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> The biggest motivation for US adult smartphone owners to upgrade their devices is longer battery life (61%)... Battery replacements are a thing. They're app

by Syonyk 2y ago

> The biggest motivation for US adult smartphone owners to upgrade their devices is longer battery life (61%)... Battery replacements are a thing. They're apparently not a common thing, unfortunately, because that might impact new phone sales... and even on devices where it's trivial, people don't seem to do it. A decade ago or so I was doing a lot of Nexus 5 battery swaps for people because one of the battery OEMs was shipping junk and the batteries were shot in a year. I really wish OEMs would put bigger batteries in phones. It improves everything. Not only do you get longer initial battery life, you can handle far more "battery aging" before things stop working right. You still have a day's battery life (which I expect is what most people actually mean - they want their phone to last the day without thinking about it) even with capacity loss, and a larger battery can have more internal resistance increase (another factor of battery aging) before it sags too badly under the load to keep voltage up. Based on the fact that easily 90+% of phones I see in the wild have cases on them, physical size and thickness isn't a big factor (and those newer folding screen devices are massive when folded). Another few mm doesn't matter when phones live in purses, men's pockets, or jackets. ... or just go back to a modern flip phone sort of device, get a week and a half battery life, and stop worrying about remembering to charge your phone. ;)

Sohcahtoa82 2y ago
> Based on the fact that easily 90+% of phones I see in the wild have cases on them, physical size and thickness isn't a big factor Everyone says this, but I wonder if the sales data says otherwise, because device manufacturers, especially Apple, REALLY love to advertise how thin their devices are. Personally, I don't want a super thin device because I feel like the slightest bending force is going to snap it in half. It's absolutely wild to me that people will store their phones in their back pocket.
- Syonyk 2y ago
  Apple's mobile division still seems to struggle with the ghost of Jony Ive. At least their laptop division was willing to rethink things with the Apple Silicon transition and go back to things that worked. The late Intel-era portable Macs were simply broken, because of Ive's apparent obsession with "thin for thin's sake." Or, more probably, "thin for the sake of industrial design awards." They innovated 20% too much on keyboard design with the butterfly keyboard that was simply a bad design. I don't know what else to call a keyboard that reliably breaks after a few years of service. But, bad though that it is, it was even worse because you couldn't replace the keyboard. You had to replace the whole top case and battery, at something like $700, when one key went bad, because the whole thing was integrated to save a mm or two. Not only did they un-solve a solved problem (reliable laptop keyboards), they even un-solved the ability to replace a keyboard when it gets mangled, or something spills in it, or a random failure happens. But, worse, they went with the USB-C only design (the thinnest port!), meaning that every owner of one of those laptops I knew had a pile of assorted adapters in their bag so they could do things that most people want to do every now and then with a laptop, like drive an external display for a presentation, read a USB-A storage device, or read a micro SD card. Yes, the laptop was thinner, but at the cost of needing to carry extra stuff with you to work around the lack of ports. And then, because it was so thin, they didn't have space to properly cool the zorching-fast Intel chips they put in them, and the chips would throttle badly while baking the machine. The M-series laptops, shocking me incredibly, threw all that "design" out the window, and went back to something actually useful. They cool well (admittedly, that's mostly the Apple Silicon barely needing cooling), they fixed the keyboard, and the machines have a useful set of ports on the side for "common tasks with a laptop" (SD, HDMI, headphone, plus the USB-C/Thunderbolt ports - still no A ports, though). And then enough battery to last just about forever. Anyway, I hope their phone division works this sort of thing out too.
NoboruWataya 2y ago
> Based on the fact that easily 90+% of phones I see in the wild have cases on them, physical size and thickness isn't a big factor Well, people are probably going to put cases on their phone regardless, so the phone has to be thin enough that even with a case it's still a manageable size. But I agree that battery is where phones ultimately fail most of the time. I have had a Samsung S10 for a bit over 5 years now and it is the battery that is going to force me to retire it and get a new one. Speed, storage, screen quality, camera quality are all perfectly fine for my use case. But the battery rarely lasts a full day with any kind of usage now which is annoying. I would love a phone with a replaceable battery. But I agree that the average consumer won't bother, they will just get a new one (or they will have upgraded before battery life ever becomes an issue).
- Syonyk 2y ago
  So replace the battery? It's not some impossible task. https://www.ifixit.com/products/galaxy-s10-replacement-battery https://www.ifixit.com/products/galaxy-s10-replacement-batte... It's slightly annoying to replace, but even if you have a shop do it, it's far cheaper than a new phone. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+S10+Battery+Replacement/121826 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+S10+Battery+Repl...
  - NoboruWataya 2y ago
    I'm aware it can be done and have looked at the page on iFixit, and may end up doing just that. But as well as looking like a bit of a PITA to do it, I'm not particularly confident my phone will be good as new after I melt the glue and pry it open. My point is that it would be great if replacing the battery was as simple as clicking off (or even unscrewing) the case and taking it out, like it used to be. Granted, I probably couldn't take my phone swimming with me, but I think I could get over that.
- marcosdumay 2y ago
  People didn't put cases on all phones at the time they could survive small falls and were thick enough to handle.
- 2y ago
jandrese 2y ago
I just did a battery replacement on a Pixel 6a. It wasn't terribly expensive, $18 for the whole kit, but the process was very nerve wracking. Unlike Apple's relatively friendly rubber cement Google used some kind of industrial adhesive to glue everything together. You need a good amount of heat to loosen it, but not too much because that will damage the phone. There's a fine line. They do include a helpful strap for removing the battery, but you have that awful glue to deal with. The cherry on top is the slippery little spring clip connector you need to remove without damaging the board underneath. All in all it made me pine for the days when you could just pop the back off of the phone and yank the battery out to replace it. Personally I think I could live with a 0.8mm thicker phone that still has this feature. Also a headphone jack while you are at it.

