This is not just about battery replacement. I used to keep several fully charged batteries stocked in my rucksack whenever I went hiking or anywhere else that was remote. After a day of taking photos in the wild its nice to be able to just chuck in a fresh batttery and off you go.
I feel like this feature of phones was not only lost, but pretty much forgotten about after smartphones stopped including user replaceable batteries.
They can be charged with the same power adapter you use to charge your phone, without the need of an extra docking thing.
They can be used to charge any USB-chargeable device.
They are not tied to your specific model, and thus you're not vendor locked with them, making them cheaper and easier to find anywhere in the world.
They come in multiple capacities, allowing you to plan in advance your energy needs and choose the right size bank for your situation.
They are far more sturdier than any modern battery, which makes them more resistant to puncture and bending.
They don't have external contacts that could potentially short in contact with conductive surfaces.
There's a reason professional devices (e.g. cameras) still have replaceable batteries.
Reading the comments here, it's obvious that the replaceable battery fans can't even agree on what they want. One commenter wants the back covered in tens of screws for waterproofing. Other commenters want the battery quickly replaceable so they can do hot swaps without missing a beat. Some people are sharing links to phones that have replaceable batteries and getting responses from people saying they'd never buy that phone because it's too big, too ugly, or other reasons.
This is an impossible debate because one side has convinced themselves that it's possible to have their cake and eat it, too: They believe that removable batteries can be implemented without any tradeoffs and the only reason they're not removable is so the phones are forced to become e-waste, which requires you to ignore all of the low cost battery replacement services available.
There's challenges adopting standardized rechargeable batteries, e.g. trying to recharge alkaline batteries risks fire/explosion (and you know that will happen far too often given the number of people out there), but if we have had standard battery sizes, voltages, and capacities for rechargeable batteries, things would be so much better.
There are several high end phones with removable batteries. You should buy one of them if this feature is important to you.
This movement to force everyone's phones to pay the costs of removable batteries to address these really niche use cases is not great.
You seem to have completely missed the primary point of all this, which is to reducew ewaste. That fact that it also satisfies some niche uses cases is a great bonus!
Everyone acting like iPhones and mainstream Android phones become e-waste after 3 years is just making specious arguments.
Why does the average phone user know more about phone batteries and replacing them than all of these commenters acting like iPhones are becoming e-waste after a couple years?
I think I know more people with 4-6 year old iPhones than with an iPhone 17.
Apple stores will replace the battery for you for a very reasonable fee and the phone will carry on for many years more. This is a common thing to do and you can find battery replacement services for popular Android phones too.
https://www.anker.com/products/a1665-5k-ultra-slim-qi2-power...
"Due to a 30% to 45% energy loss in battery cells and conversion circuitry, a fully charged 5,000 mAh power bank typically offers an estimated 2,750 to 3,500mAh to power devices"
EDIT: Wait no it's a carousel of completely unrelated products because the page redirected (without my input) to https://ankernordics.com/.
The Anker Nano Power Bank (5K, MagGo, Slim). No screen, charges via USBC.
Yeah, that would work. The first party Apple MagSafe power bank is also a decent alternative.
I would still prefer replaceable batteries back though, and you really dont need to convince me otherwise!
I'd say these are more convenient than extra swappable batteries. They have integral charge controllers and charge via USB. There's no need to charge them in the phone or have to buy some extra external battery charger.
And it’s not just wireless that’s inefficient; with a usb connection you’ll typically lose at least 15% in a good buck/boost stage and there’s 2 involved in a usb battery pack: one in the battery pack itself to step up/down from pack voltage to the negotiated PD voltage, and then another lossy stage in the phone stepping down to 3.7v.
Id like my user replaceable 100% full batteries back if its ok with you?
https://www.androidcentral.com/best-android-phone-removable-...
It is my preference to have user replaceable batteries, and my belief is that they were only removed to make phones become obselete quicker and cause higher turnover of purchased phones.
No amount of battery packs can bring that back.
My iPhone 12 is six years old. I replaced the battery last year. While it probably won't be workable on cellular networks in six years, outside of physical damage there's little reason it'll stop working. My original iPhone from 2007 still boots up and runs. There's no GSM service for it to talk to but it runs as a WiFi only iPod just fine if I really wanted.
The idea that non-replaceable batteries is a conspiracy to lower the lifetime of devices is sort of silly. Flagship phones are made of incredibly sturdy materials. If they were designed to be disposable they'd have a bunch of sacrificial structural elements to limit their lifetime. Instead they're built as well as they can possibly be built.
A flagship phone will be left behind in CPU power running bloated JavaScript blogs or cellular service long before any internal component fails. Non-replaceable batteries are about hitting a capacity/size target more than anything else. Replaceable batteries enforce constraints on a phone's design that non-replaceable ones do not have.