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The short version is: "Wouldn't it be disruptive if Apple went back to replaceable batteries?" but the author stopped short of where that leads. One of the thi

The short version is: "Wouldn't it be disruptive if Apple went back to replaceable batteries?" but the author stopped short of where that leads. One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This is a big improvement in my user experience. Another of the things that have moved us forward is that power efficiency has gone up dramatically, as a result a smaller battery can give the same "run time" as a large battery of old without the bulk associated with the larger energy storage capacity. Why not combine them? Why not no battery in the device? Seal it against the elements. Then put in a pocket where a battery that is a wireless "charger" can drop into a slot on the device and provide the power. Current demands on a modern device are low enough that you just go wireless all the time for main power. Now your device takes a sealed "toaster pastry" sized unit that looks innocuous, but slide it into the slot and poof the device powers up, put it on a recharging mat and it starts charging up itself. Now you have no exposed terminals to "short out", no worries about the battery in your device becoming a "pillow of doom"[1]. And you can carry a couple of extras if you're going to be away from power for a while. You get all the benefits of replaceable batteries and none of the downsides with the possible exception of a "slot" in your device that looks funny when there isn't a battery in it. I totally should have patented this :-) [1] Just Google it :-)

rzzzt 3y ago
AKA spicy pillows, there is a subreddit with the same name dedicated to those puffed up bastards.
silisili 3y ago
That's pretty close to how power tools work, minus the wireless charging of course. My first concern would be warmth, my phone always warms up when wireless charging. Doing something CPU intensive would probably get the device blazing. My second concern would be size - is the total package going to get a lot bigger here? If we forgo the pocket and just use magnets at each corner maybe it gets slimmer, but can it be about as slim as they are today? If we could overcome those two hurdles, I'd be a huge fan of the idea.
- judge2020 3y ago
  MagSafe's auto-alignment really helped the efficiency of Wireless Charging, supposedly 75% efficient with MagSafe (based on the cable pulling 20w and phone supposedly accepting 15w) versus 50% for regular Qi charging.
- ChuckMcM 3y ago
  There is a tradeoff here which might mislead. That is that when you're wirelessly recharging a battery "good" is defined by "charges in a short time" which means a lot of current and thus a lot of heat. When operating a device "good" is defined by "runs a long time" which means minimal current and thus little heat. So before we could dismiss the idea, we would really need to run the experiment of "running" via wireless power to see how the current requirements in that state would be reflected in device heating (or not). I agree with you though that if the answer was "always smoking hot" then it is a non starter. As for size, the "wireless" part is really really thin (a loop antenna). Battery size is a function of how much electrolyte it can carry and LiOn batteries are about 0.5g/cc and 250Wh/kg (or .25Wh/g) iPhones are around 12Wh so about 48g of battery which is 96cc of Lithium. Call it 100cc and you're looking as a "7.8 x 15 x 1" cm "battery card" (order of magnitude approximation based on that math and rough measurements of my iPhone 13SE which is a smallish phone) I like the idea of magnets but I don't like the idea of the battery being "jostled off" my phone in my pocket and so effectively turned off when I think it should be on. So I think that would take some design work to get right.
  - punkybr3wster 3y ago
    Moderate super capacitor for interstitial periods?
pjerem 3y ago
You really don’t have to go wireless to protect your device/battery against the elements. In fact, most smartphones today are totally waterproof while still being charged by a good old cable. It’s also pretty easy to design a connector with exposed pins that are totally inoffensive until something real is exposed. In fact, modern USB charging already works like this : a charger will not send anything over 5v x 150mA before having negotiated with the device to know what it needs.
albertgoeswoof 3y ago
Wireless power is too inefficient for this to make sense. You’d be throwing 30% of the battery capacity to the wind
- bradgessler 3y ago
  You could have low profile metal contacts between the battery case and the phone to achieve full efficiency.
  - amelius 3y ago
    How do you keep them clean?
    - ungamedplayer 3y ago
      $45 apple cleaning cloth.
  - silisili 3y ago
    Every phone with moto mods were built this way. The battery mod was probably the most popular. They didn't sell well, apparently.
Thorrez 3y ago
You'd still need some in-device battery to keep the phone from fully powering off every time you change the outside battery. I think people want their phones to not have to fully power off all the time.
- lbotos 3y ago
  30min of standby capacity for an internal lil battery, external poptarts galore? I don't hate it. It's kind of an interesting play because apple could make a super thin phone that has 30 min battery life and then a few different size pop tarts with different capacities. You want 3 days, get the mondo brick.
  - bradknowles 3y ago
    How is that materially different from what Apple already has?
    - Haemm0r 3y ago
      Apple can charge the same prize for the phone and upsell you on the battery :-)
      - bradknowles 3y ago
        Again, how is that different from the current situation?
- windowsrookie 3y ago
  Interestingly Apple's old PowerBooks had this. They had a very small internal lithium rechargeable battery. So you could close the lid(making the PowerBook go to sleep). Then you could swap the main battery without having to shut down the laptop. It could power itself off the internal battery (in sleep mode) for a few minutes.
buildbot 3y ago
> One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This is a big improvement in my user experience. The palm pre and several early android phones had both removable batteries and wireless charging. The back panel just had pogo pins for the coil to transfer power.
- FractalParadigm 3y ago
  In many cases the coils were integrated into the casing of the battery, and the back panel of the phone was thin enough to transfer sufficient power through.
Reason077 3y ago
> "Why not no battery in the device?" How about a nuclear battery, aka radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG)? This would be sealed in (carefully!) and would last the lifetime of the device, with no need for charging, ever. Would need special steps/handling to ensure safe disposal at end of product life, however.
- M3L0NM4N 3y ago
  What about a fusion reactor, generating its own hydrogen molecules to power nuclear fusion through electrolysis from the water vapor in the air. There isn't really a theoretical limit to how small a fusion reactor can be, although clearly this would not achievable for a long time.
  - ungamedplayer 3y ago
    Totally planned obsolescence.
  - eru 3y ago
    If you want to go totally crazy, you can use a black hole as a power source. The laws of physics don't give you a minimum size for them either. However for black holes the smaller they are, the more power they emit in terms of hawking radiation.
    - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
      I’m pretty sure there was a Rick and Morty close to this.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      Fusion is silly but at least possible. Unless you have an idea for keeping the black hole inside the phone?
      - eru 3y ago
        Yes, I do: use a bunch of carefully controlled magnets to spin your block hole in a circle inside the phones. Black holes can hold charge, and thus electromagnetism works on them. (Not really useful for a phone, of course. But manipulating black holes like that is not any harder than manipulating an equally massive lump of ordinary matter.)
threetonesun 3y ago
Wasn’t a similar but worse version of this common in laptops 15ish years ago? You often had the option of running two batteries instead of 1 and a CD drive because they had interchangeable slots.
esperent 3y ago
Wireless charging wastes a lot of energy. I'm not sure of the exact figures but I recall around 50%. Not a huge deal, on a personal level, for a plugged in charger (although if everyone in the world starts doing this it'll be more of a problem). However wireless charging from a battery pack is not ideal because the battery will have to be bigger. I already feel my phone is too big to be comfortable in my pocket, and I know it's even more of an issue for smaller people/women's clothing with tiny pockets. It's an interesting idea though.
hasoleju 3y ago
I googled pillow of doom but I still have no idea what you meant by it. I only find information about real doom themed pillows. Did you mean a damaged, blown up battery pack? At least that's what I expected to find.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  You are correct. “Pillow of doom” is sometimes used to refer to bulging/swollen batteries. There is subreddit named “SpicyPillows” that’s centered around the same concept. I assume it’s due to the pillow shape a swollen battery takes.

