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Comment by KirinDave | Hacker News Reader

It's somewhat frustrating to hear folks patiently explaining the customer benefit of this as if the audience was 5, talking about how aged batteries aren't as good and balancing device replacement vs performance. They're forgetting the plot:

We're in this mess because Apple decided that replaceable batteries were not in its best interests. It then applies further technical fixes as a consequence. All of these fixes decrease the longevity of the device as a consequence.

But hey, our phones are 0.05cm thinner and yay, they're 2% cheaper for Apple to manufacture. Whew.

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iPhone batteries are replaceable. They're not trivially swapped by the user the way they are in some phones, but Apple will replace them for $79, many third parties will do it for cheaper, and technically-minded people can pretty easily do it themselves.

This is unrelated to replaceable batteries. Apple would want to do this anyway, because not everyone will replace their battery (which costs money even on phones designed to make it trivial) at the slightest sign of trouble.

Oh yes. I forgot. You can pay a service fee to have your device performance and battery life uncapped "responsibly." Apple even licences the technicians.

Of course, since the many folks are extremely inconvenienced without a phone for a day or two for servicing, I wonder how good the uptake on the post-warranty battery replace really is. It's a 1 hour operation to replace-and-upgrade.

I’m pretty sure they replace it while you wait.

Last time I did it (2 weeks ago) they asked us to leave it overnight, and then it wasn't ready.

What Apple charges to replace the battery is roughly what a replaceable battery from Apple would cost.

The time Apple takes to replace the batter is roughly how long it would take me to unpackaged a replaceable battery myself.

The only drawback to Apple's choice (and incidentally just about every other manufacturer's as well) is that I have to drive to a location rather than having a replacement battery delivered.

So there's a drawback, but it's not as drastic as people seem to imagine. I suspect most people are just unaware that Apple (or third parties) will perform this task so cheaply.

Don't forget that this (in their words) "feature" was only announced after it was found by users, not before.

And it's now somehow the users' fault for jumping to conclusions.

It is a feature. There was code specifically written to do this. As annoyed as OP may be about people explaining tradeoffs, this is a tradeoff.

Undocumented and confusing to paying customers, only acknowledged after third-party investigation.

I agree that it is a feature. If shutdowns are a thing, I'd rather have this feature than not.

I emphasized that they call it a feature because they've hidden it and refused to admit it until decent proof appeared. Which is just shady.

On the other hand, Apple has seen time and time again that thinner phone deliver more profits. Maybe people complaining about performance will have an impact this time! One can hope. Also, I was under the impression that you can replace batteries - you just need to bring the phone to Apple. Ifixit has a 30 minute procedure that you can do on the 7 as well, without bringing it in.

One of the benefits of non-replaceable batteries is they can make better use of the available space. For the same sized phone, they will always give a larger capacity over a swappable battery. While I agree there are downsides to glued in batteries there are upsides as well. Apple (and every other phone manufacturer pretty much) has made the decision that most phones get replaced in 3-4 years anyway so for the extra capacity it is worth the battery failing in 2.5-3 years.

Users make their own decisions about retirement of their purchased devices. Even if security updates are stopped, users can use their device offline.

Fine, poor phrasing from me. I should have said "Apple, and most phone makers, have seen that most phones get replaced in 3-4 years and so they have made the decision to glue their batteries in place to get extra capacity" - Apple is a mass market device, there is little upside to them designing for the small niche of people who want to run their phone into the ground and not upgrade.

Little upside until that “small niche” started reverse engineering the behavior of software that Apple designed explicitly to address this segment of their paying customers.

"Since phones get replaced anyways let's make it so phones MUST be replaced."

Not a fan of this logic.

The batteries are replaceable, by Apple or an authorized service store. They're also replaceable by unauthorized third parties if you want to roll the dice on batteries from China.

They aren't user replaceable and that is 100% the correct design choice.

Why do you think that its the correct design choice? I never had a problem with all of my older phones that had replaceable batteries. Same with sim cards, we are saving so little space and they are now a lot fiddlier to handle and instead of one new size we have two. I don't see the benefit.

I can’t remember a single phone with a replaceable battery that did not need tape to fix it after a year of usage... and I never bought a replacement battery.

Your experience is either imaginary or ridiculously atypical. Its literally not a real thing. Devices with replaceable batteries don't normally fall apart unless you are in the habit of dropping them all the time. This isn't a design consideration or a justification.

Phones are designed without user replaceable batteries because it makes it slightly cheaper to manufacture, generates revenue from users who require replacement, and makes it less desirable to keep an existing device vs buying a new one.

My Nokia 6230i (which I still sometimes use as a backup), Nexus S, Xperia Pro, and LG F3Q would disagree with that assessment. Maybe treat your devices a bit better?

Well if you personally didn't have a positive experience with such a phone, then I guess it's axiomatically impossible!

The current designs allow for fitting more battery into a smaller space because the available space can be non-contiguous and can contain odd angles while a replaceable battery comes in whatever shape you want as long as the shape is rectangular. By not having accessible batteries the vendor can seal the phone much better and increase its water-resistance. Your older phones were larger, heavier, not water-resistant, and had one more set of user-accessible failure points.

> They aren't user replaceable and that is 100% the correct design choice.

Why? Imagine that Apple sold batteries at cost, so people replaced the battery in their phone instead of throwing away the whole phone. The only loser would be Apple, since they sell fewer phones.

So for whom is it the correct design choice, Apple or its customers?

Why is this 100% the correct design choice? People are capable of changing the batteries in their remote. They are capable of doing the same with batteries in phones.

> The batteries are replaceable, by Apple or an authorized service store

Ah yes, it'd be a shame if Apple didn't get a pound of flesh from the service techs who pay for the license. Very good point.

It's 100% the correct design choice if your goal is to perpetually force users to upgrade. But hey, at least the phone is sliiiightly slimmer. Because what everyone's desperately been asking for is a slightly slimmer phone.

Can you explain WHY its the correct design choice.

Unfortunately that is what consumers are funding. There are a lot of compromises that decrease the longevity of the phone for a svelte sleek look. For instance phones made of metal and glass with no bezels that break on fall (phones are dropped a lot).

If consumers demanded replaceable batteries by only buying phones that had them, Apple would not be selling all these phones.

Until now, consumers had no proof that Apple devices were engineered to be (non-optionally!) slower as the device ages, rather than the expected behavior of shorter battery life as the device ages.

The batteries are totally replaceable; they're just not easy to replace, and you'll void your warranty if you try to replace it yourself. Except, if its under warranty and needs replaced, Apple will do it for free.

What's your point again? To create drama? Right, that's what I thought.

It will 100% need to be replaced after the warranty runs out. And Apple charges a fee to people who want to claim they're "licensed" service technicians, and you need to work at such a certified shop to get genuine parts.

My point is: it's a fantastically anti-user-interest system and yet another example of the perpetual forced obsolescence that people refuse to call Apple on. And their groundbreaking work in forced obsolescence and PR aircover has made it acceptable for every other phone manufacturer to follow suit. Hooray!

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