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Comment by daoboy | Hacker News Reader

I understood that the move to non-replaceable batteries was at least partially driven by water resistance

*Edit. Not sure why people are downvoting. I didn't make a positive declaration. HN didn't used to be this way for completely milquetoast comments.

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It probably makes things easier, but its unlikely that the industry that found a way to make foldables waterproof couldn't figure out a way to put rubber gaskets on battery covers. And in fact, they did, there were several devices introduced in the transition period that had both features.

Rubber gaskets wear out. Best practice is to replace them every time you open the cover. We can put them in, but the replacement battery better come with the gasket because you can't safely replace the battery without a new gasket.

Galaxy S5 was IP67-rated (1 metre depth, 30 minutes) and had a user-replaceable back cover / battery

Also a notification LED, OLED screen, bezels to pick the device up by, headphone jack, unlockable, a continuous light sensor... peak smartphone, save perhaps for the meager 200 Hz accelerometer refresh rate (modern phones have 500 Hz usually, I have no idea what for but I personally love toying with FFT plots)

If the headphone port flap was perfectly sealed….

*charge port flap

Waterproof phones all still have charging ports and no flaps. Not sure how but that seems to be solved. Maybe that one part's connectors are encased in glue?

Yes and don't forget consumer preferences. This is Hacker News where they are still clamoring for a "small smartphone" because everything else is too big. Shocker, small phones don't sell. Neither do bulky ones when compared to sleek iPhones.

Haven't modern smartphones had non-replaceable batteries long before they had any kind of water resistance ratings?

Not sure if I should be repeating the same answer below each instance of the question but here goes: See the Samsung Galaxy S5 for example as having a good waterproofing rating and user-replaceable battery

Anything except full support of the EU during European hours gets downvoted

Every post about the EU here gets absolutely flooded by negative comments of people who tell me that whatever the EU proposed won't work, governments shouldn't do these things, the proposed legislation is ineffective, it doesn't go far enough, they're just trying to extract money from our successful American companies, and so on and so forth. It's just a neverending diarrhoea of anti-government anti-European underbelly sentiment.

That sounds like seeing a pattern where there is none (apophenia). Do you have examples of posts that wouldn't be downvoted outside of times where Europe/Africa is awake, or that weren't only because it was posted outside of said hours?

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