Palm Pre Plus not great for the environment? 71
by Dieter Bohn Wed, 25 Aug 2010 11:49 am EDT
Gizmodo points out that O2 UK has started publishing 'ecoratings' for many of their phones (but not, notably, BlackBerrys or the iPhone). Sadly, on their scale of 1 to 5, the Palm Pre Plus clocks in at the bottom with a lowly 2.7. O2 takes in a number of factors in determining their rating, from packaging to materials to supply chain issues to the manufacturer's 'social inclusion and community.'
As we said, we can't see how the Pre Plus stacks up against the iPhone or BlackBerry devices, but seeing it score so poorly compared to HTC, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung is a little disheartening.
Would a 'Ecorating' factor into your next smartphone purchase?
Source: O2 UK; via Gizmodo; Thanks to everybody who sent this in!
71 Comments
>>>Would a 'Ecorating' factor into your next smartphone purchase?
No.
they may as well call it the "BS rating". Judging by the description it sounds like 90% of the rating is based on subjective factors.
I feed baby kittens to my Pre+ to charge the battery. I also pay tribute to verizon so they won't break more than the gps with the update, if there ever is an update
this would not factor in to my decision one bit. Even if this would be a factor I would think my cell phone would be very low on my list of products that would need to change.
we (human being) Start destroying this planet 100 million years before so what diference can make this or another phone.
this is crazy BP spill by "accident" more than 10 million of barrel of crude in the gulf and we are worried about the "ecorating" on a smartphone.
I think it should be calling a dumphone then
+1 Anyone actually worried about an "ecorating' of a phone really need to get a life.
Mammals were still scampering around avoiding dinosaurs 100 million years ago. Human ancestors didn't start evolving until a couple of million years ago, were probably nearly wiped out except for a few thousand survivors 70,000 years ago, and only started agriculture about 10,000 years ago.
You're free to be negative about these things, but maybe spouting off like this isn't the best way to do it. Even if you were exaggerating for effect, it still makes you look uneducated.
+1
Global warming is a hoax. But "educated" people like you don't even care, do you?
absolutely not.
Frankly I don't give a crap. Go away tree-huggers!
There's only one scenario where this would impact my purchase decision. If a phone somehow managed to score somewhere in the 0-2 range on the 5 pt. scale, I'd have to consider buying the phone on that basis alone.
If some eco-nut with a political agenda is so AGAINST a phone, that by itself is reason enough for me to buy it.
I'm with ya!
It's a factor, but a small one. I wonder whether they considered that most Android phones seem to stop getting updates/support after about a year which often prompts the users to purchase a new phone while the current one is still usable. This planned obsolescence is one of the most popular and most environmentally harmful sales strategies ever devised.
Well put. Lots of smartphones getting sent to the landfills.
I'm glad the Pre ranks low on the list. When you start worrying about eco crap too much, that becomes a higher priority than actually making the device perform well. I don't care how eco-unfriendly it is... just as long as it works and it's not giving me cancer.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. It's meant only to appease the ever-guilty liberal conscience.
it wouldn't make much difference to me, really. So long as people buy full size SUVs to drive around one or two people, me owning a smartphone doesn't seem so awful.
what is this idiot talking about?... It's a rating that no Palm Pre users seem to care about (liberal or conservative)...
but I do hope that the next Pre have dual exhaust! ...lol
a small factor perhaps, but worker suicides at the manufacturing plant would be a larger factor.
Did anyone else notice that this "lowly" rating of 2.7/5 is still better than half (2.5/5)? It could've done worse.
And why aren't they rating the iPhone and Blackberries? I suspect RIM and Apple weren't happy with their ratings and threw their weight around....
Screw the environment...
(My comment is a little biased... My allergies are going crazy today so I am wishing death on everything in the environment.)
Amen to that. :D I hate my allergies!
If they didn't include the iPhone and BB, this rating is suspect and thus, meaningless.
No
I'm honestly stunned that a carrier would go to this route. First of all, eco-friendly would only make the difference in a purchase decision if everything else were COMPLETELY even. Second, putting such a subjective rating on a handset would just anger the manufacturers rated lower, leading to tons of problems.
Why the hell is this out there?
It's a European carrier. Euros tend to factor in the environment much more than Americans (or even Canadians).
Yeah, those Euro's racing semi tractors around and running witches brew in Formula 1 cars, that's all low impact stuff right? I love the BMW commerical that talks about fuel economy, passing people waiting for buses, riding bicycles, standing on trains, so that the Euro can get to work in his (not so) fuel efficient car, ALONE! At least, if Euro's are so green, show the smuck car pooling.
Anyway, my excessive bathing has a greater impact on the environment than my phone. I guess I'll never be, or smell, as eco-savvy as the Euros.
