this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2024
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Technology
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Actually, how hard can it be? My old cheap ass Casio can have its battery replaced and waterproof already.
Sure, smartwatches have more bells and whistles but not as complicated as a mechanical watch, right?
Not as complicated, but the parts are bigger. Few would want an even bigger smart watch just to get repairability.
just make it easily repairable by third stores with minimally qualified people and cheap tools, like digital watches already were and are. Or, make a full collecting and recycling tax to be paid by those uncaring clients.
No, that's not good enough. "Right to repair" is kind of an unfortunate name, because it really shouldn't be just about repair. My property rights include a right to modify, too, and letting manufacturers off the hook by doing first-party replacements instead of facilitating work by third-parties is not sufficient to protect that right!
I'd settle for first party repair and a repair window of up to 20 years.
Modification is great and should always be legal... But I'd take the win to get away from so much throwaway technology.
It is. Making anything easier to disassemble requires connectors which are a huge tradeoff in terms of space Vs features. Screws take a whole lot of space especially in something you want as thin as possible such as a watch.
Nowadays the direction is embedding of passive and even active components directly into the PCB layers and an increase of the number of layers. That means that if any of them fails there's nothing to be done, or at least not without equipments that cost way too much to be worthwhile to anyone.
In a few years, microelectronic systems will be mostly just one big custom die with the processing units and all accompanying mosfet, inductors, capacitors and resistors directly etched into a 25 layers PCB with barely any surface mounted components. Even lithium batteries can been embedded and most likely will.
If you want something totally serviceable you will have to sacrifice on size.
Sure, but people probably don't expect ram slots on a smart watch. Just a replaceable screen, housing, mobo, dials, and battery would do a lot.