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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

I’m happy to have batteries glued to my smartphone (replaceable, but only in the sense the main logic board is replaceable) if it saves even a few % in weight, rigidity or how waterproof it is. The times when phones had battery hatches were the dark ages. I used 2-3 batteries in every smartphone I used and the replacement was always cheap ($50 or so). That’s enough. Adding the possibility to user-replace it for half that by adding some design compromise like a hatch wouldn’t be interesting to consumers. For every battery replaced, how many screens are replaced? 3? Yet no one seems to be talking about making it easier for end users to replace screens?

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Waterproofing being a problem was always a myth. The Samsung Galaxy S5 was IP67 certified and had a removable battery.

I think this removability is part of a broader push for the EU to become a circular economy - at the end of life of the phone the user would discard the device and battery into separate bins.

That is at least the official goal regarding EV batteries and there are efforts underway to make it happen.

It still compromises something I’m sure. Weight/thickness/rigidity or something else. The phone already has a hatch for the battery: the shell. If it takes 1 hour to replace a battery or 30 seconds feels like it doesn’t matter since you need to replace the battery every 5 years and in that time you are likely to take it apart for screen repair anyway.

Perhaps my lack of understanding comes from using more expensive phones? I use iPhones and keep them for 5 years and usually replace 1-2 screens in that time. And since the phone is $1k new it feels completely irrelevant if a battery replacement costs $50 to have it done at a shop or $25 do do myself. If I used a $200 phone there could be a difference of course.

GP comment: factual statement using a specific device as a counterexample

Parent comment: handwavy "still compromises something", but can't be certain what, then gives a personal anecdote.

Of course it’s a design drawback. Otherwise it would be the design.

The drawback could be as simple as “higher cost to manufacture” or “higher risk of consumers using incorrect/third party batteries”. I’d argue the latter is a real problem, but everyone might not agree.

As for parent comment it was about an android phone. I never used or owned one so can’t comment.

The 'drawback' could also be "unnecessarily extends the product's lifetime and hurts sales of next year's model".

My main point was that the batteries are replaced anyway, if the product still has life in it (os updates, decent perf) because people have shops replace batteries or they trade them in when upgrading and they are refurbished and resold. But all of this hinges on the product being a high cost/long support product to begin with, like iPhone. Cheaper androids don’t fit this description.

> The drawback could be as simple as “higher cost to manufacture” or “higher risk of consumers using incorrect/third party batteries”

This wouldn’t be an issue if we had some kind of standards around batteries for cellphones rather than making unique batteries for every single model.

If you could just buy a “Type B” format phone battery for a phone this would eliminate the issue. It would be similar to the charger market, where different manufacturers could compete. This is _toward_ the market economics that capitalists so love, unless they’re benefiting from market capture of proprietary parts.

One-off designs are wasteful and drive up costs and drive down quality.

That battery would inevitably be thicker than necessary and have less capacity. Would also more or less stop any potential innovation.

> drive down quality.

How so?

I’m under the impression (probably created by Apple) that anything not tailor made by them is worse. I can charge my phone with any 5V source and the right connector but it’s always slower than an Apple charger. Why, I don’t know. Could be that the phone just recognizes the Apple charger and refuses to charge full speed otherwise. But is there anything that could be done about that? It’s malicious compliance at worst or just a lowest common denominator standard at best. I use third party batteries and the phone refuses to reliably gauge their health (understandable) which makes them objectively worse. The list goes on. It’s bad for the wallet and the environment but people still want to pay for complete tailor made ecosystems and I’m not optimistic that it can change completely via regulation. USB-C standardization lets me charge with a third party charger in a pinch but it still doesn’t rid me of Apple’s monopoly on good iPhone chargers!

The glue makes the device stiffer. If you want drop resistance you need rigidity or softness. A phone with glass won't be soft, so it has to be stiff.

There are ways to make a phone stiff, such as a rigid metal shell around the battery. Or glue.

That’s a cheap looking (by modern standards) plasticky device. Can the same be done with a glass/metal chassis? Can you explain how exactly?

Adding another datapoint: My iPhone 11 is 3 years old (from Apple Center brand new) and battery is already at 73%, prompting me to replace it.

Phone costed me 600€, replacement after recent Apple price hike costs another 100€. I’m already considering just buying another iPhone next year since replacement costs so much.

Since my first Nokia 5110 I’ve replaced 0 screens, 2-3 screen protectors, 1 keypad, and so many batteries. Ofc this is all anecdotal, for me batteries, lack of updates and non-extendable storage have been the main reasons killing otherwise perfectly useable iPhones.

100 euro doesn’t sound all that much to spend on a consumable like a phone battery that will keep it alive for at least another three years…

Apple does not guarantee waterproofness after 1 or 2 years, so it’s a bs argument again

The real next step is standardizing battery sizes. Think of all the other gadgets that have replaceable batteries. (Eg. Power tools)

Most of those batteries are standard at the wholesale level. But a thin plastic layer added to house the battery makes it proprietary due to the connection interface. And now it’s a world of incompatible batteries and price gouging for replacement batteries.

I guess the real next step is to keep selling thick old devices as the EU SKU and modern innovative stuff to the rest of the world. Apple already has to do that on the software side for their AI features. Given the current GDP/capita trajectory of the EU, that is likely all they will be able to afford anyway. :)

I recommend you to read this Aesop's fable: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Fables_of_Æsop_(Jacobs)/T...

