9 ms·

IP68, replaceable battery, phone jack, 5G: https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.p

IP68, replaceable battery, phone jack, 5G: https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php

RedShift1 5mo ago
And 4 years old... I wouldn't buy this new
- joe_mamba 5mo ago
  The comment is not meant to give you something to buy, it's just proof that it can technically be done, they just don't want to do it for modern flagships.
  - nickpp 5mo ago
    > it can technically be done At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs. I like it when different producers select a different subset of priorities for their offer. Competition at work. One of the reasons we witnessed such an awesome evolution in the smartphone market. I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition.
    - inanutshellus 5mo ago
      The tradeoff was discussed in a sibling thread: it's heavier by 58 grams and thicker by 2mm. That's it. That's the tradeoff. Why go crazy on the guy?
      - soperj 5mo ago
        That's with the latest iphone, not the equivalent iphone from when this was released.
      - bigbuppo 5mo ago
        So the fun plateau will be less pronounced and fun?
    - cicko 5mo ago
      I hate when a technocrat at a multi-billion dollar company makes those decisions, maximizing profit and not giving a fuck about any other criteria.
      - nickpp 5mo ago
        > I hate when a technocrat at a multi-billion dollar company makes those decisions Really?! So instead of the person hired and paid specifically to select and decide what the product should cost, look and work like, the person whose very pay depends on how well she chooses those product features for you - instead you'd rather have a faceless nameless bureaucrat who never pays the cost of his wrong decisions, who instead gets more power and money the more he panders to the vocal minorities that push populist agendas completely detached from the market place. > not giving a fuck about any other criteria That is simply not true, such a company would go out of business fast. As I said before, any product is a set of tradeoffs. Cost (and profit) is just one of the factors. Ignoring the others does not make successful products. > profit I love it when a company I buy from is successful. That means it's gonna be around to create more stuff for me to enjoy. It also means the awesome people working there get paid and are successful themselves. Finally, it means that its investors will back up more of this kind of companies that create useful products and services. Profit is great!
        cicko 5mo ago
        Everything you've written can be turned around, swapping companies and authorities. Those working in a public administration are serving the public while those working in a private company are serving themselves (and the shareholders).
    - _ZeD_ 5mo ago
      > At what cost though?! maybe just a little less margin for apple...
    - john01dav 5mo ago
      > I like it when different producers select a different subset of priorities for their offer. Competition at work. One of the reasons we witnessed such an awesome evolution in the smartphone market. > > I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition. I generally agree with that sentiment, except we don't have a vibrant market of many options with many different trade offs. Finding headphone jack, solid reparability, user swappable battery, easily replaceable USB port, and all the other things that one might want is basically impossible. The vast majority of phones are highly unrepairable, have no headphone jack, have everything soldered to a tiny number of internal boards, and are full of anti repair dark patterns.
    - user_7832 5mo ago
      > At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs. My $200 Moto G3 in 2016 had a removable back cover (admittedly not battery). It was also waterproof (and had a headphone jack.) The engineering of making things waterproof is in the realm of "A bit more annoying but easily doable if anyone's interested in doing it", not "Doable at the cost of everything else".
      - nickpp 5mo ago
        > My $200 Moto G3 in 2016 had a removable back cover (admittedly not battery). It was also waterproof (and had a headphone jack.) It also did diddly squat in the market place and the company producing it ran out of business. Again, a product is a set of tradeoffs. Those tradeoff include functionality, cost, logistics to build, even marketing and sales. Maximizing a feature to serve a loud minority (headphone jack!) but thus ignoring other features will simply make a product fail in the market place in time...
        user_7832 5mo ago
