IP68, replaceable battery, phone jack, 5G: https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php
I think the next mandatory laws EU should pass is that manufacturers should either allow people to upgrade/replace the OS by themselves or provide mandatory upgrades for the next decade (i don't care how the manufacturers handle it, that's up to them, but the easiest way out of such a law is to allow people upgrade/replace the OS by themselves).
Also, they committed to a rather long support cycle for the xcover6 (5 years I think?) - I have one and it is still going strong. I've replaced the battery twice - not because I desperately needed to, but... why not. They are cheap, and I use the older ones still as backup battery packs since they are fast to swap in.
This is what we use them for and they do stand up to the abuse. Of course people treat them very badly as it's not something they paid for. Really long support too.
They're not good in terms of specs for the price but that is not what these phones are about.
Currently Qualcomm decides when your phone stops getting updates, pretty much regardless to who actually made your phone.
Shoutout to fairphone who actually updated the firmware themselves, surely a loss leading project, but a very respectable dedication to end users.
I am not sure how much of a shout-out they deserve. For example, Fairphone 4 is still supported until this year. They ship with firmware from 2023 and with a kernel patch release from 2024. Every one of their phones is full of holes because their software lags so much.
Even on their most recent model, they are frequently more than a half year behind firmware updates, ship 1-2 year old kernels, and are late with major Android releases (meaning you miss out on security patches not classified high/critical).
Good examples of software longevity are iPhone, Google Pixel, GrapheneOS, and to a lesser extend Samsung flagships.
> (6) Operating system updates:
> (a) from the date of end of placement on the market to at least 5 years after that date, manufacturers, importers or authorised representatives shall, if they provide security updates, corrective updates or functionality updates to an operating system, make such updates available at no cost for all units of a product model with the same operating system;
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1670/oj
There's some weasel wording there ("if they provide ..."), so I'm curious how the courts are going to interpret that clause.
Motorola already seems to be testing this interpretation of the law.
https://www.androidauthority.com/motorola-eu-software-update...
The lack of standardization of handled devices is also another factor, they might look similar or even identical but they often are different per region and have some hardware revisions.
Android does have a separate driver partition nowadays but that doesn't help too much.
False. This is my work phone and the last update was less than a month ago. It's still supported.
I like how you didn't even bother checking if that was true.
These phones exist. Companies have been producing them intermittently. When they do, few people buy them and there are always complaints that it's too big, too ugly, not fast enough, or something else.
The vocal minority demanding this feature but refusing to buy phones with the feature believe they can have their cake and eat it too. They want phones with all the benefits of built-in batteries and none of the downsides of removable batteries.
I had to reflect on that statement for a bit. I've always bought a new phone when there are battery problems or something else. BUT, that's because I can easily afford it.
There are plenty of people in this world who just can't go out and buy a new phone because one part wore out.
Or, to put it differently: I'd really like to replace the battery in my spare phone that I bring into my hot tub.
Why is this strawman all over this thread? Battery replacement services are well known and honestly affordable. Apple will even do a first-rate job of replacing an iPhone battery for a fraction of the price of a new phone.
This topic is so strange on Hacker News because everyone is either actually unaware of how cheap/easy it is to get battery replacements, or they're feigning that you have to throw away the entire phone to try to make a point.
I don't think you understand just what it's like to be rich. Every minute counts, and ordering a replacement part that shows up on your doorstep instead of needing to go somewhere to have someone do something (or coordinate a repairman) is a life saver. Likewise, money saved on an easy repair is spent elsewhere.
These aren't strawmans; you're using fancy words to justify your lack of empathy.
Now, with much higher capacity batteries that work better and are more efficient at handling all the demanding displays, high end gpu's and now AI tasks running the background? There's really no need to have removable batteries any more.
Sure, you're going to get a few lemons here and there, but for the most part, batteries these days have no problem lasting the 4-5 years that you need them. You still see three or four year old iphones on ebay with 80-85% battery being sold like hot cakes.
For comparison: The feature I look for the most is a microsd slot. The last time that option existed that was in the quality range I want, I bought it. For anyone buying a phone right now, samsung has dropped microsd support from multiple more tiers, google and apple have never offered it, motorola and some others have the physical hardware but won't properly update the phone...
That's a feature that has been demonstrated to have no meaningful downsides, and manufacturers won't put it in to good models. I'm not convinced batteries are very different. People's refusal to make huge unnecessary compromises doesn't prove any features are DOA. I can guarantee that the above phone using LCD instead of OLED isn't a compromise for the battery's sake.
The biggest downside of removable batteries is that it's not an option on good phones. There might be some solid physics-based reasons, unlike with microsd, but I'm skeptical.
I can want three cupholders, not two, on my next car, and I want it to be a Toyota EV in purple. Not too much to ask - but Toyota has no reason to make it for me. Not even if 100 of us on Toyota superfan sites want it.