rzzzt 3y ago

AKA spicy pillows, there is a subreddit with the same name dedicated to those puffed up bastards.

silisili 3y ago

That's pretty close to how power tools work, minus the wireless charging of course. My first concern would be warmth, my phone always warms up when wireless charging. Doing something CPU intensive would probably get the device blazing. My second concern would be size - is the total package going to get a lot bigger here? If we forgo the pocket and just use magnets at each corner maybe it gets slimmer, but can it be about as slim as they are today? If we could overcome those two hurdles, I'd be a huge fan of the idea.

judge2020 3y ago
MagSafe's auto-alignment really helped the efficiency of Wireless Charging, supposedly 75% efficient with MagSafe (based on the cable pulling 20w and phone supposedly accepting 15w) versus 50% for regular Qi charging.
ChuckMcM 3y ago
There is a tradeoff here which might mislead. That is that when you're wirelessly recharging a battery "good" is defined by "charges in a short time" which means a lot of current and thus a lot of heat. When operating a device "good" is defined by "runs a long time" which means minimal current and thus little heat. So before we could dismiss the idea, we would really need to run the experiment of "running" via wireless power to see how the current requirements in that state would be reflected in device heating (or not). I agree with you though that if the answer was "always smoking hot" then it is a non starter. As for size, the "wireless" part is really really thin (a loop antenna). Battery size is a function of how much electrolyte it can carry and LiOn batteries are about 0.5g/cc and 250Wh/kg (or .25Wh/g) iPhones are around 12Wh so about 48g of battery which is 96cc of Lithium. Call it 100cc and you're looking as a "7.8 x 15 x 1" cm "battery card" (order of magnitude approximation based on that math and rough measurements of my iPhone 13SE which is a smallish phone) I like the idea of magnets but I don't like the idea of the battery being "jostled off" my phone in my pocket and so effectively turned off when I think it should be on. So I think that would take some design work to get right.
- punkybr3wster 3y ago
  Moderate super capacitor for interstitial periods?

