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Cries in my ongoing Apple Watch Series 6 battery replacement

Seriously, how close can you even put a screen and a metal casing?! Incredibly tiny gap that is impossible to jimmy open. I'm on day 3 trying to get this bastard open now...

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Incidentally, just replaced batteries in my Apple Watch S6, MBP M1 2020, and iPhone 12 Pro Max during a one-day visit to Shenzhen. A dude in Huaqiangbei did everything in two hours for a small fraction of what Apple would charge.

ECG stopped working reliably after the battery replacement, but otherwise the watch should be good for another few years (stuck on watchOS 26.x)

> A dude in Huaqiangbei did everything in two hours for a small fraction of what Apple would charge.

I much prefer my approach of ordering hundreds worth of new equipment first just to change the battery on my wife's watch, over the course of maybe one-two weeks in total (pending I actually manage to open it, new tool for opening just arrived today!), which may or may not end up with me breaking the screen. Well, or breaking ECG it sounds like, the cables inside seem brittle indeed.

Yeah, it's a tragedy that we throw devices away because the battery has a short expiration date :/

At least I guess watches are on the more understandable end of the "hard to repair" continuum.

Truly does suck, imagine the waste... To be fair to the average person though, we're a far away from when you could just pop open the back casing of the phone and switch the battery with your bare hands, no wonder people are afraid of doing these things themselves.

I'm fearing the day my waterproof bone conduction headphones have poor battery health, changing the battery on that will be a whole 'nother challenge.

Yeah, anything waterproof is going to be a problem. I'm curious to see how the new EU laws on battery replacement deal with this.

The EU battery replacement laws do not apply to waterproof devices.

Looking at you Withings. My perfectly able and capable Steel HR needs to be binned and repurchased (quite hefty price too) after 8yrs of good use as now the battery lasts only 3 days. Tried to contact them to swap the battery (at a cost) they suggested the only option is the bin... 8yrs is definitely more than an Apple Watch probably, but way less than the Zenith my father wore for more than 30 years.

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