Fun fact: “More than 90% of all [car] battery lead and plastic is recycled in North America, making lead-acid batteries one of the most highly recycled consumer products in the world, surpassing aluminum soft drinks and beer cans, newspapers, and old tires.”
And all because of a small fee for those who get a new batty and chose not to recycle the old one. Like the Aldi quarter of recycling.
I wonder if we get a discount for them selling our old ram back to us? I feel like the fat ladies from fight club.
Now that you mention it, I did get a discount on a new phone by trading in my (10 year) old (bricked) one. That was two years ago, though.
That’s a great question Malica.
Unfortunately we are unable to offer any discounts on our current product line at this time.
Have a great day.
Nonononono! Don’t shutter the conversation. You redirect and up-sale! Don’t say:
Unfortunately we are unable to offer any discounts on our current product line at this time.
Have a great day.
Instead try:
Unfortunately we are unable to offer any discounts on our current product line at this time.
Would you like me to show you some of the models available in our post-consumer-recycled line? Or would you prefer something from our Virgin Silicon line — because there’s nothing like the first time™.
That’s something they should do regardless of memory prices IMO. So many valuable parts get just thrown away
Reduce, reball, recycle.
If this is what it takes for us to get sockets back on our RAM and CPUs in consumer tech, so be it.
Going to open an Etsy shop and sale handmade RAM sticks.
While this is a sign of very problematic times, it’s kinda good we do this. Reduce -> reuse -> recycle.
Idk if it’s still the case but phone memory used to go bad over time, reducing in size and speed with usage
Not sure, but you might be confusing memory with storage?
Pretty sure memory stays as speedy and keeps its capacity over time. Though the software we run on the devices seems to constantly grow, which gives an impression of devices being more sluggish. But in reality, it is the software that is less efficient.
Both can fail. Failing NAND flash (solid state storage) usually results in reallocated sectors or slower reading due to retrying reads on bad sectors. Slow read/write can also just be a symptom of a nearly full drive. Failing DDR# memory can cause software freezes, crashes, or other random behaviour because usually there’s no error correction at that level (ECC isn’t common for consumer devices). Lots of detectable errors (through ECC) can cause a slowdown as it needs to redo the read/write.
Yeah, but failing RAM don’t get slower or lose capacity. It just plain crashes, right?
If you ignore error correction, storage doesn’t get slower either.
But I also forgot one scenario: the voltage required to get a certain memory frequency increases as the chip ages. At some point you’ll have to lower the frequency to use the chips with a safe voltage, which is literally a slow down.
Yes, unless you consider retraining
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
From an environmental standpoint, I don’t think this has much benefit. Using old tech as-is is great, but the energy used to dismantle and re-engineer old parts at that level probably exceeds the energy needed to build new.
It’s only beneficial in that you don’t need to break ground on a new factory to do it.
It’s a heat chamber or heat gun and some fresh solder. Certainly not anywhere close to a new RAM module
I’ve watched our techs move parts between boards
It’s not just about the raw energy consumption. Reusing old parts means less raw materials need to be manufactured or mined, which is especially good for toxic materials that are hazardous to the environment or workers.
Yes, but the actual material in a RAM chip is tiny.
Yes, but the scale of smart phone proliferation is massive.
In this case, all that raw material that would have gone into the chips for these devices is still going to be mined and processed. It will just wind up in a datacenter rather than the general consumer devices.
We’ve reached the point where the smartphone industry is doing board level archaeology to keep $200 phones affordable. Reusing working chips is actually sensible. The absurd part is that we needed a memory shortage to rediscover that perfectly functional electronics don’t automatically become garbage when the phone does.
While I agree with the sentiment that reusability is good, I would only knowingly buy a phone with reused components if they offered a three year warranty on those reused parts. My phones typically last me three or four years. The wear and tear on those memory units would make me extremely skeptical of them.
Meh, brand new stuff should have at least 3 years too.
Maybe they will give us replaceable batteries again so we can just keep using older phones.
The EU has forced that.
My concern is we start to notice applications become slower to load and someone discovers nefarious code waa injected to throttle the equipments performance or use the battery faster.
The absurd part is that we needed a memory shortage to rediscover that perfectly functional electronics don’t automatically become garbage when the phone does.
It doesn’t seem absurd to me at all. A budget phone’s primary goal is low cost. Labor is generally more expensive than new parts. So buying new memory and consuming less labor has made economic sense up until now. The only change now is that the cost of the memory has increase beyond the cost of the additional labor to extract memory. So the budget approach is reuse.
Most of the time consumers don’t buy pre-owned/used items over new for ethical reasons. They buy them because they’re cheaper than new items.
If I was going to buy a phone with this, I’d want it to be made very clear this was the case, but as long as they do that and a consumer can make an informed decision, I think it’s a great idea.
Even if you disclosed this no avg consumer is going to be educated enough on what this actually means to make an informed decision.
Functionally making it a moot point.
Still disclose it tho
It depends on how it’s done.
“This device uses previously used RAM that may have been used for many years. While the RAM has been previously used, we still offer our full and regular warranty and it has been thoroughly tested to still function”
Granted… i doubt we’d ever get something along those lines.
Yeah, that still is just a disclosure tho. My point was more the “why” that disclosure is there in the first place is something that’s lost on most people. The technical reason can’t be meaningfully communicated in a reasonable way.
A good disclosure can cover almost all the needed ground either way. But your right we will be lucky to get that.
Oh so you mean, this might break earlier than expected or have decreased performance sooner kind of messages.
Ya, i dont see something like that ever being added, and some people wouldn’t realize it.
yeah. No sane company is going to add that sort of message even tho it REALLY should in that sort of instance.
If this is what it takes to make true recycling profitable, so be it.
At a certain point, can we agree that we don’t need these overpriced cell phones? How did we get to a point that a grocery store employee needs a smart phone?
You do realize for many people (in the world), their phone is their only computer/access to the internet?
Yeah, how dare poor people want to e.g. access Youtube or message their friends!
The point is it’s a chain around your neck. Working shouldn’t require to have a google or apple phone…
There’s an example. Fun points? I played a gameboy emulator on it. It would fit in your pocket unlike the tablets of today.
“I can use x, everyone should do that”
The entire world runs on smartphones these days, did you miss that memo? And yes, you’re right! You can live without them. But that is like running hurdles and saying I won’t jump because the track normally doesn’t require it.
I mean that’s a smart phone. I was referring to being forced to use crapple or doevil phones. At this point everything is running a hurdle and jumping out the window. The most basic things have become overly complicated. It’s like being thankful for the connivence fee to pay your bill.
