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Comment by alamortsubite | Hacker News Reader

I replaced the batteries in my mom's iPhone and dad's Motorola at about the same time last year. I agree it should be easier to do, but it's definitely not a losing proposition. They both turned out very well and cost < $20 each.

I'd love a return to the old snap-fit plastic cases. Besides the ease of battery replacement, those phones seemed much more durable. Maybe because there was something that gave way on impact? I remember watching in horror as the plastic cover of an old LG shot under the display shelving at Home Depot at approximately the same speed the phone hit the concrete floor. I never used a case with one of those phones, nor did I ever crack a screen. It was tricky digging that cover out from under the shelving, however.

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> Besides the ease of battery replacement, those phones seemed much more durable. Maybe because there was something that gave way on impact?

Metal cases give way, too— permanently. When they give way, they dent, shrinking the space available for the glass screen and, inevitably, cracking it.

Glass cases/backs obviously easily crack themselves.

Making phone housings out of something other than plastic is an obviously stupid kind of fetishism for certain materials as hallmarks of a vague 'quality' regardless of context.

Idk about the screens. Do we need glass for touchscreens as we know them to work really well? Can they be brighter or something? Or are they largely unnecessary, too?

The big points of using a glass screen are durability from scratches and better surface feel over time. A large plastic screen is going to get all kinds of scratched up.

> I'd love a return to the old snap-fit plastic cases.

I wish OEMs would do this as well. Polycarb is strong. Safety glasses are made out of it for a reason. Sure, it scratches, but so does glass.

> I'd love a return to the old snap-fit plastic cases.

Fairphone is worth a look for this: https://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone-5

I still remember the age of snap-fit phones with replaceable color covers.

When you dropped one, you had to dig at least 4 parts from around the room. Front & back covers, the battery and the rest of the phone all flew in different directions =)

When you refer to snap-fit plastic cases being more durable, I presume you're not talking about water and dust resistance.

You can't have it all

Galaxy S5 had a removable battery and IP67 rating 9 years ago.

Motorola Defy did the same 13 years ago. Loved the size and the white frame design, would buy a remake with modern chips and camera without hesitation.

Right.

You can't have the thinnest/sleekest possible phone and an easily removable battery. Have to choose.

Frustrating thing is, mainstream phone manufacturers don't give you a choice. There's no option to buy e.g. an a slightly more ruggedized iPhone that is 15% bulkier but gives you easy battery access. That's a thing I'd buy, even if it cost a bit more.

The quest for "sleekness at all costs" made more sense 15-20 years ago, when full-spec smartphones and laptops were clunkier.

Hopefully the tide is turning. Apple is offering beefier and thicker laptops (M1/M2 Macbook Pros) and likewise now gives buyers an option for a beefier "Explorer Edition" watch. No battery access sadly. But hopefully the pendulum might swing the other way a little now.

> Frustrating thing is, mainstream phone manufacturers don't give you a choice.

https://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/phones/galaxy-xcover/galax...

Edit: This is getting downvoted, but it's a regularly-updated phone line from a mainstream manufacturer with decent specs. You can absolutely vote with your wallet here as OP laid out.

> You can't have the thinnest/sleekest possible phone and an easily removable battery.

Is this true? Plastic covers seemed thinner than the glass/metal shells that have replaced them. Also, from my limited experience, the batteries in the glued-together phones have adhesive strips that secure them inside the case, which again add a little extra thickness.

I could be wrong about those things, but I stand by my assertion that the plastic snap-fit phones were more durable. Durable enough that they didn't need cases for protection, which above all else rob a phone of its thinness/sleekness.

The first time I dropped a glued-together phone, I cracked the screen. I thought it must have been a fluke, since I'd dropped plastic phones tons and they'd always been fine. I was so sure it was a weird one-off I refused to get a case after having the screen replaced. My girlfriend called me an idiot. Two months later, I dropped the phone again. Now I have a case.

> There's no option to buy e.g. an a slightly more ruggedized iPhone that is 15% bulkier but gives you easy battery access. That's a thing I'd buy, even if it cost a bit more.

Why not buy a $100 rugged waterproof case and an external battery?

Surely you understand why a person might want to carry and charge one thing instead of two?

A 25% bulkier "rugged" iPhone 15 Pro would still fit nicely in most people's pockets. Unlike an encased iPhone plus external battery pack.

Like a lot of men, I carry a phone and wallet in one pocket and my keys in another. I don't typically carry a bag. Not gonna carry a battery pack too.

