For the physical part? A couple cents per phone sold.
But it’s also one less part for for the circuit board designers to accomodate in their ever-shrinking layouts, one less part to inventory, track, and warehouse, one less behavior to verify by Q&A, one less SW and/or HDL code module to maintain, etc etc etc. When you look at the entire design, verification, and manufacturing process, multiplied by millions of units, every part and behavior carries a cost.
There are plenty of valid reasons to crap on the major phone manufacturers, especially when they take away features and capabilities we like. But “it’s just one small part” usually isn’t one of them.
I miss the LED for sure. How much money could that have possibly saved?
For the physical part? A couple cents per phone sold.
But it’s also one less part for for the circuit board designers to accomodate in their ever-shrinking layouts, one less part to inventory, track, and warehouse, one less behavior to verify by Q&A, one less SW and/or HDL code module to maintain, etc etc etc. When you look at the entire design, verification, and manufacturing process, multiplied by millions of units, every part and behavior carries a cost.
There are plenty of valid reasons to crap on the major phone manufacturers, especially when they take away features and capabilities we like. But “it’s just one small part” usually isn’t one of them.