        > It also did diddly squat in the market place Not sure what the context or background of that is, but here in India, the G3 sold out shortly after launch. Per this [1] stat by a Motorola exec too, it did very well. > Motorola’s General Manager for India, Amit Boni stated at the Moto X Play launch event that the Moto G (3rd Gen) that was launched in July is among the fastest selling smartphones on Flipkart. Its sales mark grossed 140% higher than the Moto G (1st Gen and 2nd Gen). (And I know that's legitimate because a lot of peers, friends and family, folks on the streets etc had Motorolas.) > and the company producing it ran out of business. Unfortunate, yes, but I don't think it was because they made and sold phones that didn't sell. I don't know if it was business mismanagement or what, but it's an unfortunate legacy of one of the most promising brands. Fortunately Lenovo isn't killing the brand, so there's that. 1 - https://telecomtalk.info/motorola-sold-over-5-6-million-india/142980/ https://telecomtalk.info/motorola-sold-over-5-6-million-indi...
    - joe_mamba 5mo ago
      >I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition. It's because of those "bureaucrats", that car manufacturers were forced to implement catalytic converters and ECUs for emissions controls, and why the air in your city isn't a smog cloud like in the 70s. I hate it when people assume the environmental and societal problems caused the unregulated free market, are gonna be fixed by the same unregulated free market which only optimizes for profit.
- wolvoleo 5mo ago
  There's a new model the 7 pro https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover7_pro-13780.php https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover7_pro-13780.php
  - badsectoracula 5mo ago
    No 3.5mm jack though :-/
- jbvlkt 5mo ago
  Better than average phone sold today. The only problem might be lack of android upgrades otherwise it is straight upgrade for most people. This is reason why replaceable battery is important. If you leave IT bubble people happily use ancient phones and do not need upgrades if battery is ok and there is space to save new photos.
kaiwn 5mo ago
2 mm thicker and 58 grams heavier than the latest iPhone.
- toasty228 5mo ago
  Oh yeah so it's utter trash and not worthy of our attention. Imagine carrying a whole 58 grams more, during a whole day, impossible for the average tech worker's atrophied muscles
  - bartvk 5mo ago
    I get what you're saying but please be friendly here.
  - chroma 5mo ago
    The point is that people have different preferences, so the EU should not force people to buy phones with removable batteries. People who want such features can buy those phones, and people who want smaller, thinner phones can buy ones with integrated batteries. At most the EU should tax externalities like electronic waste, though that would be a rounding error compared to the cost of the phone itself.
    - john01dav 5mo ago
      Such phones with removable batteries are incredibly rare, such that finding one is quite likely to fail if you have any other concerns at all. If a truly well made phone was common and made by many people, then there'd be much less argument for this regulation.
      - chroma 5mo ago
        Phones with removable batteries are rare because only a small fraction of people want phones with removable batteries. Phone manufacturers also dislike removable batteries because customers buy cheap 3rd party batteries and complain when these batteries perform poorly or malfunction, sometimes by exploding. And then the headline is, “Phone made by company X explodes.” not, “Cheap battery explodes.” Removable batteries also introduce new failure modes like contacts degrading, causing phones to power off unexpectedly when jostled or flexed in certain ways. That increases the risk of a recall and bad PR. I and millions of others want a phone that is smaller than the current offerings. Heck, my 13 mini is too big for my tastes. But I don’t think that means the government should force phone manufacturers to make smaller phones. So too for features like removable batteries, physical keyboards, or headphone jacks.
elzbardico 5mo ago
[flagged]
badsectoracula 5mo ago
Unfortunately it is from 2022, meaning no OS upgrades. I think the next mandatory laws EU should pass is that manufacturers should either allow people to upgrade/replace the OS by themselves or provide mandatory upgrades for the next decade (i don't care how the manufacturers handle it, that's up to them, but the easiest way out of such a law is to allow people upgrade/replace the OS by themselves).
- jodleif 5mo ago
  Would be really nice. Seems like even android is getting more and more locked down
- varispeed 5mo ago
  It's not going to happen, because government need backdoors to the devices. That's why ability to flash own os is severely limited.
- capitainenemo 5mo ago
