Re:Transparency Report
by AnthonyMouse on Friday November 13, 2020 @09:41PM
(#25089828)
You don't actually need the ewaste disaster to have cheap old cellphones. You can get a 64-bit PC on eBay shipped to you for <$50. 10+ years old but will still run the latest Windows or Linux.
If phones worked like this, people would keep them for many more years, but there would still be more than enough 10+ year old phones available for a close approximation to the shipping cost.
It would also mean that the older phones would go to poor countries that could still use them instead of being slag, because "slow but runs current software" is usable whereas "not even old enough to be slow but can't run current software" means you can't use the thing because websites will throw certificate errors from missing roots, apps won't run on it and it will be full of known vulnerabilities and get malware.
If phones worked like this, people would keep them for many more years, but there would still be more than enough 10+ year old phones available for a close approximation to the shipping cost.
It would also mean that the older phones would go to poor countries that could still use them instead of being slag, because "slow but runs current software" is usable whereas "not even old enough to be slow but can't run current software" means you can't use the thing because websites will throw certificate errors from missing roots, apps won't run on it and it will be full of known vulnerabilities and get malware.