For the record, I want removable batteries and the ability to change my phone's OS. But if there's not sufficient market pressure, it ain't gonna happen - without legal force. And that won't happen if the businesses have too much lobbying power (USA), or it's specifically against government interests (3-letter orgs wanting backdoors).
Sure!
My point is that the ability to "vote with your wallet" is not really there in many cases, and lack of purchases for some niche and low end phone with a feature is not strong evidence that the feature is unwanted.
> But if there's not sufficient market pressure, it ain't gonna happen - without legal force.
And it takes too much market pressure to make certain changes even when the tradeoffs are minimal, so I welcome the legal force in a lot of cases.
What are you basing this on? If you would approach a random person on the street and try to pitch them this idea of bringing back swappable batteries, I think that most people would like the idea. Although this is not a "dataset" per se, I have not talked to a single person IRL that disagreed with this, which includes a mechanical engineer that worked in phone manufacturing
Usually, in consumer electronics, the unencumbered market tends to gravitate toward what people actually want to buy. Totally possible this could be an exception to the rule, but I doubt it.
In the absence of such phones, I compromise on adding a cover.
It's an extreme example, and way too bulky for most people, but the point is: "rugged cellphones" absolutely exist.
Also I don’t need fully ruggedized. Just enough that a cover would be superfluous.
At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs.
I like it when different producers select a different subset of priorities for their offer. Competition at work. One of the reasons we witnessed such an awesome evolution in the smartphone market.
I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition.
Really?! So instead of the person hired and paid specifically to select and decide what the product should cost, look and work like, the person whose very pay depends on how well she chooses those product features for you - instead you'd rather have a faceless nameless bureaucrat who never pays the cost of his wrong decisions, who instead gets more power and money the more he panders to the vocal minorities that push populist agendas completely detached from the market place.
> not giving a fuck about any other criteria
That is simply not true, such a company would go out of business fast. As I said before, any product is a set of tradeoffs. Cost (and profit) is just one of the factors. Ignoring the others does not make successful products.
> profit
I love it when a company I buy from is successful. That means it's gonna be around to create more stuff for me to enjoy. It also means the awesome people working there get paid and are successful themselves. Finally, it means that its investors will back up more of this kind of companies that create useful products and services. Profit is great!
maybe just a little less margin for apple...
I generally agree with that sentiment, except we don't have a vibrant market of many options with many different trade offs. Finding headphone jack, solid reparability, user swappable battery, easily replaceable USB port, and all the other things that one might want is basically impossible. The vast majority of phones are highly unrepairable, have no headphone jack, have everything soldered to a tiny number of internal boards, and are full of anti repair dark patterns.
My $200 Moto G3 in 2016 had a removable back cover (admittedly not battery). It was also waterproof (and had a headphone jack.)
The engineering of making things waterproof is in the realm of "A bit more annoying but easily doable if anyone's interested in doing it", not "Doable at the cost of everything else".
It also did diddly squat in the market place and the company producing it ran out of business.
Again, a product is a set of tradeoffs. Those tradeoff include functionality, cost, logistics to build, even marketing and sales. Maximizing a feature to serve a loud minority (headphone jack!) but thus ignoring other features will simply make a product fail in the market place in time...
Not sure what the context or background of that is, but here in India, the G3 sold out shortly after launch.
Per this [1] stat by a Motorola exec too, it did very well.
> Motorola’s General Manager for India, Amit Boni stated at the Moto X Play launch event that the Moto G (3rd Gen) that was launched in July is among the fastest selling smartphones on Flipkart. Its sales mark grossed 140% higher than the Moto G (1st Gen and 2nd Gen).
(And I know that's legitimate because a lot of peers, friends and family, folks on the streets etc had Motorolas.)
> and the company producing it ran out of business.
Unfortunate, yes, but I don't think it was because they made and sold phones that didn't sell. I don't know if it was business mismanagement or what, but it's an unfortunate legacy of one of the most promising brands. Fortunately Lenovo isn't killing the brand, so there's that.
1 - https://telecomtalk.info/motorola-sold-over-5-6-million-indi...
It's because of those "bureaucrats", that car manufacturers were forced to implement catalytic converters and ECUs for emissions controls, and why the air in your city isn't a smog cloud like in the 70s.
I hate it when people assume the environmental and societal problems caused the unregulated free market, are gonna be fixed by the same unregulated free market which only optimizes for profit.
At most the EU should tax externalities like electronic waste, though that would be a rounding error compared to the cost of the phone itself.
If a truly well made phone was common and made by many people, then there'd be much less argument for this regulation.
I and millions of others want a phone that is smaller than the current offerings. Heck, my 13 mini is too big for my tastes. But I don’t think that means the government should force phone manufacturers to make smaller phones. So too for features like removable batteries, physical keyboards, or headphone jacks.
You could argue that the market already reflects people's desires via, eg., Apple's market research. They could argue that democracy in the EU also reflects people's desires.