  So, they have an XCover 7 now - with similar specs. Also, they committed to a rather long support cycle for the xcover6 (5 years I think?) - I have one and it is still going strong. I've replaced the battery twice - not because I desperately needed to, but... why not. They are cheap, and I use the older ones still as backup battery packs since they are fast to swap in.
  - wolvoleo 5mo ago
    Yeah they are really meant for businesses. Frontline workers, factory floors. This is what we use them for and they do stand up to the abuse. Of course people treat them very badly as it's not something they paid for. Really long support too. They're not good in terms of specs for the price but that is not what these phones are about.
    - capitainenemo 5mo ago
      Yeah, the specs were... decent... nothing standout. Really I was going over the list of things I had lost after the Galaxy Note got rid of all their features and decided the replaceable battery was the one I cared about the most. The ruggedness was just a nice plus.
asdfasgasdgasdg 5mo ago
I feel like the fact that the phone-with-removal-battery option already exists and is not popular in the market should be a signal to EU politicians about how much the public actually values this capability.
- pfisch 5mo ago
  You can't buy an iphone with this functionality, and many people are locked into that walled garden for a lot of different reasons.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 5mo ago
    That's fine, but even among Android users, nobody buys these removable battery phones. It's possible there's a disproportionate reservoir of iPhone&removable battery-only consumers, but it would surprise me if the desire for a reusable battery were strongly correlated with being locked into the Apple ecosystem. If anything, I would expect the propensity to desire removable batteries is more strongly correlated with Android use.
    - munk-a 5mo ago
      There are a plethora of reasons to prefer one phone to another and while removable battery phones exist if that's a strict criteria for you the market of available devices is extremely limited. Consumers don't have a real choice here.
      - asdfasgasdgasdg 5mo ago
        I would expect that one of the main reasons that people prefer non-removable battery phones are the engineering tradeoffs inherent in making a phone with a removable battery. They will have strictly less choice on this axis when they no longer have the option to buy a non-removal battery phone.
        munk-a 5mo ago
Aurornis 5mo ago
And all of the commenters complaining they would never buy this phone is great proof that the removable battery movement is DOA. These phones exist. Companies have been producing them intermittently. When they do, few people buy them and there are always complaints that it's too big, too ugly, not fast enough, or something else. The vocal minority demanding this feature but refusing to buy phones with the feature believe they can have their cake and eat it too. They want phones with all the benefits of built-in batteries and none of the downsides of removable batteries.
- gwbas1c 5mo ago
  > And all of the commenters complaining they would never buy this phone is great proof that the removable battery movement is DOA. I had to reflect on that statement for a bit. I've always bought a new phone when there are battery problems or something else. BUT, that's because I can easily afford it. There are plenty of people in this world who just can't go out and buy a new phone because one part wore out. Or, to put it differently: I'd really like to replace the battery in my spare phone that I bring into my hot tub.
  - Aurornis 5mo ago
    > There are plenty of people in this world who just can't go out and buy a new phone because one part wore out Why is this strawman all over this thread? Battery replacement services are well known and honestly affordable. Apple will even do a first-rate job of replacing an iPhone battery for a fraction of the price of a new phone. This topic is so strange on Hacker News because everyone is either actually unaware of how cheap/easy it is to get battery replacements, or they're feigning that you have to throw away the entire phone to try to make a point.
    - gwbas1c 5mo ago
      I don't think you understand just what it's like to be poor. Every penny counts, and something that you can do yourself without specialized tools is a life saver. I don't think you understand just what it's like to be rich. Every minute counts, and ordering a replacement part that shows up on your doorstep instead of needing to go somewhere to have someone do something (or coordinate a repairman) is a life saver. Likewise, money saved on an easy repair is spent elsewhere. These aren't strawmans; you're using fancy words to justify your lack of empathy.
vrighter 5mo ago
galaxy s5 from 2014 also achieved all of this. It was a solved problem literally over a decade ago

