5 ms·

I did like having two batteries and an external charger. 30 seconds I’m out the door with a freshy

katbyte 6y ago
i guess with external battery packs being thrown at people every trade show there are alternatives now. I have a small one on me always that can charge my phone twice over
xondono 6y ago
Would you want it enough to pay 20% to 30% more and have the phone be ~5mm thicker? Because the obvious issue is that most people won’t.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  Why is that the requirement? The extra layers of plastic to enable removable batteries cost close to zero dollars and don't have to cost more than a millimeter.
  - tekknik 6y ago
    There’s also connectors that wouldn’t be there normally, those connectors also have to be large enough to support the current. Then there’s the plastic lined battery well, as well as the plastic battery case. It’s not as simple as throwing plastic around a battery and calling it a day.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      > There’s also connectors that wouldn’t be there normally, those connectors also have to be large enough to support the current. Supporting 5-10 amps requires very small pins. It's a tiny percentage of the battery size. > Then there’s the plastic lined battery well, as well as the plastic battery case. It’s not as simple as throwing plastic around a battery and calling it a day. Yes, those are the layers of plastic I was talking about. I didn't say you could slap something together in half an hour, I said it would cost close to zero dollars when talking about the per-phone price.
      - tekknik 6y ago
        > Why is that the requirement? The extra layers of plastic to enable removable batteries cost close to zero dollars and don't have to cost more than a millimeter. That very last phrase you said a millimeter. None of this will fit in one millimeter, which was my counter.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        The connector won't affect thickness, it will go at one end of the battery. For the layers of plastic, the battery already has a wrapping, and the phone already has a back. You just have to reinforce the wrapping on the battery. How much thickness do you think that needs? It's definitely not five millimeters.
  - xondono 6y ago
    “ The extra layers of plastic to enable removable batteries cost close to zero dollars and don't have to cost more than a millimeter.” “It’s two lines of code, how hard can it be?” More seriously, the cost of designing a battery pack goes way beyond that, just like in software there’s a world of difference between an internal and an external interface. Adding ESD protection for instance can be a headache.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      There's an enormous amount of design cost in a phone no matter what. Doing it differently from the start does not substantially increase the cost, and I'm not asking for a retrofit. It's absolutely bonkers to suggest a 20-30% increase in total cost that would be driven by design costs; that's more than doubling the entire design budget!
      - xondono 6y ago
        I'm not talking about NRE costs, I'm talking about very real manufacturing costs that you are ignoring. Modern battery packs are one of these things that if you haven't designed one you tend to think they're simple, but have a lot of hidden complexity. Just as an example, modern batteries require keeping track of a lot of parameters and metrics, and require keeping control of things like cell balancing. Making a battery removable means having to move all this into the pack, which then implies having exposed critical interfaces. As an example check this device by Texas Instruments: BQ40Z50-R2. This gives you a lot of the functionality to the point that Apple keeps variants of them in current laptops, even if they're not removable anymore. To make a software equivalent, imagine building an enterprise product that connects to a database, and then being asked to have this link exposed through public APIs. Now you need to consider delightful things like authentication, or being vulnerable to DDoS.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        Okay, that's an actual cost. But: 1. That just moves from phone to battery, doesn't it? That's not a cost increase for the bundle. 2. You don't need fancy things like cell balancing for a phone battery. 3. Even with this chip it's $4 BoM for small batches and significantly less in bulk. So that could be a 1% cost increase. So we have that, a thin plastic shell, and a tiny connector. How are we hitting 20-30% increases, hundreds of dollars?

i guess with external battery packs being thrown at people every trade show there are alternatives now. I have a small one on me always that can charge my phone twice over

xondono 6y ago

Would you want it enough to pay 20% to 30% more and have the phone be ~5mm thicker? Because the obvious issue is that most people won’t.

Dylan16807 6y ago
Why is that the requirement? The extra layers of plastic to enable removable batteries cost close to zero dollars and don't have to cost more than a millimeter.
- tekknik 6y ago
  There’s also connectors that wouldn’t be there normally, those connectors also have to be large enough to support the current. Then there’s the plastic lined battery well, as well as the plastic battery case. It’s not as simple as throwing plastic around a battery and calling it a day.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > There’s also connectors that wouldn’t be there normally, those connectors also have to be large enough to support the current. Supporting 5-10 amps requires very small pins. It's a tiny percentage of the battery size. > Then there’s the plastic lined battery well, as well as the plastic battery case. It’s not as simple as throwing plastic around a battery and calling it a day. Yes, those are the layers of plastic I was talking about. I didn't say you could slap something together in half an hour, I said it would cost close to zero dollars when talking about the per-phone price.
    - tekknik 6y ago
      > Why is that the requirement? The extra layers of plastic to enable removable batteries cost close to zero dollars and don't have to cost more than a millimeter. That very last phrase you said a millimeter. None of this will fit in one millimeter, which was my counter.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        The connector won't affect thickness, it will go at one end of the battery. For the layers of plastic, the battery already has a wrapping, and the phone already has a back. You just have to reinforce the wrapping on the battery. How much thickness do you think that needs? It's definitely not five millimeters.
- xondono 6y ago
  “ The extra layers of plastic to enable removable batteries cost close to zero dollars and don't have to cost more than a millimeter.” “It’s two lines of code, how hard can it be?” More seriously, the cost of designing a battery pack goes way beyond that, just like in software there’s a world of difference between an internal and an external interface. Adding ESD protection for instance can be a headache.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    There's an enormous amount of design cost in a phone no matter what. Doing it differently from the start does not substantially increase the cost, and I'm not asking for a retrofit. It's absolutely bonkers to suggest a 20-30% increase in total cost that would be driven by design costs; that's more than doubling the entire design budget!
    - xondono 6y ago
      I'm not talking about NRE costs, I'm talking about very real manufacturing costs that you are ignoring. Modern battery packs are one of these things that if you haven't designed one you tend to think they're simple, but have a lot of hidden complexity. Just as an example, modern batteries require keeping track of a lot of parameters and metrics, and require keeping control of things like cell balancing. Making a battery removable means having to move all this into the pack, which then implies having exposed critical interfaces. As an example check this device by Texas Instruments: BQ40Z50-R2. This gives you a lot of the functionality to the point that Apple keeps variants of them in current laptops, even if they're not removable anymore. To make a software equivalent, imagine building an enterprise product that connects to a database, and then being asked to have this link exposed through public APIs. Now you need to consider delightful things like authentication, or being vulnerable to DDoS.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        Okay, that's an actual cost. But: 1. That just moves from phone to battery, doesn't it? That's not a cost increase for the bundle. 2. You don't need fancy things like cell balancing for a phone battery. 3. Even with this chip it's $4 BoM for small batches and significantly less in bulk. So that could be a 1% cost increase. So we have that, a thin plastic shell, and a tiny connector. How are we hitting 20-30% increases, hundreds of dollars?