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Comment by pfooti | Hacker News Reader

Replaceable batteries are kind of a lost cause these days. You could buy some model-specific batteries and deal with rotating them around and charging them up and carrying them and rebooting your phone when you want to swap, or you could instead get a power brick that works with most/all of your devices and doesn't require swapping, and doesn't get obsoleted by a phone upgrade.

It doesn't solve every problem that a removable battery solves, but it solves enough of those problems that you're unlikely to see much demand for a removable battery anymore.

And remember that engineering the removable battery means engineering for a couple extra mm in thickness for the battery enclosure, which isn't needed in a tools-only or soldered-in kind of deal.

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> Replaceable batteries are kind of a lost cause these days.

But, this is the signature open and hacker-friendly phone! Sure removable batteries have fallen out of style in the mainstream, but this isn't a mainstream product.

But you still want to sell it. And more so, you want to please the majority. Oherwise you might be killing the product by picking a niche.

You're just as likely to kill the product by not targeting the niche. Trying to please the majority puts you in competition with the big players. This phone's specs, with the possible exception of the CPU/GPU (haven't looked into it), are a downgrade from the 6 year old Note 3. The only saving grace at the moment is GNU/Linux, separated baseband, and hardware kill switches. Is that going to be enough? If the battery removal tools aren't as simple as a screwdriver, it's already lost me.

But I'm in their target market and I don't want a replaceable battery. I just want the battery to be serviceable when it wear.

For a given phone size, a replaceable battery require some additional space which means it will be smaller than a non-replaceable one.

I don't want to buy one or two additional battery to carry with me when I can get a battery that last a bit longer and that I can charge with any power bank. (mine or the one of a friend as there is no compatibility problems)

Users who want replaceable battery are niche in the niche.

I highly doubt this phone is going to win the thinness wars anyway, so the space savings aren't going to be as relevant. It would be much smarter to differentiate themselves on features such as replaceable batteries, which the mainstream market has ignored precisely because they want to chase thinness.

The real question is, how many users want replaceable batteries, and is there enough overlap between that group and the audience for an OSS phone. I would imagine the overlap is significant, but without market research on the subject I don't know if I'm right.

I think the thickness is just a minor factor, but there are two major reasons why they are out of style:

1. Making the phone water and dust resistant is much easier without replaceable batteries

2. The manufacturers want to sell smartphones and replaceable batteries are probably the single feature which extends the lifetime of a smartphone the most

The first reason alone would be good enough for many consumers to give up on replaceable batteries but combined with the second reason we come to the situation we are currently in.

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