Comment by mxfh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mxfh | Hacker News Reader

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A replaceable battery, SD card and easily replaceable screens were all features of phones available more than 5 years ago, yet these features disappeared because the iPhone showed that most consumers don't value those features over a sleek integrated lifestyle product.

Besides all points mentioned already, I just can't think of a way to protect the pin-connection from wear in daily use without adding an additional shell or individual screws, which would make it even more bulky. Simply haven't seen a single miniature socket yet that works well under constant external stress.

Regarding the proposed design, with all it's sharp edges and deep ridges I'm already looking forward to weekly lint removal sessions.

In terms of total energy waste it might be worth considering that there's not only one logistic process anymore but a mere 5 to 10(?) with each has it's own packaging, transportation and handling footprint. So it's debatable that the total environmental impact might be actually worse than that of a 2 year life cycle smartphone.

iPhone showed that most consumers don't value those features over a sleek integrated lifestyle product.

Consumers have no acess to bid on the incremental value of features. There is no supply side market for these. There is no market because apple is playing monopolist (legal). Lets not use sloppy language !!

> apple is playing monopolist

what? how does apple have a monopoly?

You're going down the road into a philosophical argument. Defining a monopoly requires you to define a market, which is a huge can of worms. If you make the market "computing devices" then nobody has a monopoly. If you make the market "Win32 API PCs" then Microsoft has a monopoly. If you make the market "devices that run iOS apps" then Apple has a monopoly. And so on.

The larger point is that consumer choice isn't there. You can't get an iOS device with a removable battery. That doesn't prove that current Apple customers don't want a removable battery, it just proves they value some other characteristics more, and the market may not be offering any single product that satisfies their optimal set of preferences.

When that happens it means there is room for a newcomer to disrupt the market. If someone started selling iPhones (or something sufficiently equivalent) with removable batteries, some people would buy them -- if only because it would double the resale value since the phone wouldn't become landfill after the non-replaceable battery goes flat.

>There is no market because apple is playing monopolist (legal). Lets not use sloppy language !!

Are you going for satire?

Patents and trademarks are legal monopolies. Because of these protections, there are no non-apple "iphones". As a result, there are no ipohones with features not offered by apple. There are no a-la-carte prices for the features discussed. plain and simple. nothing nefarious, its their right by law. that being said, you cant infer/measure market values in non-existent markets. that's what the previous poster was trying to do.

> Consumers have no acess to bid on the incremental value of features.

They could have kept buying Nokia 3310s instead of iPhones if they thought that a replaceable battery was more important than everything else they got with the Apple product. People made the same argument about physical keyboards, and look at what happened to RIM.

The fact that the Droid line sells despite it being basically a keyboard bolted onto a 2-3 year old phone shows that there is a market there. RIMs problem was one of software - only Android and iOS smartphones are really doing well these days, since nothing else has the app ecosystem.

Which comes back to the incremental value of features thing.

Small, affordable, easy to repair. Pick two.

If you disagree about the "affordable" part, I invite you to estimate the cost of an iPhone that had replaceable parts, while maintaining the performance, battery life and size of the current, integrated one (if such a device is even technically doable).

Lumia 820 anyone? Selling close to just 200 EUR, replaceable battery, SD-card slot and a replaceable cover with optional wireless charging as a bonus. It's still a WP but it's doable.

> yet these features disappeared because the iPhone showed that most consumers don't value those features over a sleek integrated lifestyle product.

Actually, at the time when the shift to non-replaceable battery happened the alternatives had significantly worse software, which easily overtook any benefit from a replaceable battery, but also means that it means little in terms of estimated consumer expectations for a single hardware feature.

To get actual information we would need Apple to produce a device that's pretty much identical to the iPhone with the only differences being whatever's necessary to achieve battery replaceability.

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