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Comment by CjHuber | Hacker News Reader

I'd rather have a tool that degrades my battery to below 80% max capacity so that I can get a free new one from apple care+

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I'd rather have that new EU rule that mandates laptops and smartphones to have easily user-replaceable batteries by 2027.

in US there is a better chance of a mandate that requires you to buy a new laptop every 17 days :)

I love the concept of being able to replace a battery. I don't love it enough to lose the option of buying a thinner, lighter, IP68-waterproof phone.

I had a samsung something from work that had a user replacable battery and claimed water proof (not sure about the IP rating though). It seemed thin and light enough to me.

Edit: it must have only claimed water resistant... Lining up the accesories, I think it was a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, which people say tests good in a bowl of water for about 20 minutes. That's a lot longer than I'd leave a phone in a bowl of water, so seems good enough to me?

Don't know about the S6, but I used to have an S5 which I used as a GPS on a motorbike. Strapped to the bars, no housing at all. Never had any problem with it under pouring rain.

A replaceable battery doesn't have to make the phone thicker, heavier, or less waterproof if implemented correctly. For example, you could hold the back glass to the phone using mounting pressure rather than permanent adhesive. You could also hold the battery to the inner casing using mounting pressure rather than permanent adhesive. The weight difference is negligible. Congratulations, the battery is now replaceable.

Mounting pressure? As in, apply constant pressure to a thin piece of glass that is already prone to being dropped and broken? Am I misunderstanding or is this a terrible idea?

> A replaceable battery doesn't have to make the phone thicker, heavier, or less waterproof if implemented correctly

A replaceable battery will reduce the water resistance by adding more possible water ingress points. There is no question about this.

It will increase thickness because you need a wall between the battery compartment and the device now.

It will add weight and thickness because the battery cover is now a separate piece and can’t contribute as much to the structural rigidity of the chassis.

Thinking that a device could have a removable battery with no downsides is fantasy.

Weird that you think a replaceable battery needs a separate cover and compartment? The entire point of my comment is that you can just make the existing thin and light phone openable.

If it didn't have to make the phone thicker, heavier, or less waterproof if implemented correctly why isn't it currently an option?

Because it's more effort to think about things like that as opposed to simply gluing everything together and saying the phone can be replaced once the battery degrades.

When the EU mandates this it’ll be the fastest eating of your words anyone’s ever seen.

All of a sudden trillion dollar smartphone companies will magically have the engineering talents to produce a waterproof and thin phone with a replaceable battery.

I dunno guys do you think a company that designed a mobile phone chip with 20 billion transistors in it can make a battery door with a gasket?

If that engineering talent is readily available, please by all means build the Framework of phones. I would love to buy it. You don't need regulations to do that, if there's sufficient demand.

The engineering talent to build supersonic planes or moon rockets also was readily available. But that doesn't mean that they were viable business strategies for profit-maximizing companies. Sometimes engineering better products has to come from government mandates, not c-suite mandates.

I think this implication that removable batteries weren’t a viable business strategy is not true in any way.

It’s not like a supersonic jet or moon lander. All phones had removable batteries before the iPhone. All laptops used to have removable batteries.

Older devices built with worse technology had things we don’t have now.

And why do you think did these things disappear?

Is it not obvious? There's a business equation being made that keeping the batteries internal encourages new device purchases.

Replacing the battery in an iPhone costs $99 and takes hours to days of time where your phone is unavailable.

Or you can just trade it in and pay nothing while your carrier subsidizes it and bills you monthly with 0% interest.

The customer is given an incentive structure that leads them to the maximum profit route…obviously that’s what businesses want, and why every industry has regulations that constrains business to live inside some basic rules.

I’d rather not pay the price of reduced chassis stiffness (from the opening), increased weight, increased cost, and increased size, however small.

Replacing the battery is a once every 4-5 years thing for me, if that. Optimizing the entire laptop around a one-time activity that I can pay Apple to do for me for $250 (OEM quality battery included) feels backward. Give me the stiff chassis and reduced complexity of a built-in battery.

That's just your average astroturfed marketing spin from affected companies. There are quality phones out there with good chassis (including IP68 waterproof) and replaceable battery. In fact we'd already come a long way with phones that don't require melting of glue and special one-time tools to open or remove the battery. That's literally just manufacturers trying to squeeze their customers with expensive (and exclusive) repair contracts. And since Apple already overcharges the base devices by a lot, they'd still make a ton of money after the rule goes into effect (unlike certain other brands).

Agreed! I have a 2020 Macbook Air (Apple Silicon) and it's been at 81% for about a year. Heck, it's now at 82% according to System Information, but Coconut Battery says 77.4%. Not sure which is correct any more, and if Apple is doing some funny business. Battery cycle count is at 845, with a manufacture date of 2020-10-05. So 1,770 days old.

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