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iFixit says the Switch 2 is even harder to repair than the original

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  • I really appreciate iFixit and how they help bring the discussion of repairability to the forefront.

    i was looking at them originally to fix my pixel 5a phone, than realize it wasnt worth the cost. not because ifixit, but because of the unreliability of the 5a at the time, i changed to a non-google phone this year.

  • Not to mention those things are expensive AF. If I had to replace a part on my car that cost 25% of the cost of the entire car EACH time, I would just not buy from that company any longer (which is what I’m doing). Not sure why this person is writing paragraphs and paragraphs of excuses for Nintendo.

    I mean, it's not a car. The joycon are expensive, but not THAT expensive. Still, they absolutely had to provide replacements to stick issues (which they did, to their credit).

    It's extra important on this run, because the new ones are even more expensive. They better last.

    Also, I'm writing responses to things people say, not excuses. Companies aren't football teams, I don't need to root for or against any of them.

  • Yeah, the EU has shown they're serious when it comes to consumer protections. It's great to see!

    For example, coming into effect in 12 days, on the 20th of June, for smartphones and tablets:

    • Durability: Devices should be resistant to accidental drops and protected against dust and water.

    • Battery longevity: Batteries must endure at least 800 full charge and discharge cycles while retaining at least 80% of their original capacity.

    • Repairability: Manufacturers must make critical spare parts available within 5 to 10 working days, and continue offering them for 7 years after the product is no longer sold in the EU.

    • Software support: Devices must receive operating system upgrades for at least 5 years from the end-of-sale date.

    • Repair access: Professional repairers must have non-discriminatory access to any required software or firmware.

    They will also have to include a sticker on packaging that has standardised information on it concerning energy efficiency, battery life, repeated drop test results, battery endurance in charging cycles, repairability score, and water/dust protection rating:

    Source

  • Nintendo has been the Apple of the video game world since the N64.

    NES actually, a good number of PC games got made because folks didn't want to deal with Nintendo and Sega arguably got into the market cause Nintendo was too strict in their publishing policy. That last bit is ironic given the AI slop and hentai on their online store, nothing against the hentai I just think it's funny.

  • I mean yeah, I wouldn't expect otherwise. Nobody hates their fans more than Nintendo does.

    Ironic because apparently the fan is actually pretty easily replaceable.

  • Even Apple makes more repairable hardware.

    Yeah once sued. They weren't going to offer it up otherwise, I suspect something similar is going to have to happen to Nintendo.

  • That's not even the biggest issue for me. The $80 games that never get discounted will cost a lot more than that pretty quickly. Plus I know they push their subscription service too.

    As a PC gamer, fuck that. I'll play cheap better games on my free operating system that I actually control on my hardware that I can repair and replace easily. Nintendo games interest me, but not nearly at the price they're asking for with what they're offering.

    Also on PC you don't need to pay a premium for mobile device parts if you have no need for them.

  • Battery life and weight. That’s what keeps me from getting a pc handheld. Although the switch 2 is so big I don’t know if that holds true anymore

    The switch 2 would have better battery life it was powered by the life force of a mayfly.

  • It's not planned obsolescence if your device is meant to last for decades. You could argue about the joycon if they had done that on purpose, but given that they ended up having to replace a bunch of them it seems pretty likely that their business model is to sell you four pairs to play with friends, not to keep reselling you more as they break.

    Nintendo's business is not based on the product becoming worse artificially to upsell you on a replacement. Their model is to keep making incremental replacements and then drop a generational upgrade every decade or so. That's not how planned obsolescence works. You don't get artificial performance degradation, deliberately fragile parts or artifical restrictions to repair via signed components. People can (and many do) repair Nintendo hardware on third party repair services with third party replacement parts, and from what iFixIt is saying that doesn't seem to have changed.

    Which is not to say Nintendo put ANY thought into repairability here. They clearly expect you to buy a Switch 2 and keep it until you buy a Switch 2 Lite. This thing is very new and that may yet change in both directions. But so far all I see here is the same old "we built this to be cheap and durable", which is fundamentally not Apple's "you'll buy one of these every two years and if it breaks you will come to us for a replacement and like it" approach.

    I mean, it's clearly not meant to last decades given the battery situation.

  • Probably depends entirely on what games you play, and how sensitive you are, but hall effects feel like trash and destroy the joycon battery life. I tried playing Celeste with hall effects and wooooow was it bad. Basically unplayable past the early chapters.

    As a fellow celete player, I'm sorry your experience was like that, but I'm also currently using hall effect sticks on both my 8bitdo ultimate and my guillikit kong 2, it feels absolutely mint on both with no tinkering. I'm gonna have to ask you to name and shame the hall effect sticks you're using, please. Thanks!

