Reballed memory currently accounts for a small share of smartphone components, but adoption could nearly double by 2027 as manufacturers look for alternatives to increasingly expensive DRAM.
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.
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.
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.
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.