On Friday 17. May 2019 12.19.36 Johannes Zarl-Zierl wrote: > > While I think that warranties for electronics could and should be longer, I > think the comparison to household appliances is unfair. > > Mobile phones may undergo less physical stress than washing mashines in > absolute terms, but operate withing much tighter tolerances. In other words, > there are plenty of places on my washing machine where hitting it with a > hammer would do minimal damage. The same is not true for a mobile phone, > and simply cannot be true due to physical constraints...
It is true that washing machines can be overengineered by a greater margin and not change the nature of the product. However, they are still susceptible to failure through improper use, lack of maintenance and care, and so on. One might also argue that the economics do not favour their repair, either, and that many people would simply replace a failing appliance than spend comparable amounts on repairing it. However, what led to the dispute about warranties was the continual refusal of manufacturers (particularly Nokia if I recall correctly) to honour warranties because of moisture damage supposedly due to improper use. This raises genuine questions about what conditions such products should be reasonably be operated under, alongside issues of appropriate design and manufacturer responsibility. I don't think it is unreasonable for people to expect their phones to last at least five years. The argument that phones get better all the time and that people "need" to upgrade constantly is even weaker now than it was, partly because (like with other products) the customer discovers that what they have already is "good enough", that upgrading delivers fewer new benefits than the last upgrade did, and partly because the upgrade treadmill was shamefully exploited with personal computers and that this is just another outing for it. Paul _______________________________________________ Discussion mailing list Discussion@lists.fsfe.org https://lists.fsfe.org/mailman/listinfo/discussion This mailing list is covered by the FSFE's Code of Conduct. All participants are kindly asked to be excellent to each other: https://fsfe.org/about/codeofconduct