IP68, replaceable battery, phone jack, 5G: https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php

RedShift1 5mo ago

And 4 years old... I wouldn't buy this new

joe_mamba 5mo ago
The comment is not meant to give you something to buy, it's just proof that it can technically be done, they just don't want to do it for modern flagships.
- nickpp 5mo ago
  > it can technically be done At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs. I like it when different producers select a different subset of priorities for their offer. Competition at work. One of the reasons we witnessed such an awesome evolution in the smartphone market. I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition.
  - inanutshellus 5mo ago
    The tradeoff was discussed in a sibling thread: it's heavier by 58 grams and thicker by 2mm. That's it. That's the tradeoff. Why go crazy on the guy?
    - soperj 5mo ago
      That's with the latest iphone, not the equivalent iphone from when this was released.
    - bigbuppo 5mo ago
      So the fun plateau will be less pronounced and fun?
  - cicko 5mo ago
    I hate when a technocrat at a multi-billion dollar company makes those decisions, maximizing profit and not giving a fuck about any other criteria.
    - nickpp 5mo ago
      > I hate when a technocrat at a multi-billion dollar company makes those decisions Really?! So instead of the person hired and paid specifically to select and decide what the product should cost, look and work like, the person whose very pay depends on how well she chooses those product features for you - instead you'd rather have a faceless nameless bureaucrat who never pays the cost of his wrong decisions, who instead gets more power and money the more he panders to the vocal minorities that push populist agendas completely detached from the market place. > not giving a fuck about any other criteria That is simply not true, such a company would go out of business fast. As I said before, any product is a set of tradeoffs. Cost (and profit) is just one of the factors. Ignoring the others does not make successful products. > profit I love it when a company I buy from is successful. That means it's gonna be around to create more stuff for me to enjoy. It also means the awesome people working there get paid and are successful themselves. Finally, it means that its investors will back up more of this kind of companies that create useful products and services. Profit is great!
      - cicko 5mo ago
        Everything you've written can be turned around, swapping companies and authorities. Those working in a public administration are serving the public while those working in a private company are serving themselves (and the shareholders).
  - _ZeD_ 5mo ago
    > At what cost though?! maybe just a little less margin for apple...
  - john01dav 5mo ago
    > I like it when different producers select a different subset of priorities for their offer. Competition at work. One of the reasons we witnessed such an awesome evolution in the smartphone market. > > I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition. I generally agree with that sentiment, except we don't have a vibrant market of many options with many different trade offs. Finding headphone jack, solid reparability, user swappable battery, easily replaceable USB port, and all the other things that one might want is basically impossible. The vast majority of phones are highly unrepairable, have no headphone jack, have everything soldered to a tiny number of internal boards, and are full of anti repair dark patterns.
  - user_7832 5mo ago
    > At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs. My $200 Moto G3 in 2016 had a removable back cover (admittedly not battery). It was also waterproof (and had a headphone jack.) The engineering of making things waterproof is in the realm of "A bit more annoying but easily doable if anyone's interested in doing it", not "Doable at the cost of everything else".
    - nickpp 5mo ago
      > My $200 Moto G3 in 2016 had a removable back cover (admittedly not battery). It was also waterproof (and had a headphone jack.) It also did diddly squat in the market place and the company producing it ran out of business. Again, a product is a set of tradeoffs. Those tradeoff include functionality, cost, logistics to build, even marketing and sales. Maximizing a feature to serve a loud minority (headphone jack!) but thus ignoring other features will simply make a product fail in the market place in time...
      - user_7832 5mo ago
        > It also did diddly squat in the market place Not sure what the context or background of that is, but here in India, the G3 sold out shortly after launch. Per this [1] stat by a Motorola exec too, it did very well. > Motorola’s General Manager for India, Amit Boni stated at the Moto X Play launch event that the Moto G (3rd Gen) that was launched in July is among the fastest selling smartphones on Flipkart. Its sales mark grossed 140% higher than the Moto G (1st Gen and 2nd Gen). (And I know that's legitimate because a lot of peers, friends and family, folks on the streets etc had Motorolas.) > and the company producing it ran out of business. Unfortunate, yes, but I don't think it was because they made and sold phones that didn't sell. I don't know if it was business mismanagement or what, but it's an unfortunate legacy of one of the most promising brands. Fortunately Lenovo isn't killing the brand, so there's that. 1 - https://telecomtalk.info/motorola-sold-over-5-6-million-india/142980/ https://telecomtalk.info/motorola-sold-over-5-6-million-indi...
  - joe_mamba 5mo ago
    >I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition. It's because of those "bureaucrats", that car manufacturers were forced to implement catalytic converters and ECUs for emissions controls, and why the air in your city isn't a smog cloud like in the 70s. I hate it when people assume the environmental and societal problems caused the unregulated free market, are gonna be fixed by the same unregulated free market which only optimizes for profit.
wolvoleo 5mo ago
There's a new model the 7 pro https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover7_pro-13780.php https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover7_pro-13780.php
- badsectoracula 5mo ago
  No 3.5mm jack though :-/
jbvlkt 5mo ago
Better than average phone sold today. The only problem might be lack of android upgrades otherwise it is straight upgrade for most people. This is reason why replaceable battery is important. If you leave IT bubble people happily use ancient phones and do not need upgrades if battery is ok and there is space to save new photos.

