Sealed in batteries on smartphones and Surface tablets.
The device will eventually reach a point where it won’t even boot (or shuts down randomly) when plugged in because the charger connection isn’t actually wired to power the main board without going through the battery first (most smartphones) or the device consumes more power than the port is designed to deliver (Surface).
I had an LG phone for a few years until one night it literally just died on me. I was messing around on it one night, just scrolling randomly, then I set it down for a few minutes to play a game. When I went to check my phone again, it wouldn’t turn on or anything.
Dealing with this right now. Battery is 4 years old and going weak, decided to no longer recognize any charger below a certain battery percentage (like 72%) unless it’s wireless. Thought it bricked itself when it first happened until seeing it’s an issue with the batteries used for this model just straight up rejecting to charge for many heavy users. Getting a new phone soon since its so inconvenient while working outside.
I’ve been successful in replacing built-in batteries in 2 different phones. Granted my families phones are all > 4 years old so maybe it’s gotten much harder lately.
Windows and ios
School just got 30 new laptops because of the tpm requirement on windows 11 just like Microsoft planned.
I would not mind helping them with Linux of any distro even after Im done learning there because it’s so much better
Clothing!
Lots of clothes only last a couple of years then they break apart, holes appears, etc…
We have a local collective that fixes clothes and its helped keep them alive for 10+ years now. But jeens, shirts, ect that are newer seem to be worse somehow. They don’t last nearly as long.
Agree. My jeans have been wearing out at the knees within a couple years and I’m middle-aged so I’m NEVER on my knees for more than a few seconds. Apparently they’re averse to bending. 🤨
A big problem is that most denim people buy these days is “stretch” which massively reduces durability of the material. It has gotten way too hard to find classic denim in most stores.
Probably doesn’t count as I didn’t buy it, so I’m technically not dealing with it. But let’s talk about electric riding lawnmowers. Last year I was looking to replace my 20+ year old riding lawnmower with an electric one. Could not find a single manufacturer who would also provide the parts lists. Digging deeper, seems like they simply do not sell parts, like at all. The mowers just aren’t repairable - straight up, if it breaks, buy a new one. That’s irresponsible when talking about an electric drill, but a full riding mower? WTF?
To be fair, this might be a chicken & egg problem. Low adoption rates means there’s a very small market for parts, so there’s no aftermarket support. And that aftermarket is where I get parts for my current mower. So maybe it’s not fair to blame the manufacturer? But I think that’s a stretch. From where I’m standing, it sure looks like intentional planned obsolescence.
John Deere ztracks have replacement part lists I managed to find on a retailer website. Most of the parts for mowers are off the shelf anyway, I would imagine the power supply stuff is off the shelf too.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
Having to replace perfectly functional Pixel phones because GOS stopped making updates for them. I don’t blame GOS as they’re a FOSS project and their end of support coincides with Google’s end of support, but it still feels bad replacing perfectly functional hardware. Wish release cycles were much slower so support for existing devices could be focused on, instead of having to spend time porting to every new phone dropped like every year or whatever.
I put crDroid on my pixel 5 and I’m never looking back at graphene again.
But I would have replaced it even if it was still supported. Too apple " we know what’s good for you and you don’t " for me.
My body. Shits getting worse by the day.
Sonos
They used to not be that way. I have 5 devices (couple connects, amps and plays) that I’ve kept on S1. Haven’t gotten any new features, but never lost any in their whole S2 debacle. Going 10+ years strong.
Smartwatches. Seriously, they are all working perfect one day, and next day they die. Wanna change the battery? Good luck keeping them out of the water, if you happen to find and replace the battery at all, which isn’t cheap anyway.
I’m perfectly happy with my Amazing Bip watch. It keeps track of my steps and sleep, and links to my phone so that it will buzz if I get a call or text.
It’s about 7 years old now, and still gets almost a month of regular use on a single charge.
I did own an Amazfit model, the battery was dead suddenly after less than two years. A full charge wouldn’t last a week.
I think that the Bip was the battery life champion. I checked sometime in the past year, and I think Amazfit watches typically lasted between 1 and 2 weeks.
Pebble seems to be headed in a good direction ever since it got bought back by the original founder.
I wish. It’s the only smartwatch I’d buy after some awful experiences. Well, the Pebble and little better version is the PineTime.
I’ve had a good experience with my Apple Watch. It’s the first model that ever came out and it’s almost a decade old. The battery lasts only 75% of a day now but I think ten years is a good life for it.
Apple, are we on CPU architecture 3 now ?
4
Macs started out on Motorola 68k processors, then made the switch to PowerPC, then to x86, and now ARM.
To be fair to Apple those changes were done pretty cleanly and for good reason.
68k was cheap and plentiful. It had lots of competitors using it. They could learn from each others successes and failures too.
PowerPC performed much better and made design changes that made much more sense long-term. But then it wasn’t built for the mobile era. Apple tried to reel it in but the other titans behind POWER overruled them so Apple had to migrate away.
By this point, x86 had caught up with many of the advantages power had and had a better path for the mobile market ahead of it so Apple went that route.
Finally, intel’s x86 was just not going to keep up with the efficiency demands of mobile. It consumed too much power. It was expensive. It ran hot. Intel was not delivering on their promises. And Apple could see what was coming for Intel years before others admitted it.