by Syonyk 2y ago

Sohcahtoa82 2y ago

> Based on the fact that easily 90+% of phones I see in the wild have cases on them, physical size and thickness isn't a big factor Everyone says this, but I wonder if the sales data says otherwise, because device manufacturers, especially Apple, REALLY love to advertise how thin their devices are. Personally, I don't want a super thin device because I feel like the slightest bending force is going to snap it in half. It's absolutely wild to me that people will store their phones in their back pocket.

Syonyk 2y ago
Apple's mobile division still seems to struggle with the ghost of Jony Ive. At least their laptop division was willing to rethink things with the Apple Silicon transition and go back to things that worked. The late Intel-era portable Macs were simply broken, because of Ive's apparent obsession with "thin for thin's sake." Or, more probably, "thin for the sake of industrial design awards." They innovated 20% too much on keyboard design with the butterfly keyboard that was simply a bad design. I don't know what else to call a keyboard that reliably breaks after a few years of service. But, bad though that it is, it was even worse because you couldn't replace the keyboard. You had to replace the whole top case and battery, at something like $700, when one key went bad, because the whole thing was integrated to save a mm or two. Not only did they un-solve a solved problem (reliable laptop keyboards), they even un-solved the ability to replace a keyboard when it gets mangled, or something spills in it, or a random failure happens. But, worse, they went with the USB-C only design (the thinnest port!), meaning that every owner of one of those laptops I knew had a pile of assorted adapters in their bag so they could do things that most people want to do every now and then with a laptop, like drive an external display for a presentation, read a USB-A storage device, or read a micro SD card. Yes, the laptop was thinner, but at the cost of needing to carry extra stuff with you to work around the lack of ports. And then, because it was so thin, they didn't have space to properly cool the zorching-fast Intel chips they put in them, and the chips would throttle badly while baking the machine. The M-series laptops, shocking me incredibly, threw all that "design" out the window, and went back to something actually useful. They cool well (admittedly, that's mostly the Apple Silicon barely needing cooling), they fixed the keyboard, and the machines have a useful set of ports on the side for "common tasks with a laptop" (SD, HDMI, headphone, plus the USB-C/Thunderbolt ports - still no A ports, though). And then enough battery to last just about forever. Anyway, I hope their phone division works this sort of thing out too.

NoboruWataya 2y ago

> Based on the fact that easily 90+% of phones I see in the wild have cases on them, physical size and thickness isn't a big factor Well, people are probably going to put cases on their phone regardless, so the phone has to be thin enough that even with a case it's still a manageable size. But I agree that battery is where phones ultimately fail most of the time. I have had a Samsung S10 for a bit over 5 years now and it is the battery that is going to force me to retire it and get a new one. Speed, storage, screen quality, camera quality are all perfectly fine for my use case. But the battery rarely lasts a full day with any kind of usage now which is annoying. I would love a phone with a replaceable battery. But I agree that the average consumer won't bother, they will just get a new one (or they will have upgraded before battery life ever becomes an issue).

Syonyk 2y ago
So replace the battery? It's not some impossible task. https://www.ifixit.com/products/galaxy-s10-replacement-battery https://www.ifixit.com/products/galaxy-s10-replacement-batte... It's slightly annoying to replace, but even if you have a shop do it, it's far cheaper than a new phone. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+S10+Battery+Replacement/121826 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Samsung+Galaxy+S10+Battery+Repl...
- NoboruWataya 2y ago
  I'm aware it can be done and have looked at the page on iFixit, and may end up doing just that. But as well as looking like a bit of a PITA to do it, I'm not particularly confident my phone will be good as new after I melt the glue and pry it open. My point is that it would be great if replacing the battery was as simple as clicking off (or even unscrewing) the case and taking it out, like it used to be. Granted, I probably couldn't take my phone swimming with me, but I think I could get over that.
marcosdumay 2y ago
People didn't put cases on all phones at the time they could survive small falls and were thick enough to handle.
2y ago

jandrese 2y ago

I just did a battery replacement on a Pixel 6a. It wasn't terribly expensive, $18 for the whole kit, but the process was very nerve wracking. Unlike Apple's relatively friendly rubber cement Google used some kind of industrial adhesive to glue everything together. You need a good amount of heat to loosen it, but not too much because that will damage the phone. There's a fine line. They do include a helpful strap for removing the battery, but you have that awful glue to deal with. The cherry on top is the slippery little spring clip connector you need to remove without damaging the board underneath. All in all it made me pine for the days when you could just pop the back off of the phone and yank the battery out to replace it. Personally I think I could live with a 0.8mm thicker phone that still has this feature. Also a headphone jack while you are at it.