I am beginning a journey away from technology, especially “throwaway” technology and technology that is either designed or known to surveil the user.
As part and parcel of this decision, last week I gave away my Samsung Galaxy smartwatch, and will be replacing it with a Casio G-Shock digital watch with atomic clock receiver (enabling automatic time adjustment, much as a smartwatch gets its time adjusted automatically through the phone to which it is attached).
I chose to make this adjustment for a few reasons.
First, I hadn’t used almost any of the smart functions for several months and didn’t anticipate beginning to use them heavily in the future. They also would drain the battery quicker on a per-charge basis, as they increase the workload on the device processor. Considering the main reason to buy a smartwatch over a traditional (analog or digital) watch is the smart functions, continuing to use one without using its smart functions had become superfluous.
Second, the Galaxy watch is designed to surveil the user, while there is no surveillance function with a basic watch. It simply tells the time, and perhaps the date or other simple functions based on built-in sensors, if any. No third party systems or infrastructure are needed once it is manufactured in order for it to operate. No separate device is necessary to enable it to perform its function. It neither collects nor distributes sensitive information.
Finally, the internal, non-user-replaceable battery had become worn out. This meant it would barely last an entire workday and the inconvenience of waiting two hours for it to charge became quite an annoyance. The cost of professional battery replacement (necessary because doing so is not easy) was greater than the cost to replace the watch with either another used smartwatch or a used traditional watch (such as the excellent Casio G-Shock). A basic watch features a battery that is quite easily user replaceable and lasts several years without having to take it off one’s wrist in order to charge it.
Non-user replaceable batteries a questionable, wasteful “innovation”.
A major reason to replace portable technology nowadays is due to battery failure as expressed through loss of capacity, which is expected and occurs over a relatively predictable timeframe (within about two years of use, in my experience). Despite this known fact of capacity degradation, over the past several years, more and more technology manufacturers have opted to design their portable devices with batteries that require technical expertise, and often specialist tools, to remove and replace. Contrast this with earlier models of smartphone (and dumbphones) that had batteries for which the removal and replacement process is not only user-friendly but remarkably trivial, such as sliding off a plastic faceplate.
Non-user-replaceable batteries, while technically replaceable, are effectively non-replaceable for the average person. The process can risk damaging both the phone and the battery itself, presenting both data loss and fire risks. As an example, some batteries must be removed using a heat gun to remove the adhesive securing them to the phone; this does not sound like a safe thing to do with a highly flammable, volatile component like a lithium polymer battery.
Designing devices to have non-user-replaceable batteries is a boon for the manufacturer and repair shops (both of which make money off the sale of new devices and repair services) but not for either the user or the environment. When it becomes more expensive to pay for the replacement of a single, known primary failure component like a battery, than it is to purchase a completely new device, users are encouraged to discard their old device and buy a new one. Non-user-replaceable batteries are thus a form of planned obsolescence. While electronics recycling programs do exist, the fact is the recycling process, even when conducted with proper equipment (which does not always happen) is far from environmentally friendly. It would be better economically and environmentally if components that retain their function were put to reuse by the person who already owns the device rather than some type of recycling, disassembly, or disposal. Unfortunately, everyone, including users seem focused on recycling as a solution without considering that reducing and reusing are also good, and perhaps even better, for the environment.
Only one Samsung smartphone with user-replaceable battery remains
Presently, Samsung only makes one US network compatible smartphone series with a user-replaceable battery (Apple makes none, though that is not a change for them). This is the Galaxy XCover series, a rugged phone which is marketed towards business users, who I suppose are the only remaining customer group savvy enough to consider battery replacement as a recurring cost and potentially time-consuming task that can be both streamlined and minimized with appropriate design consideration. I have never seen one of these in a carrier store or a big box store, only online; it is evidently not heavily marketed unlike, say, the Galaxy S series which is easy to find.
Dumbphones getting the non-user-replaceable treatment, too
Even my new dumbphone, a TCL Flip 4 5G, does not feature a user-replaceable battery, unlike its predecessor model. I do not consider this shift away from user-replaceability to be a positive aspect of the phone; however, it is the only 5G dumbphone fully compatible with the network I use. I believe it is also the only 5G dumbphone available in the US at this point.
My reasoning for, and my decision to, replace my smartphone with a dumbphone will be the subject of an upcoming post.