[giantrobot]

> Electronics can often be repaired, but we throw them away instead.

A skilled technician replacing a 2¢ part on a $10 board costs more than a new $10 board. Just disassembling that board to recycle parts off of it will cost more than the board originally cost to manufacture.

You also run into the same argument against landfill airbag controllers. A factory that produces a million boards can have very good reliability metrics. A skilled technician not only has more variable output but less accurate quality metrics unless they put a lot of extra effort into process controls.

A recycled board will cost more and be statistically less reliable from a brand new board. It would be more efficient to just mechanically separate them to extract raw materials.

[crote]

Oh, absolutely! Which is why I explicitly specified "smartphone and laptop".

Replacing a $0.02 part on a $10 board doesn't make sense, but why aren't we replacing $0.02 parts on $500+ boards?

[giantrobot]

Refurbishment already happens. If you drop you get a replacement iPhone there's a decent chance it's a refurbished phone and not just a produced-for-replacement phone. Apple doesn't just toss a broken phone in a wood chipper. Same with most manufacturers. But that's the whole item and not logic boards and such.

A whole board needs to be pretty valuable to replace a 2¢ part because the technician's time is expensive. A 2¢ part that takes an hour to replace and test is $40-50 in skilled technician labor. That assumes you know exactly what 2¢ part needs to be replaced. Every technician hour adds a premium onto a refurbished board. Even a skilled technician can also screw up a repair so the rate of failed repairs also adds a premium. As does shipping and storage on the repaired units.

If you design boards to be more easily be repaired by a technician you're adding test leads and headers that cost money and take up space. In a phone that eats into your envelope budget meaning a smaller battery, a larger device, or tighter thermals. Anymore the same is true for laptops.

Even stuff like the Framework laptop doesn't envision people replacing surface mount ICs. They design around LRUs and have people send back old parts to refurbish or recycle.

There's not really any 2¢ parts for smartphones and laptops. There's $100.02 parts including all the expenses. So the part needs to be well over $100.02 in value to the manufacturer to make it worthwhile for them to refurbish it rather than just replace it and recycle the broken unit. A consumer isn't going to spend $100 to fix a $200 phone. They're better off spending $100 on a used replacement and sending the broken device to be recycled.