Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people, right on. - Power To the People, by John Lennon.
Last year I had an extremely stressful time finding a replacement battery for my smartphone - a Medion Life P4502 the discount supermarket Aldi had on special offer a couple of years ago. The phone itself was good value and well specced, performing without problems to date. However based on my experience of dealing with both Aldi and Medion UK I would advise against buying any item of technology made by Medion or their parent company Lenovo, even if it is sold at a bargain price by Aldi.
Smartphone batteries inevitably degrade over time. One of the reasons I chose the P4502 over the other models available was the fact that it had a user-replaceable battery so that when the original expired I could simply slot a new one in myself without having to back up the phone's data, wipe the device clean for security, and be without it for however long it took for a repair shop to fit a new one before returning to claim it and reinstalling the previously erased data. Or so I thought.
After two years use and the battery showing obvious signs of distress, I expected it would be easy to go online and order a replacement battery from one of the myriad cyber shops, but unfortunately that proved not to be the case. Somehow I had managed to inadvertently purchase a device so rare that no one could be bothered to stock replacement batteries for it - not even Medion UK who when I searched for the battery on their service portal informed me "Unfortunately, no available replacement parts could be found. The desired item is no longer produced and can unfortunately no longer be requested." When I phoned them to query this I was informed after a ten minute wait on hold they had none in their inventory, nor could they tell me when they might have them in again... So I contacted Aldi to ask if they could help; they bounced me back to Medion UK.
Despairing of such inept customer service and having had enough of writing scathing emails to companies who obviously didn't give a toss, I renewed my online search. I contacted obscure suppliers around the world, but most of my queries went unanswered or elicited a polite 'sorry we can't help you' reply. I focused especially on phone shops or repairers in Hong Kong; they being close to where the phone was likely to have been made and so hopefully a source of supply, but again I had no joy there. I decided to try both the company who manufactured the existing and now rapidly ailing battery, as well as any other possible candidates. My emails vanished into a Shenzhen black hole, apart from one to which the company replied they would be delighted to help - but the minimum order would be 1500 pieces. How fricken' difficult can it be to get hold of such a simple thing as a phone battery? Apparently it was all but impossible.
Then at last I thought I'd finally struck lucky; with a sigh of relief I placed an order with a supplier who claimed to have the item in stock - only to find that on delivery though the battery was labelled as suitable for my device, its dimensions were half the size of the previous unit. Depressed, I returned it.
I'd run into a brick wall; prevented from obtaining the battery I so urgently needed by a company who delighted in exerting a death grip stranglehold over their supply chain, precluding any alternative source of supply or choice of vendor for their consumers, of whom this one in particular was becoming extremely hacked off. I knew this was company policy for a fact thanks to contact with an 'official' service centre who replied I could have a new battery provided I sent the phone off to them and paid £50 for the moment's labour of installing a £20 replacement, even though I was quite able to do myself. My response suggesting they simply quote to supply and send me the battery remains unanswered to this day. It was especially galling knowing Medion were sitting on a stockpile of batteries somewhere, or else there had only been a limited production run of that specific type; but whatever the reason for the artificially contrived scarcity, to attempt to restrict their availability in such a manner is outrageous behaviour.
I was seriously considering paying the company's office a personal visit armed with a newly sharpened hatchet and a Molotov cocktail when I had a lateral thought: if Medion UK were utterly clueless wankers perhaps I might have better luck contacting the Medion GmbH parent company; German law might forbid the restrictive practices prevalent on 'Treasure Island' (the name mega corporations call the UK as a result of its laissez-faire culture of consumer abuse...) Within moments I'd found their service portal and thanks to the magic of Google translate ascertained the mythical item was indeed in stock. Seventy-two hours later one was installed in the very device I'm now writing this chapter with (with difficulty, but I want to prove a point!) and an office on the outskirts of Swindon was spared my wrath. For now.
So what lessons can drawn from this saga? The one I've taken to heart as a result of this is when considering buying a phone - even one with a supposedly replaceable battery - always check the availability of batteries for that particular model online before purchasing, and if your search doesn't return plenty of verifiable sellers with stocks in hand at that moment, don't buy it!
Though beyond that there is the wider issue of non user replaceable batteries proliferating throughout the smartphone industry to consider. The corporate spin is that they allow for slimmer handsets as well as allowing the battery and electronics to be sealed together as a water resistant unit. But I'm calling bullshit on that rationale; slimline replaceable batteries can be produced which would add little to a device's thickness, and in any case thicker phones are easier to grip, as well as being less prone to being bent while under strain in a pocket. As for waterproofing, if the battery is considered part of the 'outside' then all that is required is to design the internal shielding accordingly.
So why are non user-replaceable batteries becoming more common? The answer is corporate greed. How does a company make money from selling new products when the market has become saturated and people are generally happy with what they have at present? They introduce planned obsolescence, forcing consumers to buy replacements. As far as smartphones are concerned this means coercing the hapless masses into 'official' repair networks with their manufacturer preset pricing (£79 to get an older iPhone battery replaced! Yes, Apple agreed to reduce that to £29 in the wake of the Batterygate scandal, but I wonder how long that will last?) or the phone shops "...and as the battery is beginning to go, why not take this opportunity to upgrade? Sign there on a two year contract..."
The practice is ethically and environmentally wrong. It eliminates choice, creating a relationship of customer dependency and infantalises grown adults who are more than capable of prising the back off a phone, given the option to do so. More to the point, I'm not having it! Before I managed to source a replacement battery, one of my friends offered to solder in place any nearly-but-not-quite-fitting battery I could find; it wouldn't have been an ideal solution but it would've kept my phone going. I also discovered via YouTube the inventive solutions people who had suffered similar woes to mine had come up with: Try searching along the lines of 'how to use a different cellphone battery' to find out for yourself; some of the videos may be in a foreign language, but it being a visual medium you'll be able to work out how they did it.
So fellow strugglers for 'the right to repair' I salute you! Like you I refuse to throw away an otherwise perfectly working device because a lack of replacement batteries! I won't be dictated to by a bunch of exploitative bastards! It may be a difficult battle to fight, to persuade consumers and the companies themselves that their long term interests are best served by maintaining removable batteries and hopefully standardising the many different types produced at present, but it's one we can win. Power to the people, right on!