  • I mean, it's clearly not meant to last decades given the battery situation.

    You'd think, but I have Nintendo handhelds from the 2000s that still hold a charge fine, and so does my launch Switch 1, which is about a decade old.

    The Switch 2 is the first one of these they ship with a battery care charge mode, too, which is interesting. I think as they abandon their old single-threaded, no-multitasking design, for a more mobile-like architecture they're also having to make similar adjustments to their battery management, so it'll be interesting to see if the Switch 2 battery struggles with degradation more than older devices. It sure is more power hungry, and it does get hotter so you'd expect more charge cycles per year and less durability. It's going to be an open question for a while.

    Still not the worst battery health in a Nintendo product, no matter what happens. That'll always be the WiiU controller. That sytem laster just a couple of years and I still had to replace the battery for an aftermarket one and ended up using it plugged in anyway.

  • You'd think, but I have Nintendo handhelds from the 2000s that still hold a charge fine, and so does my launch Switch 1, which is about a decade old.

    The Switch 2 is the first one of these they ship with a battery care charge mode, too, which is interesting. I think as they abandon their old single-threaded, no-multitasking design, for a more mobile-like architecture they're also having to make similar adjustments to their battery management, so it'll be interesting to see if the Switch 2 battery struggles with degradation more than older devices. It sure is more power hungry, and it does get hotter so you'd expect more charge cycles per year and less durability. It's going to be an open question for a while.

    Still not the worst battery health in a Nintendo product, no matter what happens. That'll always be the WiiU controller. That sytem laster just a couple of years and I still had to replace the battery for an aftermarket one and ended up using it plugged in anyway.

    The problem with the battery is that it's glued in and requires basically destroying the foam it sits on, with no available replacement for the foam or specifications given AFAIK.

    Also, if we're just talking anecdotes here, I have at least two Nintendo devices from the 2000s that ended up with swollen batteries. This has actually reminded me that I might need to check again.

  • For example, coming into effect in 12 days, on the 20th of June, for smartphones and tablets:

    • Durability: Devices should be resistant to accidental drops and protected against dust and water.

    • Battery longevity: Batteries must endure at least 800 full charge and discharge cycles while retaining at least 80% of their original capacity.

    • Repairability: Manufacturers must make critical spare parts available within 5 to 10 working days, and continue offering them for 7 years after the product is no longer sold in the EU.

    • Software support: Devices must receive operating system upgrades for at least 5 years from the end-of-sale date.

    • Repair access: Professional repairers must have non-discriminatory access to any required software or firmware.

    They will also have to include a sticker on packaging that has standardised information on it concerning energy efficiency, battery life, repeated drop test results, battery endurance in charging cycles, repairability score, and water/dust protection rating:

    Source

    Does that go into effect for all devices on sale, or only for devices released after that date? Also, that software support section is great. That basically means all phones need atleast 6 years of support

  • I mean, it's not a car. The joycon are expensive, but not THAT expensive. Still, they absolutely had to provide replacements to stick issues (which they did, to their credit).

    It's extra important on this run, because the new ones are even more expensive. They better last.

    Also, I'm writing responses to things people say, not excuses. Companies aren't football teams, I don't need to root for or against any of them.

    They only provided replacements after the a class action lawsuit and specifically only replaced them in North America for the longest time. That was on July 2020. Five years later and the flaw is still there on brand new devices. There is nothing to applaud or give credit for.

    Edit: to say that $80 is not expensive is to be completely detached from reality. 28% of Americans have savings of less than $1,000.

  • Does that go into effect for all devices on sale, or only for devices released after that date? Also, that software support section is great. That basically means all phones need atleast 6 years of support

    Only new devices released after June 20th.

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    This was inevitable. Everybody who was ever going to buy a Switch has already bought one. How else are they going to make more money? Keep increasing prices and keep cutting costs (enshittification essentially). These two will be the centre of all big business for the coming years.

  • Probably depends entirely on what games you play, and how sensitive you are, but hall effects feel like trash and destroy the joycon battery life. I tried playing Celeste with hall effects and wooooow was it bad. Basically unplayable past the early chapters.

    It sounds like you used crappy hall effect sticks or have defective ones, to be honest.

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    I thought Nintendo devices were built like tanks, nes, snes, all old consoles are still playable. How long did the new Nintendo devices like switch last? I think the screen and battery are the main limit of devices life.

  • As a fellow celete player, I'm sorry your experience was like that, but I'm also currently using hall effect sticks on both my 8bitdo ultimate and my guillikit kong 2, it feels absolutely mint on both with no tinkering. I'm gonna have to ask you to name and shame the hall effect sticks you're using, please. Thanks!

