Out of date software means usable hardware provides a second rate experience, with reduced features, limited app compatibility and security vulnerabilities.
Software plays a big part in perceived obsolescence of devices.
Tag: environment
demonstrating how companies can adapt software, hardware and business models for a circular economy. They show the changes companies could make, which parts of the supply chain might benefit most and which consumers are likely to be most receptive.
Three types of intervention that can be made – hardware, software, and business model.
This report shows how companies across the mobile electronics supply chain can adopt a circular economy model to make money out of old devices, attract new customers around the world, increase brand loyalty, and cut manufacturing costs and risks. Doing so would also help to cut electronic waste, carbon emissions and resource use.
The report seems quite business-focused. The intended reader seems to be businesses? The environmental and social benefits seem to be presented as a side benefit.
keeping a mobile phone in use for just one extra year cuts its lifetime CO2 impact by a third.
89 per cent of mobile devices in the US were thrown into landfill in 2010, even though the resources they contain mean it is economically sensible to recycle them
Slowing the production cycle means making phones that last longer, which allows the resource and energy drain of each device to be spread over time. Extending lifespans is about designing more durable products, capable of being easily and inexpensively repaired or upgraded. It’s also about extending the lifespan of components, by harvesting parts from e-waste to reuse as spare parts or in new phones.
Software updates should extend, or at minimum not end, older products’ lifespans. http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/FINAL-10YearsSmartphones-Report-Design-230217-Digital.pdf
Design choices to extend product life include 1) material selection, i.e. whether the plastic or metal is non-virgin and is suitable for clean recycling, 2) accessible components, so that devices can be easily repaired and later disassembled, 3) availability of software updates, repair manuals, and spare parts.
Manufacturers should measure their innovation not by fewer millimeters and more megapixels, but by designing devices to last, by making them easily repairable and upgradeable, and using components and materials that can safely be reused again and again to make new phones.