I would consider environmental impact in my decision, if I could do it reliably, but it would, perhaps unfortunately, be a subordinate factor.
First, I'd have to have confidence in the "rightnes" of the eco-rating.
After that, I'd have to consider the phone's capabilities and my needs/wants in a phone. 'course, if it's the only option in it's market segment with webOS, I might not consider anything else...
...In any case, I'd definitely not dismiss environmental impact with "not my problem", or "one little phone isn't going to make a difference", or "who cares about the environment", or "stupid liberal agenda". Every person, every little decision contributes to the problem or helps. I don't see how anyone can abdicate responsibility for their impact on the environment.
Again, assuming the correctness of the environmental impact assessment, even if I choose a phone that's less environmentally-friendly than another phone, I'd still regret the loss to the environment and my relatively hurtful choice.
IDK... the Pre scored nearly 3 out of 5, so I'd say it's doing OK. It would be helpful if the individual component scores were published for each phone, and how O2 arrived at those scores.
Overall, I wouldn't base my purchase decision on this rating.
They are bad for the environment because they are made of cheap plastic and you have to throw away so many of them.
that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Not remotely related to my choice.
especially when they conveniently leave out BB and iPhone.
notice apple doesn't allow user reviews of their products on the at&t website. Same deal. Bad news is suppressed by the big dogs. They clearly thing smartphone buyers are idiots.
Not even the smallest consideration....
I especially like the part about 'social inclusion and community'... So sony's outsourced factory in china polutes less than Palm's outsourced factory. And 'inclusion' doesn't apply to including adobe or jailbreaking users? This story wasn't even worth printing...
*cough* would it factor into my purchase you say? Uh, NO! ON the other hand, the SAR would. I like the fact that every phone Palm has put out had a lower SAR than the one before. I hope that trend continues. Maybe they could even get it down in the Samsung like ranges of below .7.
I still want to know what went into this rating, it should get a 10/5 based on community alone...
I especially like the part about 'social inclusion and community'... So sony's outsourced factory in china polutes less than Palm's outsourced factory. And 'inclusion' doesn't apply to including adobe or jailbreaking users? This story wasn't even worth printing...
Would a 'Ecorating' factor into your next smartphone purchase?.....
Let me think about this....no
ARE YOU KIDDING ME!? An ecorating system? Honestly we have bigger non eco-friendly things to worry about like BPs sloppyness.. Refinery pollution.. Chemical pollution,, toxic waste and so on.. Honestly where does a smartphone weighing in a few ounces and packaging weighing a few more ounces rank in there?
are the Eurohippies that bored they come up with some wacked "ecorating" that they won't rate the iphone or blackberry on because they probally own either or and don't want to look bad?
some ecorating has no way of helping me make a smartphone decision. I recycle my old phones. I keep all the packaging and when I get a new phone I hold onto the old one and give the previous phone I was holding to someone that needs a decent phone and get off some crappy feature trac phone. I haven't thrown a phone or it's packaging away in 10years.
Even bad ESN ones can be recycled to be useful... How is that not environmental friendly?
exactly ToniCipriani.. Honestly for once I think everyone of us here making comments have all agreed on something for the first time.. Lmao
now that I think about it, this WOULD impact my decision... I would not buy a phone or service from a carrier dumb enough to publish such nonsense, especially with no info on the two biggest vendors.
so O2 would lose my business if I lived in the UK.
I wonder how many Foxcon suicides would factor into the iPhone's score...
YES I do care. But O2's rating-methods are a joke.
It would actually take two of me to care any less. Then again, I profit greatly from a company that makes millions of dollars a day raping Mother Earth.
Impacts to the environment are very difficult to assess. Check this blog, which argues price is the best way:
http://www.thebigquestions.com/2010/08/23/loco-vores/
OK If they are talking about the hardware of the pre then i can see why it got such a low rating, but compare WebOS to the OS of the other smartphones and WebOS is ahead of the curve in my opinion. I use my Pre for business and it's great. I do things on this phone i wouldn't be able to do with an Iphone or Blackberry. I can have my calendar, contacts, email all open at once all while being on gchat.
I just wish reply emails were grouped together like they are in Gmail.
No way. Ecoratings are for tree huggers!
