[bluGill]

Manufactures care about support for as long as they think consumers will care. If phones stop working one month after you buy them consumers would revolt. They have decided that 2 years is an acceptable number for customers - long enough that most will be willing to pay to upgrade after that long. If you are one of the "cheap" customers who want to keep your phone longer they want to force you to spend money and most customers seem to be willing to pay then so they are happy.

[palata]

And that is why we need regulations that force them to make phones that last longer.

[bluGill]

Why should someone who is going to throw their phone away in 2 years (or less) anyway be forced to subsidize those who want to keep theirs longer? There is a cost to supporting old hardware and that needs to be paid by someone.

[BobaFloutist]

Why should someone who is going to throw their phone away in a day (or less) anyway be forced to subsidize those who want to keep theirs longer? There is a cost to supporting old hardware, and that needs to be paid by someone.

[palata]

I was assuming that we as a society would rather want to survive this century, but you're right, maybe we don't. We surely act like we really, really don't.

But hypothetically, if we were to want to survive, such regulations would be some of the very easy steps to take (and by far not enough, of course).

And again, I think you're right: it's far more likely that we as a society will just collapse, so maybe it's not even worth wondering what we would do if we didn't want it.

[bluGill]

Throwing phones away is not going to cause society to collapse.