Hacker News Reader

I recently changed the battery of my Switch 1, if for most of the process it was easy, and I really struggled on two points. 1) the plastic part into which the screws are screwed broke, and it is tough to remove them. 2) ungluing the battery with isopropyl alcohol without breaking anything was very long for me. I recently changed the USB port of my Fairphone 4 and it was just unscrewing and screwing. So for me it is a great change from Nintendo.

There's been some recent developments with removing batteries glued to the device: use floss or some other thin string and saw through the glue. The string won't pierce the battery and can fit in tight spots.

That's clever.

I usually just cut a "knife" out of a cereal box and saw back and forth.

I remember same floss-hack used to work to replace a smartphone screen without replacing touchscreen

Oh how far we fallen

I used floss as indicated in ifixit comments, but the glue did not saw easily (I'm not dexterous).

I recently changed the USB port of my Fairphone 4 and it was just unscrewing and screwing.

why are you changing a USB port on a phone?

At some point, only charging worked (and for one usb-c cable only on one side, which is weird given connecter is symmetrical), data and usb-audio stopped working. With my previous Samsung phone contact became very unreliable after 3 years. A new connector costs only a few euros, but I cannot do the soldering by myself and it cost me around 40€.

Phillips Heads: The design is often criticized for its tendency to cam out at lower torque levels than other "cross head" designs. There has long been a popular belief that this was a deliberate feature of the design, to assemble aluminium aircraft without overtightening the fasteners.[15]: 85 [16] There is no good evidence for this suggestion, and the property is not mentioned in the original patents.[17]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives#Phillips

It has more to do with manufacturing techniques. Screw heads are stamped. A cone shape, with all sloped sides, is easier to stamp reliably. Even the famed Robertson bits from canada have a slight slope for this reason.

If I were to speculate, the point of phillips head was to just be easier to use than flat head while still being easy to manufacture 90 years ago. The better heads introduced since then have more intricate designs that require more precise manufacturing than a simple stamp

They describe it as a feature in their later 1942 patent (US2474994A), in the description of which they mention it to protect against powertools with poor torque control, claiming that a better screw would only be possible if power tools and their torque control were perfect and that it is therefore a required feature.

The original designs did not reference this though, so it seems more like them adopting an observed behavior as a feature - so the statement that it was originally designed to be that way is indeed off, but the company did adopt the behavior in official paperwork.

I work with a product that has to use Philips head for one specific area. I hate those damn screws. They all need to be torqued to a specific value and this requires putting an significant amount of force axial to the screw to keep the driver from slipping. If you do slip, you'll probably strip the head and now it needs to be replaced. It doesn't help that there's a gasket around the plate that adds extra running torque. Good luck getting a countersunk #2 screw out. The rest of the product uses hex heads so those are incredibly easy to install.

Your comment is interesting but next time say "Apple," right to repair isn't really about this Portlandia-esque mealy mouthed nerdery your rhetoric trades in. The batteries cost "$1" so I should be able to just buy them and quickly replace them. It's that simple.

Excuse me? That derogatory tongue-in-cheek way of referring to that company is not "mealy mouthed nerdery", as everyone and their mother understands who I am referring to. The lawsuit mitigation communication I suspect you're confusing it for requires it to be genuinely unclear who you mean.

However, batteries cannot cost $1 unless you want $1 worth of battery. Modern batteries are genuinely complex devices with extremely tight assembly tolerances, and something like a phone battery should be expected to be more like 10-40 USD.

Cheapo cells exist, but they genuinely have issues like poor assembly tolerances introducing risks of it deciding to spontaneously transform into a pocket-sized smoke machine.

> Also, as the device is Japanese, it uses JIS screws rather than Philips (in addition to triwing), which could surprise some.

My understanding is that Europeans also generally tend to not use Phillips screws, but Pozidriv instead.

