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The issue is that the choice is vanishing, and the point of this thread is that it's likely not because of valid technical reasons (you could already get slim a

The issue is that the choice is vanishing, and the point of this thread is that it's likely not because of valid technical reasons (you could already get slim and waterproof with a removable back several years ago). Honest question: do you know of any high-end phone with a replaceable battery? I know iphones don't have them, the Galaxy S line has lost it starting with the 6. The Asus Zenfone doesn't have it. Sonys don't. One Plus doesn't. I'm not famialiar with lower-end models, but I know the Galaxy A33 doesn't have a removable battery either. And this is also spreading to other electronics, such as laptops. My 2013 MBP had a glued battery. I was able to change it after like 20 minutes of scraping that crap. That laptop was thicker than my current "ultrabook" which has a screwed battery pack (though it says it's not user replaceable - since it's new I didn't try to take it out yet, so I may be in for a surprise). There was ample space in the MBP for a bunch of screws under the back cover, and it wouldn't have interfered with aesthetics or anything else.

scarface_74 3y ago
That’s just the thing, there are valid technical reasons. Apple alone sells 200 million phones a year. If even five percent of people don’t secure the battery properly or the battery cover isn’t reliable after repeated removal - which happen to older phones back in the day - it affects a lot of people. There weren’t that many reports in the west for instance about the physical home button being unreliable. But that did become a problem in places like China where older iPhones are bought and sold in the refurb market to a point where they were turning on accessibility options to have a soft home button on the screen to keep wear and tear down on the home button. Can you imagine how much less reliable at scale a physical removable battery door will be over the five or six year possible lifetime of an iPhone? Apple claims to have over 1 billion iPhones in use. And that’s an exaggeration. Apple has historically provided OS updates for five years and the 2013 iPhone 5s got a security update earlier this year. I am a lot more sympathetic to wanting a replaceable battery in a laptop. While I can just click on “backup” of my iPhone, erase it before I take it in for service and restore it back, that isn’t so simple with a computer. Heck when my work MacBook battery needs replacing, I have no idea what they are going to do since we have a four year replacement cycle. Will they ship me a replacement MacBook temporarily?
- vladvasiliu 3y ago
  > Can you imagine how much less reliable at scale a physical removable battery door will be over the five or six year possible lifetime of an iPhone? Apple claims to have over 1 billion iPhones in use. I can't, since my GS5 lived 5 years with me before I lost it, and never had any issue with water. It's not obvious to me that this is automatically an ureliable setup. You're also talking about the refurbished marked. I actually looked at buying such an iphone and refrained, since being water-resistant is important to me because I actually do get my phone drenched somewhat regularly. None of the shops guaranteed the water resistance. I don't doubt some phone manufacturers can and will choose to cheap out on the quality of components or manufacture so that their phone will lose water resistance if you look at it the wrong way. But that doesn't mean it's impossible to do right, just as not having a user-replaceable battery doesn't guarantee that it won't take water. My sealed with non-user replaceable battery iphone developed a bulge and became open to the elements when the screen started separating from the body. And it didn't just pop right out all of a sudden, the seals probably started decaying much before I noticed the screen being weird. Lucky for me, I wasn't caught in the rain during that time. I can totally live with an alert that reminds me once in a blue moon to check that my back cover is well installed. I don't reboot my phone every day. The iPhone never reminded me to check whether, maybe, the screen was separating.
  - scarface_74 3y ago
    > with me before I lost it, and never had any issue with water. It's not obvious to me that this is automatically an ureliable setup Samsung itself thought that it was enough of an issue to have constant warnings. Now multiply your anecdote by 1.5 billion - the number of active iPhones in existence. What are the chances that 5% won’t encounter an issue over 5 years with more moving pieces if something as simple as a physical home button had reliability issues over the years?

scarface_74 3y ago

That’s just the thing, there are valid technical reasons. Apple alone sells 200 million phones a year. If even five percent of people don’t secure the battery properly or the battery cover isn’t reliable after repeated removal - which happen to older phones back in the day - it affects a lot of people. There weren’t that many reports in the west for instance about the physical home button being unreliable. But that did become a problem in places like China where older iPhones are bought and sold in the refurb market to a point where they were turning on accessibility options to have a soft home button on the screen to keep wear and tear down on the home button. Can you imagine how much less reliable at scale a physical removable battery door will be over the five or six year possible lifetime of an iPhone? Apple claims to have over 1 billion iPhones in use. And that’s an exaggeration. Apple has historically provided OS updates for five years and the 2013 iPhone 5s got a security update earlier this year. I am a lot more sympathetic to wanting a replaceable battery in a laptop. While I can just click on “backup” of my iPhone, erase it before I take it in for service and restore it back, that isn’t so simple with a computer. Heck when my work MacBook battery needs replacing, I have no idea what they are going to do since we have a four year replacement cycle. Will they ship me a replacement MacBook temporarily?

vladvasiliu 3y ago
> Can you imagine how much less reliable at scale a physical removable battery door will be over the five or six year possible lifetime of an iPhone? Apple claims to have over 1 billion iPhones in use. I can't, since my GS5 lived 5 years with me before I lost it, and never had any issue with water. It's not obvious to me that this is automatically an ureliable setup. You're also talking about the refurbished marked. I actually looked at buying such an iphone and refrained, since being water-resistant is important to me because I actually do get my phone drenched somewhat regularly. None of the shops guaranteed the water resistance. I don't doubt some phone manufacturers can and will choose to cheap out on the quality of components or manufacture so that their phone will lose water resistance if you look at it the wrong way. But that doesn't mean it's impossible to do right, just as not having a user-replaceable battery doesn't guarantee that it won't take water. My sealed with non-user replaceable battery iphone developed a bulge and became open to the elements when the screen started separating from the body. And it didn't just pop right out all of a sudden, the seals probably started decaying much before I noticed the screen being weird. Lucky for me, I wasn't caught in the rain during that time. I can totally live with an alert that reminds me once in a blue moon to check that my back cover is well installed. I don't reboot my phone every day. The iPhone never reminded me to check whether, maybe, the screen was separating.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  > with me before I lost it, and never had any issue with water. It's not obvious to me that this is automatically an ureliable setup Samsung itself thought that it was enough of an issue to have constant warnings. Now multiply your anecdote by 1.5 billion - the number of active iPhones in existence. What are the chances that 5% won’t encounter an issue over 5 years with more moving pieces if something as simple as a physical home button had reliability issues over the years?