> 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 clai

> 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.