Meanwhile they already had incredible ARM chips in their phones. The PAsemi boys they bought up were put to the task of making a more general purpose ARM chip and they pulled it off.
So now Apple is on ARM and it’s serving them very well.
Apple isn’t playing planned obsolescence here. They are evil in plenty of other ways but in terms of planned obsolescence Apple is one of the more reasonable companies. These migrations solved a problem for Apple each time. They are very expensive. They are incredibly risky. Honestly it was miraculous they pulled off the jump to ARM successfully.
PowerPC performed much better and made design changes that made much more sense long-term.
There were also volume production issues and architecture advancement issues.
Essentially, they couldn’t get volume guarantees and they were at the mercy of a much slower improvement cycle than they would have liked.
PowerPC was absolutely an excellent top-tier processor, and the current Power11 line absolutely smokes anything else out there from either Intel or AMD, at the cost of being 100-200× more expensive. Like, think $30,000 USD for a single entry-level workstation, or $70,000 USD for the high-end one.
Exactly. There’s a reason power isn’t going away.
Not sure if this qualifies as planned obsolescence but Acer stopped supporting a tablet I bought in less than two years. I have been avoiding Acer products ever since.
Dacor Stove
In 2006 my wife and I moved into a new house and bought a Dacor RSD30S stove.
Dacor made parts for the thing for TWO YEARS and that’s it. I owned it for 12 years and it went through three igniters and the door handle broke. The first igniter broke within 18 months and I was able to replace it with a new one. The second one went out at around 5 years and the part was already discontinued. Fortunately, the parts guy I was ordering from was very familiar with Dacor and said that the igniter from the new model would work, the bracket would just need to be drilled to mount it. It took me all of 5 minutes. The third one went out and I was screwed. So I spent about 2 years manually igniting my “modern” duel fuel range. Even when it did work, Dacor used one igniter coil for all four igniters. If they were not all perfectly clean the current would only go to one with the least impedance and the rest wouldn’t work.
I was never able to fix the broken handle.
Dacor… Never again.
Contrast that with the stove I replaced the Dacor with, a Wolf DF304. Granted, we’re talking about a very high end range vs a middle of the road POS. However, Wolf has not changed the design of the DF304 in 25 years. I actually bought my Wolf 2nd hand, hence why I could afford it. It was 8 years old when I bought it. Wolf not only still has all the parts for it in stock, the stove is still in production. It currently is 14 years old and works like new, compared to the Dacor being 12 years old and completely clapped out. Also Wolf uses independent coils for each igniter, so the current doesn’t flow to the igniter with the least impedance like the Dacor.
I know this sounds like a case of “you get what you paid for”, but that Dacor new was $2500, so not exactly cheap.
And don’t even get me started on General Electric appliances…
Dishwashers, the 3 most recent dishwashers that I have had experience using across 3 very different households and use levels, from 3 different manufacturers, have all had minor to major faults in the 4-5 years since installation, just after the warranty period ended.
Mostly drawer and roller related, but also a pump failure.
Samsung washing machine. I watched a YouTube video about how they deliberately chose a material that wears out after like 4 or 5 years for a critical component. Real cool, thanks Samsung.
Is it easy to repair, or also deliberately made difficult?
They are hoping for people to get a new one. One of the drain pipe is made of plastic that is brittle after 4 years! There are Tupperwares that last 5 times than that without breaking. I refuse to believe its not a conscious decision for it to break. And no aftermarket alternative. You need $110 parts from Samsung supplier!
Ah yes, proprietary parts also get you.
And they make them so tricky to repair that appliance repair people will either have to charge too much or outright refuse to work on them.
Not just Samsung, all manufacturers.
Drum spider and drum with two dissimilar metals that react and eats the drum spider away with use?
They’ve been doing it for decades at this point. No idea why people buy Samsung appliances.
Then again even Bosch and Miele have started using plastic welded drums which prevent repair of simple parts like bearings and motors so… Fuck us all I guess.
That’s the one. It was my mom’s. I told her to get a speed queen if she wanted to spend money like that, but she didn’t listen, and the POS broke like 5 minutes after the warranty was up.
Phones. Windows.
My phones.
I have a Samsung Galaxy A15 as a substitute work phone, it plays music for me when I’m there overnight and whatnot. Provides me entertainment. and I have a Samsung Galaxy A32-5G which is the main primary phone with a plan on it.
The battery life apparently drains faster than I remember it. Sometimes when I leave the phones alone for awhile after a work week, I’ll usually get a good extra day and a half off from them. But, sometimes I have to keep charging because from 100%, they dip down to 94 and 96 respectively.
My Chevy Volt 2013, which still runs great, no longer has OnStar because they never planned for a way to upgrade the connectivity when 3G networks were retired. So I am concretely less safe when driving and lose other useful features like remote start, milage tracking, etc.
you are better off without remote control systems like that
To add insult to injury, they are fully capable of adding the 4g module because Canadian Volts were able to be upgraded. GM decided to not let US owners pay for the upgrade, because fuck us that’s why.
I would say you’re better off just because they can’t auto-brick your car remotely because your account isn’t up to date.