Except your analogy does not hold because you can simply choose not to buy the product with the connector you don't like or can no longer afford as a result of socialism.

It appears much harder to opt out of said socialism without leaving the country though, so read that again with this pretext perhaps?

Standardisation can lead to innovation or be an innovation in itself. Think about containers - shipping containers or docker containers - the most exciting innovation in phones is not in the form of the chargers or batteries.

Sure. Standardization led to USB-C which is great. Mandate led to nothing and is bad and unnecessary.

Arguably achieved nothing as Android was already on USB-C and Apple too on everything but iPhone and would have switched anyway soon for speed reasons regardless. Arguably, the switch was too early and a disservice to iPhone users.

apple would _not_ switch for speed reasons, they are interested in you syncing files though their cloud. Similar to google and android, you "can" sync/backup with a cable, but usability is a nightmare.

Speed is not just useful for syncing files to a computer, which is not the primary use case of iPhone USB-C. The computer is no longer the center of your digital world. The iPhone is (and the cloud). Most iPhone users don't even have a Mac. The use case is to connect the iPhone to other accessories like displays, fetch photos from cameras, etc.

That said, I stand by my comment that most iPhone users would have been better off with Lightning. For many of us who carry Macs as well as phones, having a singular charger is beneficial (less so now that you'd wanna use MagSafe with the Mac, again), but still years of Lightning cables make them easy to find in any iPhone household.

They had already switched iPad Pros long before EU mandate was a thing, so I don't think your would've-not-been theory is substantiated by evidence. If I were to speculate, Apple's evolution would be towards killing the port altogether and do everything wirelessly which is an admirable goal (I'm sure will be downvoted to the oblivion in this community for saying this, but that's also the sentiment of the initial MacBook Air release in 2008 which now defines the modern laptop).

For sending files, Apple has perfected wireless AirDrop and that's quite speedy.

> The real next step is standardizing battery sizes. Think of all the other gadgets that have replaceable batteries. (Eg. Power tools)

I don't think we are at that point yet. There is still a lot of innovation happening in batteries on the cell and pack level. Cell sizes are mostly standardized indeed, but packs not. For high performance and reliability, you might want to glue those cells in-place. Or some manufacturer may decide to use a more capable battery management system, which then requires more space. I think that enforcing standardization would be a major hindrance for innovation.

> price gouging

Can we stop using this term? It's a meaningless word used by politicians to scapegoat businesses. If they really wanted to solve problems, they would go after monopolies or cartels. Both hinder competition and thus make it less likely that the consumer gets a good deal. "Price gouging" on the other hand is about whether a price is "fair" or not. Unlike monopolies or cartels, there is no clear definition for "fairness". I can call something fair while you would call it unfair. You cannot solve people being unfair to other people, but you can solve a lack of competition. So that's where the aim should be.

Right, and unless there is some significant barrier to entry, whether a natural moat created by past performance by the company, or an unnatural moat created by some kind of corruption, price gouging alone makes it easier for competitors to enter the market since there is some slop available in the market rate for whatever good it is.

50 is not cheap. There are a lot of phones not worth a $50 repair. They work just fine if it wasn't that they need to be charged often. Disposal is also a problem. They have their own bin here.

I was thinking a smartphone from $500 at least.

You are thinking of the new price. I mean second hand value. In mint condition a phone from a few years ago is almost worthless. If it has scratches, a small crack or a dirty charge port it isn't worth anything anymore. You can buy the same model without the defects (and a reasonable battery) for less than the battery swap costs.

If we assume a batter needs replacement, that is likely to be years after a new phone. A years old used phone with an old battery will usually have a bad battery too, though. It is more about whether older hardware is worth it to invest with a new battery in the first place.

Sure, but that's objectively more environmentally wasteful than just replacing specific components, convenience be damned.

Old phones are refurbed and sold. New screen and battery and it’s often as good as new. A 5 year old iPhone 11 with a new battery and screen is great value at maybe $200. It’s important that the battery replacement done at those shops is easy enough otherwise the used phones become waste rather than refurbished. But whether my mom can replace the battery I don’t feel is very important.

A very clumsy person can replace the battery of a flashlight or a radio with greater success rate than a repair shop disassembling a phone and looking into your personal information while you are stranded by the side of the road unaware of the forest fire and the alien invasion while you struggle with HN withdrawal symptoms.

FWIW it took me 15 minutes to replace the screen on my Pixel, took some basic tools but it's a reasonable tradeoff for waterproofing. The battery seemed like an easy swap as well, though I didn't need to at the time. Smartphone repair kits should be sold right along the phones.

It makes it sound like you don’t care what the downside exactly is, which in turn makes you sound very proselytic and not interested in any discussion.

Yes replaceable batteries make your phone thicker, ok. The upside outweighs this downside by a far margin for me.

The reason it does not exist is definitely not because people do not want it, it’s because it ensures a higher revenue to smartphone constructors, it is basic capitalism (and I don’t mean capitalism is bad, it just will always tend to maximise profit, it’s its nature)

Finally, it is less wasteful to be able to replace components.

And to add an anecdote: replacing my battery on my iPhone was so complicated that the apple technician broke the screen (it was replaced free of charge) and it cost me 50% of the residual value of my phone. Wasteful and expensive, in summary. Replaceable batteries would solve this.

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