    Buddy says they were gulikit, yes (wasn't my joycons). Tried them out on chapter 2 golden and some c sides. He liked them (didn't play anything like Celeste) but had noticed the reduced battery, I could feel the reduced polling rates sometimes causing latency and throwing off timings.

  • I thought Nintendo devices were built like tanks, nes, snes, all old consoles are still playable. How long did the new Nintendo devices like switch last? I think the screen and battery are the main limit of devices life.

    Lol nah, they might be generally well designed, but they've been making it all in China (until now for tariff bypass) for decades now, so you don't get the Japanese OEM quality shine you usually get out of other electronics.

    Most of the repair will be for damaged consoles. Switch 1 battery lasted pretty well considering most phone batteries begin to deteriorate around 4 years.

    Aside from that though, I expect the joycon drift issue to be unfixed which will be the real issue, especially as warranties expire.

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    Brother I live in western Europe and of the 6 supermarkets in my smallish city, 4 offer the handscanner. It's incredibly common here, and very convenient.
  • Why doesn't Nvidia have more competition?

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    It’s funny how the article asks the question, but completely fails to answer it. About 15 years ago, Nvidia discovered there was a demand for compute in datacenters that could be met with powerful GPU’s, and they were quick to respond to it, and they had the resources to focus on it strongly, because of their huge success and high profitability in the GPU market. AMD also saw the market, and wanted to pursue it, but just over a decade ago where it began to clearly show the high potential for profitability, AMD was near bankrupt, and was very hard pressed to finance developments on GPU and compute in datacenters. AMD really tried the best they could, and was moderately successful from a technology perspective, but Nvidia already had a head start, and the proprietary development system CUDA was already an established standard that was very hard to penetrate. Intel simply fumbled the ball from start to finish. After a decade of trying to push ARM down from having the mobile crown by far, investing billions or actually the equivalent of ARM’s total revenue. They never managed to catch up to ARM despite they had the better production process at the time. This was the main focus of Intel, and Intel believed that GPU would never be more than a niche product. So when intel tried to compete on compute for datacenters, they tried to do it with X86 chips, One of their most bold efforts was to build a monstrosity of a cluster of Celeron chips, which of course performed laughably bad compared to Nvidia! Because as it turns out, the way forward at least for now, is indeed the massively parralel compute capability of a GPU, which Nvidia has refined for decades, only with (inferior) competition from AMD. But despite the lack of competition, Nvidia did not slow down, in fact with increased profits, they only grew bolder in their efforts. Making it even harder to catch up. Now AMD has had more money to compete for a while, and they do have some decent compute units, but Nvidia remains ahead and the CUDA problem is still there, so for AMD to really compete with Nvidia, they have to be better to attract customers. That’s a very tall order against Nvidia that simply seems to never stop progressing. So the only other option for AMD is to sell a bit cheaper. Which I suppose they have to. AMD and Intel were the obvious competitors, everybody else is coming from even further behind. But if I had to make a bet, it would be on Huawei. Huawei has some crazy good developers, and Trump is basically forcing them to figure it out themselves, because he is blocking Huawei and China in general from using both AMD and Nvidia AI chips. And the chips will probably be made by Chinese SMIC, because they are also prevented from using advanced production in the west, most notably TSMC. China will prevail, because it’s become a national project, of both prestige and necessity, and they have a massive talent mass and resources, so nothing can stop it now. IMO USA would clearly have been better off allowing China to use American chips. Now China will soon compete directly on both production and design too.
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    I don't see Yarvin on here... this needs expansion.
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    Make them publishers or whatever is required to have it be a legal requirement, have them ban people who share false information. The law doesn't magically make open discussions not open. By design, social media is open. If discussion from the public is closed, then it's no longer social media. ban people who share false information Banning people doesn't stop falsehoods. It's a broken solution promoting a false assurance. Authorities are still fallible & risk banning over unpopular/debatable expressions that may turn out true. There was unpopular dissent over covid lockdown policies in the US despite some dramatic differences with EU policies. Pro-palestinian protests get cracked down. Authorities are vulnerable to biases & swayed. Moreover, when people can just share their falsehoods offline, attempting to ban them online is hard to justify. If print media, through its decline, is being held legally responsible Print media is a controlled medium that controls it writers & approves everything before printing. It has a prepared, coordinated message. They can & do print books full of falsehoods if they want. Social media is open communication where anyone in the entire public can freely post anything before it is revoked. They aren't claiming to spread the truth, merely to enable communication.
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  • Unlock Your Computer With a Molecular Password

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    One downside of the method is that each molecular message can only be read once, since decoding the polymers involves degrading them. New DRM just dropped. Imagine pouring rented movies into your TV like laundry detergent.
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