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      Minnesota enacts right-to-repair law that covers more devices than any other state

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 25 May, 2023 - 16:35 · 1 minute

    Hands on a circuit board, using multimeter probes to find errors

    Enlarge / Minnesota's right-to-repair bill is the first to pass in the US that demands broad access to most electronics' repair manuals, tools, and diagnostic software. Game consoles, medical devices, and other specific gear, however, are exempted. (credit: Getty Images)

    It doesn't cover video game consoles, medical gear, farm or construction equipment, digital security tools, or cars. But in demanding that manuals, tools, and parts be made available for most electronics and appliances, Minnesota's recently passed right-to-repair bill covers the most ground of any US state yet.

    The Digital Right to Repair bill , passed as part of an omnibus legislation and signed by Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday, "fills in many of the loopholes that watered down the New York Right to Repair legislation," said Nathan Proctor, senior director for the Public Interest Research Group's right-to-repair campaign, in a post .

    New York's bill, beset by lobbyists , was signed in modified form by Gov. Kathy Hochul . It also exempted motor vehicles and medical devices, as well as devices sold before July 1, 2023, and all "business-to-business" and "business-to-government" devices. The modified bill also allowed manufacturers to sell "assemblies" of parts—like a whole motherboard instead of an individual component, or the entire top case Apple typically provides instead of a replacement battery or keyboard—if an improper individual part installation "heightens the risk of injury."

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      iFixit’s iPhone 12 mini teardown finds shrunken components, smaller battery

      Samuel Axon · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 16 November, 2020 - 19:26

    iFixit has posted its teardown of the iPhone 12 mini, and it found inside what seems clear from the outside: a smaller version of the iPhone 12, with no missing features or components. However, some of those components—most notably the battery—are a bit smaller than they are in this phone's 6.1-inch big brother.

    iFixit found that the battery measures in at 8.57Wh. For comparison, the iPhone SE—which actually has a larger body—has a smaller 6.96Wh battery, whereas the much larger iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 Pro both have 10.78Wh batteries. This maps pretty closely to what battery tests have found: the iPhone 12 mini offers better battery life than an iPhone SE or iPhone 8, but it can’t beat its larger siblings.

    Other shrunk-down components found by iFixit include a smaller Taptic Engine and loudspeaker. Also, some display-related components have been moved around, and there are only two display cables (compared to the iPhone 12's three).

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      iFixit’s Apple Watch Series 6 teardown reveals oxygen sensor, Taptic Engine

      Samuel Axon · news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 22 September, 2020 - 19:20 · 1 minute

    The Apple Watch Series 6 isn't a radical leap forward from its predecessor. It adds a few new features, like blood-oxygen monitoring, but at its heart, it's the same Apple Watch people have been buying and wearing for a bit now. That said, repairability advocates (and repair-tool vendors) iFixit did a teardown of the Watch to find out just how different or similar it is inside.

    The verdict is that the Series 6 is indeed mostly the same Watch, with a few key differences. First, it opens a little differently—it "opens to the side like a book." This is a slightly different approach to getting inside the Watch. iFixit posits that this change may be possible in part because the hardware for Force Touch has been removed from the Watch, just as it was in recent iPhones. As with the iPhones, Apple has replaced Force Touch with long-presses.

    The battery is notably bigger, at 1.17Wh for the 44-millimeter model and 1.024Wh for the 40mm. That's a modest, single-point increase for both. There are fewer display cables to disconnect when disassembling the device, and there's a larger Taptic Engine in the Watch, too. And of course, iFixit found the pulse oximeter sensor inside.

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