There are many food additives with very useful properties, but health effects. There are many perfumes too where the original formulation had a particular compound layer found to be carcinogenic.
Regardless of whether an individual prefers to use such compounds at their own risk or not, large companies will use whatever is the cheapest ingredient for their product.
In some cases, that's better for the consumer - who, often, has almost zero choice.
(And if you think you truly have choice as a consumer, I challenge you to use a phone that isn't running either Apple or Google's code.)
Why doesn't this count as a choice? Was it more of a choice when Windows Phone was still around?
Three viable options are by definition, more choice than two options.
If (phone) OSes were truly healthy free markets, there would be a lot of healthy competition. Even cars and automobiles (which still are almost oligopolies, as it's extremely hard to compete) have more options.
I said that sentence primarily as counter to anyone who thinks the mythical "free market" is a panacea to all ills, as many anti-EU folks often have such a view. I was trying to demonstrate that an unregulated market is (very) often unhealthy, and can paradoxically can result in viewer choices.
The externalities of integrated batteries are that people probably replace their phones sooner than otherwise, resulting in more electronic waste. But phones are only a tiny fraction of e-waste. Most e-waste is from household appliances, displays, & HVAC equipment. Phones are less 10%. I mean, how could it be otherwise? Phones are small and people use them for years before upgrading.
I’m not sure what the Android/iOS duopoly has to do with removable batteries. Mandating removable batteries would not change the operating systems available. And while there isn’t much choice in which OS you can run on a phone, there is enough choice that you can buy phones with removable batteries. If anything, this is an argument against mandating removable batteries, as governments are not mandating/subsidizing another phone OS despite far less choice in that area.
Lastly, I don’t see how banning people from having phones with integrated batteries gives them more choice. Most people (such as myself) don’t really care about removable batteries, and would rather have a phone that is smaller, cheaper, and/or more resistant to the elements. The way to give people the most choice is to tax externalities commensurate to the harm they cause, and let the market figure out what people actually value.
How about vendors get on their asses and design thinner and lighter phones that are not e-waste from the moment they leave the factory?
I bet you when forced to make the right decision they can go even thinner and lighter than the current flagships...
Beyond this, hell, make the "internal" battery solid-state with minimal capacity and have an external power pack from the get-go as part of case designs. Get the size of battery you want... if you want a big booty phone with battery for days, you can get it.
Incumbents will remove and enshitify a number of features in order to maximize returns... Your new clothes dryer has a 10 year mechanical warranty.. but the control board isn't covered, will die in 12-24 months and won't be produced again. Oh and there's some clunky DRM in the mix on top. Guess you get to buy a new dryer, but this time you'll go with $OtherShittyBrandThatDoesTheSameThing.
But I don’t see how mandating removable batteries helps this situation with phones. I don’t replace my phone when the battery degrades, as it’s pretty cheap & painless to replace the battery after a few years. I upgrade when my phone stops getting security updates, or when a new phone comes along with some feature I want.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/speed-queen-revie...
Replaceable covers used to serve the same purpose.
Note that these connectors are in violation of USB standard and potentially harmful as they expose the pins in an unintended way. For instance, notice that all the connection on the USB port are not all the same length, it is a form of protection, to make sure the power lines are well connected before the data lines make contact. With magnetic USB connectors, you lose that feature, in addition to potential issues with ESD, short circuits, etc...
I have a friend who swears by them and never had a problem, but still, that's good to know.
This was noticeable on USB-A connectors when you look closely where the two outside pins were slightly longer than the two inside pins: the Make-First, Break-Last (MFBL) principle. You can also see the same thing on SATA edge connector pins.
The ~2015 Macbook Magsafe 2 connector had 2 slightly longer spring pins (two pins furthest from centre). See https://ir.ozone.ru/s3/multimedia-3/wc500/6020365815.jpg
Take care googling for photos because many are CAD mockups misinform (because they are drawn pretty incorrectly and show no physical length differences).
USB-C does have longer pins for the ground, and the CC (configuration channel) connects last. A USB-C host doesn't deliver power until it is negotiated using the CC pins.
So USB-C via a "magsafe" connector is safe.
But maybe look for the two outermost pins to be longer.
You mention ESD which could be riskier since charged fingers or worse could touch contacts directly. However the lip around the contacts is usually grounded so any spark should be grounded first. I would also assume modern electronics are well protected against ESD (nobody wants occasional undiagnosable failures leading to refunds). Sure that stuff from earlier this century wasn't so well protected. YMMV if you are a sparky person in a sparky environs: weigh the downside costs of different approaches appropriately.
(that plus the comments from the more knowledgeable person below)
Eventually they start wearing out, and I just replace them. I've had no issues with high voltages (45W+ charging on phone and steamdeck) and with peripherals (hub for example).
Or does that mean thinness matter just that much more?
From the narrow point of view of "this option or nothing", yes.
For the more general purpose view of "imagine a non-rugged version", such a phone would have a lot less of a size/weight penalty.