wait for them to go out of
| business..
| pjmlp wrote:
| This is why legislation matters, capitalism cannot sort out such
| misbehaviors when the public keeps giving money to the same bad
| actors.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| > 76 points by 1970-01-01 2 hours ago
|
| Did we accidentally time travel again?
| andersa wrote:
| > Meanwhile, Samsung's own recycling numbers tell a different
| story. Its old phone collection campaign, running since 2015, had
| collected just 38,000 phones as of May 2019. Samsung had sold 2
| billion Galaxy devices by February 2019.
|
| Well... duh? Their program offers far less money for the old
| phone than selling it used on ebay. Why would anyone use it?
| tgrowazay wrote:
| > Their program offers far less money for the old phone than
| selling it used on ebay. Why would anyone use it?
|
| It sets the price floor and provides liquidity, so the phone
| doesn't go into a trash bin instead.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| This was not going to come from Samsung, one of the most over-
| zealous companies out there when it comes from preventing rolling
| out purely software features from today's phones to yesterday's.
| E.g. "Now Bar" a literal online feature is blocked on older
| phones. (Don't get me wrong, it's a useless feature, just shows
| their thinking)
|
| Or when they announced that "Linux on Dex", for which they had
| been doing public beta testing on Note 9 phones, would only
| support the just-released Note 10. (And then they dropped the
| entire thing anyway).
|
| These are phones for which the only difference between
| generations may be a couple mAh in the battery. Yet they still
| use software to gate features.
| cpill wrote:
| I'm in the market for a new phone. is there a list of phones
| somewhere that are hackable?
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