pjerem 3y ago

You really don’t have to go wireless to protect your device/battery against the elements. In fact, most smartphones today are totally waterproof while still being charged by a good old cable. It’s also pretty easy to design a connector with exposed pins that are totally inoffensive until something real is exposed. In fact, modern USB charging already works like this : a charger will not send anything over 5v x 150mA before having negotiated with the device to know what it needs.

albertgoeswoof 3y ago

Wireless power is too inefficient for this to make sense. You’d be throwing 30% of the battery capacity to the wind

bradgessler 3y ago
You could have low profile metal contacts between the battery case and the phone to achieve full efficiency.
- amelius 3y ago
  How do you keep them clean?
  - ungamedplayer 3y ago
    $45 apple cleaning cloth.
- silisili 3y ago
  Every phone with moto mods were built this way. The battery mod was probably the most popular. They didn't sell well, apparently.

Thorrez 3y ago

You'd still need some in-device battery to keep the phone from fully powering off every time you change the outside battery. I think people want their phones to not have to fully power off all the time.

lbotos 3y ago
30min of standby capacity for an internal lil battery, external poptarts galore? I don't hate it. It's kind of an interesting play because apple could make a super thin phone that has 30 min battery life and then a few different size pop tarts with different capacities. You want 3 days, get the mondo brick.
- bradknowles 3y ago
  How is that materially different from what Apple already has?
  - Haemm0r 3y ago
    Apple can charge the same prize for the phone and upsell you on the battery :-)
    - bradknowles 3y ago
      Again, how is that different from the current situation?
windowsrookie 3y ago
Interestingly Apple's old PowerBooks had this. They had a very small internal lithium rechargeable battery. So you could close the lid(making the PowerBook go to sleep). Then you could swap the main battery without having to shut down the laptop. It could power itself off the internal battery (in sleep mode) for a few minutes.

buildbot 3y ago

> One of the things that doable "now" that wasn't doable "then" is wireless charging. I love that I can put my phone on a pad next to the bed at night and it charges, pick it up and there is no trailing wire to unplug, put it down and there is no wire to find and plug in. This is a big improvement in my user experience. The palm pre and several early android phones had both removable batteries and wireless charging. The back panel just had pogo pins for the coil to transfer power.

FractalParadigm 3y ago
In many cases the coils were integrated into the casing of the battery, and the back panel of the phone was thin enough to transfer sufficient power through.

Reason077 3y ago

> "Why not no battery in the device?" How about a nuclear battery, aka radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG)? This would be sealed in (carefully!) and would last the lifetime of the device, with no need for charging, ever. Would need special steps/handling to ensure safe disposal at end of product life, however.

M3L0NM4N 3y ago
What about a fusion reactor, generating its own hydrogen molecules to power nuclear fusion through electrolysis from the water vapor in the air. There isn't really a theoretical limit to how small a fusion reactor can be, although clearly this would not achievable for a long time.
- ungamedplayer 3y ago
  Totally planned obsolescence.
- eru 3y ago
  If you want to go totally crazy, you can use a black hole as a power source. The laws of physics don't give you a minimum size for them either. However for black holes the smaller they are, the more power they emit in terms of hawking radiation.
  - SV_BubbleTime 3y ago
    I’m pretty sure there was a Rick and Morty close to this.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Fusion is silly but at least possible. Unless you have an idea for keeping the black hole inside the phone?
    - eru 3y ago
      Yes, I do: use a bunch of carefully controlled magnets to spin your block hole in a circle inside the phones. Black holes can hold charge, and thus electromagnetism works on them. (Not really useful for a phone, of course. But manipulating black holes like that is not any harder than manipulating an equally massive lump of ordinary matter.)

threetonesun 3y ago

Wasn’t a similar but worse version of this common in laptops 15ish years ago? You often had the option of running two batteries instead of 1 and a CD drive because they had interchangeable slots.

esperent 3y ago

Wireless charging wastes a lot of energy. I'm not sure of the exact figures but I recall around 50%. Not a huge deal, on a personal level, for a plugged in charger (although if everyone in the world starts doing this it'll be more of a problem). However wireless charging from a battery pack is not ideal because the battery will have to be bigger. I already feel my phone is too big to be comfortable in my pocket, and I know it's even more of an issue for smaller people/women's clothing with tiny pockets. It's an interesting idea though.

hasoleju 3y ago

I googled pillow of doom but I still have no idea what you meant by it. I only find information about real doom themed pillows. Did you mean a damaged, blown up battery pack? At least that's what I expected to find.

joshstrange 3y ago
You are correct. “Pillow of doom” is sometimes used to refer to bulging/swollen batteries. There is subreddit named “SpicyPillows” that’s centered around the same concept. I assume it’s due to the pillow shape a swollen battery takes.