I was speaking generally of most consumer goods that have cheapened on design and materials, but to address phones…
While the material of the shell was plastic, there were huge differences in both shape, density (bakelite has different compressive properties than polyurethane) as well as engineering.
IE, the shells of lets say, and old 1985 motel phone, were made of pretty thick bakelite or poly plastic, and the insides were made of very simple metal and copper wiring, there were no integrated circuits, there were no moving parts, no computers, no video screens, no charging ports, no boards with parts, they were almost entirely mechanical, the function of the keys only served to send signal tones and didn’t connect to anything more advanced than a switchboard somewhere. That’s why they could withstand a lot of abuse.
Modern electronics, including the rare home landline phones we have now, are made of much thinner polyurethane or styrene shells, they have almost entirely solid-state parts inside, chips and boards that capacitors can come loose from, charging ports that can break off the housing and make shorts in connections, wiring isn’t designed to withstand someone accidentally yanking the whole thing, they have LCD screens and are basically just more fragile in all regards.
The issue has a lot more to do with the wider array of consumer goods though, like vacuum cleaners or microwave ovens and home goods that are supposed to last for years and years, but tend to break after only a couple years, and this is now by design.
Mechanical bells in phones were nice. If you slammed the phone on the receiver you would get a nice ring from them.
People also didn’t own the phones themselves. They were usually rented from the phone company as part of the service contract. So the phone companies had an incentive to buy sturdy equipment. Consumers buying things for themselves often buy the cheapest they can, resulting in lower quality. Yes, lots of products today are worse than they could be, consumer demand for cheap devices plays a role here as well.
microwave ovens
There are only a handful of companies making the core component magnetrons. Various brands just package it differently.
My Bosch vacuum cleaner is 11 years old and works great. The only problem it has is weaker cable retraction. My Bosch washing machine is 7 years old and works fine. My Samsung fridge is 5 years old and great. My Miele dishwasher is at least 15 years old and works great. My no name brand cheap toaster is 17 years old and works great. So from personal experience, I think this is acceptable.
I never had a microwave magnetron give out, they last far longer than the plastic housing, plastic handles, hollow frames and thin plastic films over the buttons. I’ve also lost five vacuum cleaners of various brands in the last decade, full on smoke and melted plastic. Only Dyson has lasted more than a decade.
And I also realized that by discussing the durability of branded houseware, I am absolutely too old to be on the internet anymore.
Nowadays, we see the answer to the question “What if we made the hinges plastic?” in almost everything we do, everywhere we go.
Landline phones were mostly plastic and took lots of abuse for years just fine.
I was speaking generally of most consumer goods that have cheapened on design and materials, but to address phones…
While the material of the shell was plastic, there were huge differences in both shape, density (bakelite has different compressive properties than polyurethane) as well as engineering.
IE, the shells of lets say, and old 1985 motel phone, were made of pretty thick bakelite or poly plastic, and the insides were made of very simple metal and copper wiring, there were no integrated circuits, there were no moving parts, no computers, no video screens, no charging ports, no boards with parts, they were almost entirely mechanical, the function of the keys only served to send signal tones and didn’t connect to anything more advanced than a switchboard somewhere. That’s why they could withstand a lot of abuse.
Modern electronics, including the rare home landline phones we have now, are made of much thinner polyurethane or styrene shells, they have almost entirely solid-state parts inside, chips and boards that capacitors can come loose from, charging ports that can break off the housing and make shorts in connections, wiring isn’t designed to withstand someone accidentally yanking the whole thing, they have LCD screens and are basically just more fragile in all regards.
The issue has a lot more to do with the wider array of consumer goods though, like vacuum cleaners or microwave ovens and home goods that are supposed to last for years and years, but tend to break after only a couple years, and this is now by design.
Mechanical bells in phones were nice. If you slammed the phone on the receiver you would get a nice ring from them.
People also didn’t own the phones themselves. They were usually rented from the phone company as part of the service contract. So the phone companies had an incentive to buy sturdy equipment. Consumers buying things for themselves often buy the cheapest they can, resulting in lower quality. Yes, lots of products today are worse than they could be, consumer demand for cheap devices plays a role here as well.
There are only a handful of companies making the core component magnetrons. Various brands just package it differently.
My Bosch vacuum cleaner is 11 years old and works great. The only problem it has is weaker cable retraction. My Bosch washing machine is 7 years old and works fine. My Samsung fridge is 5 years old and great. My Miele dishwasher is at least 15 years old and works great. My no name brand cheap toaster is 17 years old and works great. So from personal experience, I think this is acceptable.
I never had a microwave magnetron give out, they last far longer than the plastic housing, plastic handles, hollow frames and thin plastic films over the buttons. I’ve also lost five vacuum cleaners of various brands in the last decade, full on smoke and melted plastic. Only Dyson has lasted more than a decade.
And I also realized that by discussing the durability of branded houseware, I am absolutely too old to be on the internet anymore.
The old heavy ones were bakelite
Bakelite is plastic