Philips in PZ screws is generally going to cam out like a regular philips head, just because you're not biting into the top with the PZ... triangle bits? I'm sure there's a technical name haha. So you can get by with that, a self-selected crappy philips experience when you could've chosen pozidriv bliss.

Philips in JIS screws is an exercise in anger management. IIRC, JIS has a much wider angle on the bottom of the drive, making it sink into the head less than a philips drive would, so it's a great way to turn your philips driver into an artisanaly-rounded single-hole punch.

It's not the top triangle bits that cause the problem, it's that the whole geometry is different with parallel versus tapered flanks.

Also note that drivers are made far harder than screws, so it will take many screws turned rivets before a driver becomes said artisinal hole punch.

Am European, yeah but pozidriv was never used for tiny screws. We have also pretty much migrated all screw sizes to torx nowadays, so I only ever really see pozidriv on older appliances and hardware, while Philips mostly happen on imports.

I think I've read somewhere that JIS was phased out after Philips standard included some of JIS features and that theoretically modern Philips screwdrivers should be compatible with JIS.

The JIS, ISO and ASME standards for cross head screw drivers are fully compatible.

The myth that JIS needs special screwdrivers is caused by people using either using the wrong size (easy at small sizes), using a worn-out or poorly-made screwdriver, or using Pozidriv (which is genuinely very different).

Anecdotally, about 5 years ago I bought a set of off-brand "premium" screwdrivers, where it turned out the Phillips head ones (yes there are two L's in there) were so far outside the standard I had to just throw them in the trash.

You got the wrong standard. JIS B 1012 type H is Philips equivalent, but what people refer to as the JIS screw is JIS B 1012 type S. JIS B 1012 Type S ("JIS") and ISO 8764 (Philips) are entirely different screw and scredriver profiles. See https://www.peterverdone.com/jis-cross-head-screws-and-drive....

The Philips screwdriver has lobes with a large multi-stage taper that ejects the screwdriver from the screw upon torque. The JIS screwdriver lobes are in contrast almost perfect 90 degree angle with a tiny filet in the center - not dissimilar to the Frearson screw.

A Philips screwdriver will be unable to insert all the way into a JIS screw due to this taper, exactly similar to how the extra lobes on a Pozidriv screwdriver collides a Philips screw. Attempting to apply torque with this partial engagement puts you at very high risk of stripping the screw.

A JIS screwdriver however does work perfectly fine in Philips screws, often even better than the Philips screwdriver as you did away with one half of the "screwdriver ejection feature".

There's a reason that iFixit goes out of their way to make both JIS and Philips bits, and warn you in their guides. They aren't really in the business of trying to cram more bits down your throat for fun.

>it uses JIS screws rather than Philips (in addition to triwing)

I don't think this is an issue for anyone who has had to disassemble a japanese device before, and the bits are widely available online. Countless youtube videos have discussed that JIS vs Philips in the consumer space are largely compatible outside of american aircraft construction.

I've disassembled a few Japanese cameras with JIS screws, and they're definitely not largely compatible. You will strip the screw.

Torx is also common and also way way better than philips. Really we as a society need to phase out philips screws yesterday.

> Really we as a society need to phase out philips screws yesterday.

Pozidriv to the rescue! (just kidding)

The prevalence of Robertson in Canada is amazing.

I keep the Robertson head in my drill because it's pretty much the only one I ever use.

Because Robertsons are the best. There is no equal for wood screws.

Philips is great for what it's designed to do, strip out.

But for electronics I basically never want that behavior.

So in essence, if you EVER think you might need to disassemble something, you shouldn't use Philips.

And even then, torque screwdrivers are not that expensive

I've stripped out every sort of head. It isn't the heads fault really. Lack of thread treatment and/or correct application of torque is the cause and can happen to any head.

There are also screws more commonly available than JIS but not as comically bad as Phillips. Hopefully they use those

iPhone batteries are actually relatively easy to access and replace. The only annoying thing that Apple (and most other gadgets) insist on is adhesive strip mounting of the battery. Just use screws please.