Also, an external battery pack achieves one thing (extended battery life) but not the other -- still wouldn't be able to easily replace the internal battery once it has aged out.

The two aren't mutually exclusive; for example the Samsung Galaxy XCover has a removable battery and an IP68 rating.

No, but I never had a problem with that, either. I kept my first phone (not the one I dropped at HD) for seven years and only retired it because my girlfriend gifted me hers.

Somehow I never had water or dust problems with any snap case device that’s had a battery, though.

Maybe you never had an issue, but today's phones are quite a bit more water resistant than the removable battery phones of yore. You can dunk them in water and you're usually fine! iPhones, at least.

I'm not sure dust was ever really a problem for most people. Although, for those in sandy/dusty environments (deserts, some industrial situations, etc) I bet it was a problem.

More to the point, though: I don't think it has to be an either/or choice. Casio makes a crapload of 200M water-resistant watches that sell for $50 or less. This includes both plastic (G-Shock, mostly) and full-metal models (MDV-106/107). The secret is (gasp)... a frigging thin rubber gasket. I frankly don't see any reason why we can't have this level of water resistance in a phone.

We would have to sacrifice thinness and lightness, but not by much. I think a lot of people would happily make that trade.

Well, the second secret is having a very rigid and precise interface between the watch case and back cover so that the thin gasket remains under the correct amount of pressure everywhere around the joint. This has been optimized at the small size of a watch.

On a larger object, this level of precision is harder to maintain. Due to spacing between fasteners or other flexing/distortion of the body, the gasket could be overly compressed in some places and loose in others...

I spent a significant chunk of my teenage income on phones because of water damage. Getting caught in a rainstorm, having the canoe tip over, have people be too rowdy with splashing around a pool, forgetting it in a pocket when going swimming, it falling off a dock were all times Ive personally lost a device. Every one of those would have been fine with my current phones and they've survived all that and more without issue. Sometimes I'll even just rinse my phone under running water when the kids make it super nasty, it's no problem.

Similar thing with dust. Even though a lot of my phones in my teenage years lasted under a year, they always died with dust in their screens. Camping and riding bikes around dirt trails and what not can push a lot of gunk in those things.

I'm happy phones are a lot better sealed. It's a bit of a pain making it harder to swap the battery, but paying a shop $50 parts included to swap it and keep it sealed well is worth it to me. A replacement battery back then would have been like >$30 anyways, going by inflation that's not too much increase in cost.

The ideal design is to have a "dry" and "wet" side where you put the parts that need servicing on the wet side and the parts that don't on the dry side (to the extent possible). Specifically, you want the battery and the charging port on the wet side since those the two most likely to break. Those can then connect via metal pins/pads to the dry side which has the soc and all the expensive stuff that actually needs to stay dry.

What is the point of that? You drop phone in toilet and it stops working because the battery circuits are damaged, or the charging port is damaged. It might be cheaper to fix that way.

Phones currently can be dropped in the toilet with zero damage. It is a real benefit to have waterproofing. I would prefer waterproofing over easily replacing battery that happens rarely.

So far, I've only ever replaced smartphones because they stopped getting software support or had a battery failure. Never dropped lost one to water damage. Never cracked a screen or otherwise broke one physically.

Unless I forgot one, I think I'm on my 10th mobile phone in total since the late 1990s, so averaging just under 3 years per phone. And I think the interval was shorter in the feature phone days and longer in the last 12 years or so where I'm now on my 4th smartphone.

Maybe it's because I learned to be careful with my phones before smartphones existed, back when dropping it might mean the back cover, battery, and main body flying in different directions. As a result, I'm also the kind of person who might drop his phone/wallet/passport into ziplock bags if I was heading outside with a chance of significant rain...

> Never dropped lost one to water damage. Never cracked a screen or otherwise broke one physically.

Same here, but I don't pretend that my experience is typical.

Even if it is, and, say, only 20% of people end up dropping a phone in a toilet or cracking the screen, it seems worth it to build in water and crack resistance.

I've never dropped my phone in water, but I have replaced batteries in the past, I would go with the more common use case tbh

No reason you can't have both. The battery would just be in it's own compartment.

If the compartment with the battery isn’t waterproof it’s not a waterproof phone.

Well, first of all, phones are most certainly not waterproof.

Second, it's possible to make the battery connections water resistant, so yes, you can have a water resistant phone AND have a replaceable battery in it's own compartment.

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