Airpods et al are actually the least shocking case of nonswappable batteries. Any battery would have to be removable while also protected, either electronicall

Airpods et al are actually the least shocking case of nonswappable batteries. Any battery would have to be removable while also protected, either electronically or by some mechanism that made accidental unscrewing unlikely, while also guarding against being swallowed as button batteries are. You would need a screw, and that would take a bit of space. I suspect the best answer would just be to use 2.4v LTO batteries, which last long enough that non-replacability is acceptable. You lose some runtime, but make up for it with faster charging. For everything else, we just need a better battery standard. Companies would use it, and if they didn't, you could just mandate that anyone making a device above a certain size had to use some open standard. At the moment, 18650s and other cylindrical lithiums are the only reasonable choice, but they aren't really safe, and they are tied to Li-Ion, a chemistry we will hopefully move on from someday. We could instead have an open version of what power tool companies have: smart batteries with i2c communication and protection built in.