Are today's cell phones designed to break after a year or two?
I ask because my wife and I have had cell phones for about 8 years now, and I just ordered what I think is my 5th phone, my wife is on her 4th and it’s starting to fall apart as well. I understand that you carry them around with you all the time in your pocket or purse, but it seems like maybe they’d get scratched up, lose a piece of trim or have a dead battery or something minor. My last phone (the one I’m using now until my new one arrives), is a Razr, which 2+ years ago when I got it was still a pretty well sought after phone. And now about 5 different really annoying internal things have gone wrong with it, it’s not something simple like a battery or anything like that, it just makes weird noises, doesn’t display anything on the outside of the phone anymore (like I used to be able to see who was calling or what time it was w/o opening the phone, now that screen is black), quite often when I go to charge it, it freaks out and I try to unplug it after 12 hours of charging or what not, and it will say “Insert Sim”, and it won’t have even started to charge. Or some times during calls my whole OS resets, I drop the call and the screen has to reset before I can use it. It’s gotten so unbearable that even though I haven’t got a penny to spare, I paid $25 in upgrade and shipping fees to get a phone that works (never gonna find a job if I don’t have a working cell phone).
So, I was thinking about it, and I realized that as soon as my contract is up, almost invariably one or both of our phones will start acting funny, and I just don’t think that’s right. But what really got to me was when I started thinking about when we didn’t even HAVE cell phones. Some of you may be old enough to remember back when you actually didn’t even own your phones, but you paid a monthly fee to the phone company for a telephone, and they basically had two styles, the ones mounted to the wall and the ones that set on the desk. We had the same phone the whole time I was growing up and NEVER replaced it. Yet that phone was probably about as technologically advanced as a cast iron skillet….it seems the more advanced the technology gets, the less time the product holds up. And I know about technological obsolescence….I actually don’t feel the need to upgrade my technology every two years even though it’s 3 times as advanced, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But it seems they have caught on to consumers like me and basically shoved their middle fingers in the air at me and said, “well, if that’s the case, then we’ll make sure it DOES break.”
So anyone have any insight? Why is it that a simple telephone with no built in technology can last for decades, but a $300 high tech gadget goes tits up in 2 years?
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Warranties and guarantees for such devices run out after 12 months , the manufacturer doesn’t have much trust in their products .They also want you to keep buying , so when next years phones come out they hope you will upgrade .
Well, Razr’s are shitty to begin with honestly. I had about 4 of ‘em before I decided to switch to a new phone. I tossed my phone on my bed from about 2 feet away, it hit the sheets and the back came off. I mean, damn. That’s fragile. I have an HTC Touch Pro now and it’s been great. I think cell phones today are designed to be more stylish and less practical, but hey, I’m not complain’! :)
lots of tiny parts are hard to keep in good condition when they are constantly rattled, dropped, clunked, etc. They do the best they can but man is a clumsy breed my friend.
longest I’ve ever had one phone is two years, and it just happened to be the cheapest piece of crap phone on the planet… of course my Storm couldn’t last that long…
Also as sandy mentioned, as the rate new tech comes out now they kind of hope you need to get a new one by the time your warranty runs out so you’ll just get the latest snazzy iGizmo.
everything is designed to konk out sooner rather than later.. that’s why insurance people make so much money and yes… konk is a technical term
Reads glossary in my ps3 manuals , yes konk is in there good call @lynneblundell….... It says and i quote ” Your ps3 shouldn’t konk out , if in the likely hood it does switch off and on hay presto ”
I hope not. My iPhone is coming up on two years old.
My L7 is still running perfectly after 5 years now and I use it for atleast 6–8 hours a day
I don’t think the battery’s of mobile (cell) phones are designed to last as long as they used to.
I think the batteries are designed to last just as long, the technology on the phones are just so fresh that the batteries can’t keep up anymore.
Sorry to go against the general whining, but it is pretty hard to design something to fail after a specified period of time. Cell phones are not designed to fail in 2 years.
But, you are right, they are not designed to last particularly long, either. The cell phone industry wants you to “trade up” when your contract comes due, meaning they get to sell you a phone every two years. They view the design of the phone to be intentionally a disposable item. This expectation of disposability goes into all aspects of the physical design and the manufacturing process.
So, yea they are cheaply made, but cannot be designed to fail in 2.3 years.
last time I renewed, I told the rep, I just want a phone, no camera, no games, no color screen, no downloading ringtones. No luck
I know you can’t design something to fail after a specific amount of time. But there IS a term called planned obsolescence (first applied to cars I believe….boy the guy who came up with THAT idea, talk about someone I’d like to punch in the dick), wherein they could manufacture parts to a particular standard, say a 5 or 10 year standard durability rating, which is an average and no guarantee of anything (just like the 15, 20 or 30 year shingles you put on your roof). I have to wonder if they use parts that are rated for 2 years or 3 years, whereas for a few bucks more maybe they could use parts rated for 5 or 10 years, you know, just in case you don’t need access to “G7” or whatever the fuck type of service they’ll be marketing in 2 years. .
I guess the answers have helped me refine the question a bit in my mind. Let’s say they still made phones that were essentially a receiver for your voice, a speaker for the other voice and a ringer, and that’s it, no other high tech gadgetry inside. They were small enough to carry around, but you had to plug them into a phone jack, and let’s say we had some sort of satellite phone service where the phone jacks could be portable. Now, if the phone itself were designed that way without the technology, would man’s clumsiness as someone put it cause the phone which could sit on a desk in your house for 40 years to break after 2 because it was carried in your pocket? Or COULD a more durable phone WITH all the bells and whistles they put on phones these days be designed, or is it an inherent flaw of the micro technology inside which makes them not so durable? Essentially, does it boil down to the fact that lack of durability is an inherent bi-product of having a high tech product with a ton of small parts which people carry around everywhere and don’t take the best care of, is it more a function of the greedy phone companies trying to squeeze out every penny they can by using the cheapest materials they can find, knowing they’ll last until after the warranty expires and then they just end up making more money off the sales of new phones, or is the real reason somewhere in between, and if so, what’s the breakdown…80/20, 50/50, 60/40?
Didn’t the American auto manufacturers make that mistake years ago, purposely making inferior cars. Didn’t work out well for them in the end.
@JLeslie That’s called planned obsolescence. The American auto makers did indeed engage in that practice, mostly to sell consumers a new car every so many years. Now, with the rapid advances in technology, most cell phones are “old technology” weeks after they hit the market.
@dalepetrie, I remember not only when the wall phone was a new feature, I also remember when it was a novelty to have more than one phone in the house.
@Yetanotheruser We had only one phone for years, my mom still has the dial phone in her house, and the first wall phone we ever had is still in her kitchen.
Planned obsolescence is alive and well, especially in the electronics industry. My 1-year-old Nokia 6133 is already showing signs of wear and tear, and I’m anything but a heavy user. They are designed to crap out around the same time your contract is up, so you can run right into the store and buy your “free” upgrade.
I read on the news that some Sprint executive got killed over the weekend by a boulder falling on his car. Maybe God is trying to tell them something.
It used to be that the planned obsolescence was solely to sell more product at a later date, as the original product was not of sufficient quality to last more than a few years. Now, obsolescence is planned, but not so much as a marketing tool, but because you know that in a year or so the technology will be obsolete, because of advances in technology.
@Yetanotheruser – but if the first cell phone I bought in 2000 on which I made phone calls, that’s it, was still operational, I don’t care if the “technology is obsolete” because it would still meet my needs. I don’t think advances in technology are an excuse because there are millions of us who will never want to Tweet on our cell phones.
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