Comment by warrenm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by warrenm | Hacker News Reader

Make battery packs (call them "removable batteries, if you like") 100% completely and totally separate from the device itself - think of it like a UPS for a desktop...no (or practically "no") battery on/in the device, and instead you run the device with a Qi-compatible battery pack

IOW - the device becomes 30-50% lighter (on its own), and the buyer determines how heavy his/her experience will be based on which Qi-pack [s]he has chosen to run their phone

Want a 10,000mAh battery? No problem!

Want only a 2,000mAh battery? Again: no problem!

This even solves a problem Apple has let other vendors 'solve' with regard to cases - want an OtterBox? CrayolaCase? SiliconSoftie? Go get your case from any of a thousand manufactures

Apple could provide a pair (or trio, etc) of Qi-packs for their devices, and let other manufacturers go banana pants coming up with other options

This modularizes the iPhone in a smart way (not like that goofy Motorola method (which was reminiscent of IBM in the 80s open-standardizing the buses for their Personal Computer) whereby the only thing you "have" to get from Motorola was the core module

Apple's "core module" with such a program would still be iPhone ... and that is still the biggest differentiator Apple has vs the 80 scadzillion Android makers out there: iPhone is only Apple. Android is whomever wants to make one.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

Because Apple has had this for years a while now with the MagSafe battery pack.

I actually think it should become a standard that all companies adopt. It's far easier and quicker to use than removable batteries and doesn't remove valuable space inside the phone.

It’s also incredibly wasteful. 30-40% of a battery bank’s capacity is lost to inefficiency, and even worse with a case on. It would be great if phones commonly offered pogo pins on the back in addition to wireless charging.

I used to feel like you - the non-removable battery thing was annoying, the non-modular flash was a deal breaker, etc.

None of them turned out to matter, at all. What does matter is a solid feel and solid construction and the flash and batteries lasting the lifetime of the product. I'd rather have that than replaceable.

But the batteries dont last the lifetime of the product.

Most iPhones are still very useful devices by the time their batteries have deteriorated below 70% original capacity.

iPhone batteries can be replaced for $89 from Apple and last for years. This is not the problem you think it is

I usually keep my phones for about 4 years

The devices start glitching and/or won't run newer apps as well as they should long before the battery goes on them

Are the apps you're using substantially better than they were 4 years ago? Are they doing substantially more for you that you wanted from them?

If the hardware is failing then I guess fair enough (it shouldn't be, that's a design defect), but inflated hardware demands to compensate for increasingly sloppy code isn't a reasonable justification to demand dropping another $500+ on a device that works fine.

I recently gifted a used iPhone X to a relative. It's still an exceptional device on which the hardware works as well as it ever did, minus the reduced battery life. I would have been happy to keep using it if I could replace the battery simply and it was still getting O/S updates.

(As it is, the device still receives security updates, which I can't really grump at Apple for after almost six years - but only because they're better than the rest of the industry. It's still a poor situation).

> Are the apps you're using substantially better than they were 4 years ago? Are they doing substantially more for you that you wanted from them?

Yes - in general, the apps I am running are doing more and are better than they were when I first got a given model phone :)

I went from the 4S to the 6S Plus to the 11 and am waiting on my backordered 15 Pro currently

I still have the 6S Plus in a drawer in my utility room - it "works" for lite tasks like web browsing, but will not run most of the productivity apps I need/want for work or the educational apps my kids need/want for school. So, for me, it is a "useless" device (so the kids get to play with it - and nobody cares what happens because it is 8 years old)

My 11 still "works", too - but it is getting very long in the tooth

>(As it is, the device still receives security updates, which I can't really grump at Apple for after almost six years - but only because they're better than the rest of the industry. It's still a poor situation).

I am continually astonished at folks who expect OS and/or security updates past a few years (this is not a slight against you, just an observation on my part)

A lot of folk like to gripe about "planned obsolescence" or similar because eventually their device is no longer supported

Yet the fact that manufacturers support equipment as long as they do is ... kind of astonishing

The higher the volume of production, the shorter you would expect a manufacturer to support it (a 747 is worlds different from a pickup truck which is worlds different from a phone or laptop)

The cost-benefit analysis of continuing to support/update a given device has to be taken into account ... and - for most phones (since that is what we are talking about in this thread) for most people, that means that between 3 and 4 years after release, it makes [nearly] no economic sense to keep supporting them

That Apple does for so long speaks volumes about their commitment to their customers (even though, of course, they would like you to get a new phone every year, I am sure)

I guess my view on it is that there's really no reason for the obsolescence.

iOS 17 may not be technically able to run on the A11 chip in the iPhone X, but only on the basis that it's been designed not to do so. Any features that genuinely needed extra neural cores (or whatever limitation there might be) were clearly designed that way with the intention of forcing a new purchase - the software could have in all likelihood run just fine on the A11 if they wanted it to. OCLP kind of proves this on macOS, which should (in theory) be even harder to maintain support for than iOS, as there are many more binary driver blobs that Apple doesn't control the source code for and therefore can't stand over/patch if the original vendor has stopped doing so.

> I am continually astonished at folks who expect OS and/or security updates past a few years

How many is “a few” to you?

Many people finance their phones through carrier deals that last three years. It should at least be supported that long.

And why not expect longer? To an outsider looking in, the software isn’t changing that much. I still have a messaging app, a browser, a camera app - that all basically haven’t changed their core functionality in the time I’ve had my device.

Just like computers, I think there is a correlation between price and expected support. If I’m paying $1,500 for an iPhone 15 Pro, I am doing so with the expectation that in 5 years it will be supported. If I am paying $100 for a cheap Android, my expectations are lower.

Agree with the most of youir premise - but a magnetically aligned and secured pogo-pin interface on the bottom back edge of every MacBook might be superior to inductive charging, which wastes electricity and generates too much heat. Such battery packs could also include a second pair of pass-thru pins for stacking and connecting to a direct wall power adapter.

was not really thinking about MacBook, more iPhone (and, possibly iPad) ... but that is an intriguing idea, too: supply a basic battery that would last for X long, and have a pass-through (hermetically-sealed, if you wanted to move into the IPS zone for dust/liquid resistance) MagSafe (or similar) connector for additional battery packs on the bottom

I could totally see getting a second laptop-footprint-shaped pod for my MBA that would click on and give me another 20-40h of run time between charges!

This is basically what they're doing with the Vision Pro, though out of engineering necessity rather than preference: the headset by itself only has about 5 minutes of battery life, to give you just enough margin to swap out the external battery pack you keep in a pocket.

Hopefully that internal battery is purely optional, i.e. implemented like in most laptops and not like in most phones, where it's impossible to use a device with a dead battery even when externally powered. Otherwise it'd be the worst of both worlds.

> instead you run the device with a Qi-compatible battery pack

And lose 20% percent efficiency? A bigger battery for the same usage time and my device is constantly warmer? Sign me up! /s

I used Qi as an example - a couple folks have suggested some kind of pogo-pin arrangement (maybe a derivation of the MagSafe connector?)

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