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Comment by dotancohen | Hacker News Reader

  > Why isn't a cellphone filled with epoxy?

Added cost and weight are two things that would put off consumers. The phone would also be neigh irreparable, but consumers don't seem to care for that other than replacing their screen.

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OTOH, adding epoxy on top of everything else would probably only reduce their iFixit repairability score from 1 to 0, so...

A conformal coating wouldn't give much more weight.

A conformal coating isn't "filled with epoxy", which is the concern I was answering.

There is very little empty space in a phone, so conformal coating is practically the same as filling it.

Anyway, I wasn't disagreeing, just reasoning a bit further.

The point of filling it is to remove the compressible empty space so that large pressure gradients won’t crush it.

No, conformal coating and potting are extremely different things done for different reasons.

I'm not talking about which methods are being used, I'm talking about which methods could be used. Further, potting, where you let the epoxy drip off, gives you a conformal coating.

Conformal coating is much less viscous and would leave a layer orders of magnitude thinner then letting potting epoxy drip off. It's not at all comparable.

You are talking about a conventional conformal coating.

Neigh?

Some claim we are centaurs, we say Neigh!

This joke seems like it would make more sense if centaurs didn't have human vocal tracts.

I think they meant “nigh on irreparable“.

I didn't notice that, I was dictating to Gboard. If that's what was heard, then I should probably go eat some hay and get my tail brushed.

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