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Comment by alkonaut | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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…

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