While we're dumping millions of gallons of oil into the gulf does anyone really care how ecosmart their cellphone maker is? Oh no we're killing the earth by buying a cellphone. Someone needed to make up a new job title in a hurry. "Hey we've got a whole crew of people with no jobs well i am thinking of rating how ecofriendly all cellphone manufacturers are and you're leading the division." Lol it's ridiculous!
now that I think about it, this WOULD impact my decision... I would not buy a phone or service from a carrier dumb enough to publish such nonsense, especially with no info on the two biggest vendors.
so O2 would lose my business if I lived in the UK.
sorry for the duplicate
No offense...but this article seems more eco-threatening than my wonderful and environmentally beneficial Palm Pre does... :) I mean, ever since I got it I find myself using less styrofoam, less hairspray and chemicals, and less water. I also find that I throw paper in the trash and aluminum in the recycle bin more often, and I have since stopped hunting animals and even stepping on bugs. Oh, and I hit my wife much less frequently too. I love my Pre, and my Pre loves me.
Seriously..that is close to being the dumbest thing I've ever read.
+1
No impact at all. It's a small phone, not a massive item (even when numbered in the the hundreds of thousands).
Better off rating larger items - such as the Toyota Prius, which has a good rating if you consider the end user only, and terrible if you consider the actual manufacturing and end-of-life environmental costs that product has ...
Yes, it's irresponsible.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA............no!
and this is coming for an avid peta member/animal lover/nature lover.
Sorry i can give up alot of things for the enviorment.....my palm phone is not one of those things.
We all may think this kind of thing is stupid, but the bleating masses and the politicians leading them around by the nose definitely take it seriously.
I shouldn't be surprised that in a few years people are forced to recycle by law, and we will not see a dime of the money made or saved by recycling.
I hate politicians and this "Green Movement" is ALL about Green, Green money that is.
There's no 'Like' button...soo...
*like* :D
Maybe instead of alternative fuels and energy, we can focus on phone radio efficiency. That would wipe the pollution off this planet.
I power my pre using unobtanium that I killed some blue losers for. Had to knock down some giant tree to get it.
it is settled then.. no one gives a $hit! gah!
Haha. That eco rating is laughable. I don't care about the packaging, I care about what's in the packaging.
That rating will have zero impact on whether or not I buy a phone.
Hell No! If I want a phone I will buy whatever phone I want.
Not at all!
You know what's worse for the environment by far? It's not "supply chain issues" or "social community inclusiveness" (which we all know is nothing more than fluffing up your marketing and talking a big game without actually backing it up with actions).
It's a marketing plan where you are socially normed into buying a new phone every 6 months. Where do the old ones go? Recycling? Cell phone heaven? Nope. The majority end up in the landfill, chock full of lead and other things that aren't so good for the earth. And when you're burning through phones at a clip of 2 a year, you're suffering from manufacturing environmental cost at a rate that is two times as fast as I am with my Pre.
But here's the thing...the real value of webOS is that it is a lightweight OS (for the most part, in comparison to its competition that tries to do a lot of work client side...connecting to server hosted web services to do the real data chugging and limiting the client to data presentation is what I'm talking about here) that encourages the majority of the work to be done server side. This means that you don't HAVE to buy a new phone so often just to keep up with the various OS upgrades and such because even an older version will run the latest OS upgrades reasonably well. That's a whole lot better for the environment...and as soon as Palm nails down the hardware quality so you can basically use the same phone for a few years, that's a reality.
Ever heard of Rohs compliance? Seeing as how PALM is selling items in the EU, I doubt there is any lead in the phones.
In fact, save for a few craptastic Chinese wannabes, almost everyone sells goods to the EU. As a result, they must be RoHS compliant, meaning that lead, zinc, and other heavy metals (Lead, Zinc, Cadmium, hexovalent chrome, and many others) are not allowed into devices that will see service 'over there'.
Also of noteworthy importance is that most companies recognize that having separate manufacturing lines for phones WITH toxic metals, and WITHOUT is more expensive than just excluding the offending elements -- there are few 'global' items made today with such offensive materials included in their manufacture. Save for those items which rely upon those pesky pollutants (-ion batteries, including Li-Poly, li-ion, LiS, and others -- funny, those peculiar 'green' cars use these highly toxic batteries too) to be useful. But, since most 'green' cars these days use those types of batteries, we can turn a blind eye to them ;)
Even most of todays' solders don't use lead, or antimony as they used to, but are tin and other additives (to lower melting point) which are high not-so-aggressive-sounding-metals so that we can live fear-free of the dangers of capitalism and consumerism.
/factoid of the day.
Here in Arizona, we did something about the environment: we got rid of it.
Ever since then, everyone has been a helluva lot happier.
hey phreakish are you talking about mother nature environment or illegal immigrant environment?
Yes. On the scheme of things I'd rank that over a lot of the differences between different phones (say, a slightly larger screen or slightly faster phone). If Palm wants to show that it can compete in the future it has take note of what consumers (and regulators) of the future will look at. I seriously doubt it would break their bank to raise their ecoprofile a touch more.