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Comment by neogodless | Hacker News Reader

Uh... removable batteries?!

I jest, but my best hope for a stagnant market is competition on merits that we really want, and less so for the whizz-bang features that attract attention without improving our lives.

I've got a used Nexus 6P with a dying battery. I don't know of any improvements in newer phones I need (except security updates!) but I'm torn whether I want to learn how to replace the battery and risk damage, or shell out some bucks for a local repair shop to do it.

Let new phones come out that are "as good as" the current phones, but reintroduce features we had to "give up" to get them this good. Batteries, useful I/O ports, comfortable shapes to fit our faces...

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Save up for a replacement. My 6P just started the boot loop of death. I was using it for navigation, closed the screen and put it down for an hour, picked it back up and it was boot looping. I had that 6P for 2.5 years and even replaced the battery. I just spent a lot of money on a vacation so I wasn't really ready to drop a bunch of money on another flagship-type device. I ended up buying a Moto G7 Power. It's almost the same specs as the 6P which is fine for me, I don't do much intensive stuff on there anyway, but it does have a massive 5000mAh battery which I think I'm going to love above all else.

As for battery replacement, I had a university electronics lab at my disposal. I used a heatgun to heat the top and bottom panels on the back. It wasn't the easiest but the guides online are thorough. One thing I would recommend is letting the phone cool in a bag with some silica gel packets before sticking the back glass panel on. I had some moisture develop inside the camera lens which led to some water spots. It didn't ruin the camera but picture quality degraded a little bit.

Why did batteries stop being replaceable again?

I'm guessing it makes the design of the phone circuitry easier? You don't have to make the case removable?

The idea that it forces you to buy a new phone never seemed like a good reason to me.

Phone batteries are replaceable. Just not directly by end-users (well, not most end-users).

There are design tradeoffs to make the batteries user-replaceable. E.g., the batteries are going to need a casing and socket that make them OK for users to handle and replace. The phone's going to need additional casing pieces, latches, and seals, etc. The phone's going to be a little bigger, heavier and more expensive. Maybe not a great tradeoff for something needed once every 2-3 years.

I just looked up and Apple is charging $50-$70 to replace your battery, depending on the model. So ~$25-$45 more expensive than a cheap DIY kit from amazon. Considering the various risks of DIY, that's really not that bad to do once every 2-3 years, IMO.

What you call "design tradeoffs" is what consumers call "basic features". I can't think of a single phone before the iPhone that had non-replaceable batteries. Samsung and LG had replacement slots on their flagships all the way up to 2014/15. You had someone a 2014 LG G3 today, and I doubt anyone would complain about the weight or the size, especially when the top-line iPhone has a 6.5 inch screen.

> Maybe not a great tradeoff for something needed once every 2-3 years.

The use case for a replaceable battery is for emergency situations, not just when the original stops holding a charge. I would much rather go back to that time when I could discreetly slip in a replacement than have to use a phone attached to a giant brick with a flimsy USB cable.

> ...what consumers call "basic features"

Consumers are the ones who have insisted — with their wallets — that they prefer phones without user-swappable batteries.

This is correct, at face value. However, the comparison is usually this:

Option 1:

- has a removable battery, headphone jack and/or stereo speakers

- security / OS updates stop in 6 months (or never happen or are years behind)

- camera is OK

- getting kind of slow

- proprietary version of Android with bloatware

Option 2:

- no removable battery, headphone jack or stereo speakers

- security / OS updates for 2-3 years

- camera is better in low light

- it's fast right now

It's like evolution, except there aren't enough options and the timeline is too short and bad features are too coupled with good features.

Consumers have "insisted" on that in the same way they've insisted on having more hormones, preservatives and color treatments in their food.

Companies have switched to non-replaceable batteries because it's good for their bottom line. It's definitely market forces that are in play, but not the ones in the textbooks where consumers hold all the cards.

Yeah. A lot of "voting with your wallet" boils down to "Buy this crap and kvetch about it ...or, I guess, have nothing?"

I think that's a stretch. I don't think that consumers insisted on this at all. I think that they were simply willing to put up with it.

> Maybe not a great tradeoff for something needed once every 2-3 years.

The case for user-replaceable batteries isn't just to be able to replace them when they wear out. It's also to be able to carry a spare or two for when you want to use the device for an extended period of time. (No, external power banks don't really address this use case).

> external power banks don't really address this use case

Can you elaborate on why not? For me they address it far better than swapping out the internal battery, since you don't have to interrupt that extended use by powering down the phone to make the switch. They're also way easier to recharge simultaneously, without needing a bank of dummy phones.

Because with power banks, you either have to keep it attached to the power bank during use or wait for the bank to recharge your phone.

The best solution to this I've found is the moto Z series of phones. Integrated battery and an external battery that attaches to the back with magnets. I don't really use the other mods but there's a battery attached to the back of my phone all the time and a spare in my bag.

Replacing dead batteries is different than the UX of being able to swap empty batteries with fully charged ones so your phone is never left charging on a charger for hours, only one of multiple batteries are. Plus when travelling or away from the charger you could carry multiple with you in a bag.

But I get what you’re saying otherwise.

I get what you're saying, but most modern chargers solve this problem.

I plug my phone into a usb-c charger for 10 minutes and I've got 2~3 hours of charge.

If I really need to be away for a long period, a portable battery pack works just fine (still only needs to be plugged in for a few minutes to get me hours of charge).

I don't really have problems with my battery dying during normal use. I DO have problems with gradually reduced battery life as the battery degrades.

> Why did batteries stop being replaceable again?

Because it reduces the cost of production.

For a few reasons:

1. There is an industry drive to make phones thinner, and one way to do that is to minimize the casing that a battery requires.

2. Waterproofing is a desirable feature, which is much harder to do when you have an accessible battery, especially in conjunction with 1.

3. Very few customers ever replace their battery.

4. Phones held together with adhesive and made from glass/metal feel and look better than plastic that snaps together. When marketing a premium product it has to look and feel premium.

Security updates and finite battery lives seem to have a convenient crossover. I'm fairly sure if we could keep a device alive indefinitely, people would use them much longer.

I don't think you can safely have replaceable batteries without first making sure the devices' software are user serviceable. Completely flip the development model to something much more like a Linux distribution and get the onus on updating away from the people plugging bits of electronic-Lego together.

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