That's a false dichotomy. User replaceable batteries don't come at the cost of thin and sturdy phones.
Laptop manufacturers have been saying that for years, and look at the Framework.
Laptop manufacturers have been saying that for years, and look at the Framework.
I returned a M1 Macbook Air to get the Framework instead, so essentially, I've now paid 50% more to get a laptop with almost infinitely worse battery life when idle and 3-4x worse battery life in use. It's also slower, heavier, thicker, and has a screen resolution that a lot of apps don't know how to use well.
At this rate, I better be able to replace the battery because I'm having to do a full charge/discharge cycle multiple times a day if I'm not just constantly leaving it plugged in.
I love the idea of it in theory, but it's essentially a worse laptop than even the decade-old Apple laptops that did have replaceable batteries.
At least unless you put a big glaring "This laptop has 3 hours battery life" on the purchase page. Instead, they just repeatedly say how many Watts the battery holds and leaves you to assume that it's such a big number that it'll have great battery life.
The Framework and M1 Macbook Air weight the same at 1.3 kg, and are both 16 mm thick, according to the specs that I can find. Did it really _seem_ thicker and heavier to you?
Height: 0.16–0.63 inch (0.41–1.61 cm)
So they're the same thickness at their thickest point, but I'd guess that the Air has much less of the laptop at that thickness. I'd be curious about a volumetric comparison.
In the end, I wasn't even trying to say that the battery size mattered. If anything, the fact that it's a bigger battery almost makes it worse. They crammed more battery in and it's still a drastically worse user experience when it comes to everything about the battery.
Some of this is definitely because they're having to buy worse parts to try to make sure they're replaceable, and maybe that would improve if more places made parts for it. Maybe I could upgrade to a more efficient CPU/Mobo in the future, or a better battery, but then what do I do with the old one? I'm still contributing to e-waste.
And you can get comparable results in Linux, but you need to tweak it yourself at the moment.
The ports are great - I love that about the Framework, but having an HDMI port only matters so much if the battery is so bad you can't even show a fully movie on a TV with it not plugged in to power (and with a fairly beefy power transformer at that.)
I'm not arguing the Framework isn't more powerful on paper, but functionally, I just can barely use it. I was on a trip the other month and walked to a coffee shop in the morning to do some work and lost 20% of my battery charge on the way to the shop with it just in my backpack. Every minute using it I'm aware of how fast it's discharging in a way that literally no other electronic device I've owned in a decade has made me think about it.