Drinking glasses. Not planned obsolescence but a way to remove klutzes like me from the pool.
There’s always a trade off when it comes to any device.
Fast or slow, lots of features or basic, cheap or expensive, thin/stylish or ruggedized, water or other ingress resistant standards. All of these have to be weighted against each other.
Also what constitutes a drop? 4 feet, 40 feet, 400? (sorry if I turned on anyone with a foot fetish)
It is absolutely possible to create a mobile phone with most features people want that survives multiple 4 foot high drops, but it will be encased in a few cm of rubber, the touch screen will be under a noticeable screen protector, and reception might suffer a bit, and it won’t have wireless charging unless you’re ok if that stops working after a unlucky drop. It will also probably be expensive, even more so if you then want to use more premium materials in order to try and slim it down some.
I wonder what these would look like if Apple made them:
I mean, my mobile phone was like 350aud, has survived literally dozens of drops from 4ft+, on a variety of surfaces from carpet and lino to gravel, concrete and bitumen. Literally every function of the phone works fine and there’s no case, just a screen protector. It didn’t come with wireless charging so I don’t know how fragile that would be, but current phones are tough as shit.
The chassis of my phone is dented and smashed in dozens of places and everything it could do new it can do now just the same, except for looking pretty.
Bro just dropped his brand new Galaxy Fold/Flip/pixel from way too high and found out they need a case.
Hell, I even have protectors on the camera lenses.
The 2 has a MASSIVE camera tumor. Glad the newer ones are easier to enshroud in a hard case
Which 2?
Not really. Unless you think dishes are planned obsolescence.
Now that you mention it, we live in the future! Where are my indestructible, microwave-safe, and machine-wash safe plates? Don’t say plastic, those get weird with high temperatures.
Superfest made them. None of the glass makers and distributers would buy them because they were practically indestructible, so they couldn’t see infinite sales.
You transport the dishes, sure, but do you eat from them while standing? I was specifically referring to handheld devices.
Wine glasses, yeah. And other drink glasses too. But yeah, I assume you mean handheld electronics, which even that is a stretch. Handheld CD players, camcorders, cameras, are all pretty fragile and I wouldn’t say they’re planned obsolescence. You just gotta be careful with fragile things. We use our phones way more often than any electronic device from the past, so more chance to drop them and notice how fragile they are.
Humans will break anything and everything that we use regardless of size shape or function just depends on how fast. Long as every piece is replaceable and repairable then it doesn’t matter if it breaks
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
There’s a constant race between inventors and the universe. Inventors are trying to create idiot proof devices, and the universe is creating better idiots.
The universe is winning.
Is dropping a smartphone from a standing height the work of an idiot? Sounds like something a smartphone designer might say, but I think OPs point is valid. Don’t even get me started on cases. Eventually history will look at smartphone cases the way we look at plastic on furniture from the 50s.
Uh, not really what planned obsolescence is.
Though I do wonder how much more durable they would be if corning made it 1 mm instead of 0.4 mm thick.
Manufacturers can also improve durability by recessing the screen slightly into a plastic frame, that way when the phone drops on its corner or side on a hard object, it will reduce the likelihood of it cracking.
Uh, not really what planned obsolescence is.
You’re right, but I couldn’t think of a short term for this. I found ‘bad’ design too broad, and it’s not ‘hostile’ design either.
Probably just designed to fail maybe?
I agree that there should be phones that prioritize sturdiness for clumsy people, but I see things like sturdiness and waterproof capabilities used as an excuse to get rid of useful features, and I don’t like it. I’ve had cell phones for over 2 decades, and I’ve never dropped one; having an SD card slot and headphone jack is much more important to me than durability, since I rarely hold it over water, and always make sure to keep a solid grip regardless of the circumstances.
Samsungs have been advertising water resistance to 10m for yeeeears with headphone jacks and sdcard slots. It’s not exclusive.
I’ve had cell phones for over 2 decades, and I’ve never dropped one
Pressing X to doubt.
Meh, I can see that, my dad is the same way, the trick is he hardly uses one and treats it like an OSHA situation when he’s operating it.
TBH it’s not the worst habit to have.
I guarantee you, he would still have dropped it at least once in two decades of use.
I call bullshit.
Yeah, no. The forces of suddenly being stopped even after a few feet can be extremely difficult to mitigate. Most electronics can survive being dropped once, but few are able tp be dropped multiple times, and ‘withstand being dropped’ sounds like it would cover multiple drops.
The surface matters too. Most electronics are fine dropped on carpet, but fail on concrete because the surfaces are different.
I’m using my old Nokia to this day. And why? Because “suddenly being stopped even after a few feet” wasn’t “difficult to mitigate” for Nokia. In the last 15 years this thing must have survived more than 100 drops, sometimes down a staircase. When I pick up the back cover, the battery and the SIM card, it’s as good as new.