kaiwn 5mo ago

2 mm thicker and 58 grams heavier than the latest iPhone.

toasty228 5mo ago
Oh yeah so it's utter trash and not worthy of our attention. Imagine carrying a whole 58 grams more, during a whole day, impossible for the average tech worker's atrophied muscles
- bartvk 5mo ago
  I get what you're saying but please be friendly here.
- chroma 5mo ago
  The point is that people have different preferences, so the EU should not force people to buy phones with removable batteries. People who want such features can buy those phones, and people who want smaller, thinner phones can buy ones with integrated batteries. At most the EU should tax externalities like electronic waste, though that would be a rounding error compared to the cost of the phone itself.
  - john01dav 5mo ago
    Such phones with removable batteries are incredibly rare, such that finding one is quite likely to fail if you have any other concerns at all. If a truly well made phone was common and made by many people, then there'd be much less argument for this regulation.
    - chroma 5mo ago
      Phones with removable batteries are rare because only a small fraction of people want phones with removable batteries. Phone manufacturers also dislike removable batteries because customers buy cheap 3rd party batteries and complain when these batteries perform poorly or malfunction, sometimes by exploding. And then the headline is, “Phone made by company X explodes.” not, “Cheap battery explodes.” Removable batteries also introduce new failure modes like contacts degrading, causing phones to power off unexpectedly when jostled or flexed in certain ways. That increases the risk of a recall and bad PR. I and millions of others want a phone that is smaller than the current offerings. Heck, my 13 mini is too big for my tastes. But I don’t think that means the government should force phone manufacturers to make smaller phones. So too for features like removable batteries, physical keyboards, or headphone jacks.

elzbardico 5mo ago

[flagged]

badsectoracula 5mo ago

Unfortunately it is from 2022, meaning no OS upgrades. I think the next mandatory laws EU should pass is that manufacturers should either allow people to upgrade/replace the OS by themselves or provide mandatory upgrades for the next decade (i don't care how the manufacturers handle it, that's up to them, but the easiest way out of such a law is to allow people upgrade/replace the OS by themselves).

jodleif 5mo ago
Would be really nice. Seems like even android is getting more and more locked down
varispeed 5mo ago
It's not going to happen, because government need backdoors to the devices. That's why ability to flash own os is severely limited.
capitainenemo 5mo ago
So, they have an XCover 7 now - with similar specs. Also, they committed to a rather long support cycle for the xcover6 (5 years I think?) - I have one and it is still going strong. I've replaced the battery twice - not because I desperately needed to, but... why not. They are cheap, and I use the older ones still as backup battery packs since they are fast to swap in.
- wolvoleo 5mo ago
  Yeah they are really meant for businesses. Frontline workers, factory floors. This is what we use them for and they do stand up to the abuse. Of course people treat them very badly as it's not something they paid for. Really long support too. They're not good in terms of specs for the price but that is not what these phones are about.
  - capitainenemo 5mo ago
    Yeah, the specs were... decent... nothing standout. Really I was going over the list of things I had lost after the Galaxy Note got rid of all their features and decided the replaceable battery was the one I cared about the most. The ruggedness was just a nice plus.

asdfasgasdgasdg 5mo ago

I feel like the fact that the phone-with-removal-battery option already exists and is not popular in the market should be a signal to EU politicians about how much the public actually values this capability.

pfisch 5mo ago
You can't buy an iphone with this functionality, and many people are locked into that walled garden for a lot of different reasons.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5mo ago
  That's fine, but even among Android users, nobody buys these removable battery phones. It's possible there's a disproportionate reservoir of iPhone&removable battery-only consumers, but it would surprise me if the desire for a reusable battery were strongly correlated with being locked into the Apple ecosystem. If anything, I would expect the propensity to desire removable batteries is more strongly correlated with Android use.
  - munk-a 5mo ago
    There are a plethora of reasons to prefer one phone to another and while removable battery phones exist if that's a strict criteria for you the market of available devices is extremely limited. Consumers don't have a real choice here.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 5mo ago
      I would expect that one of the main reasons that people prefer non-removable battery phones are the engineering tradeoffs inherent in making a phone with a removable battery. They will have strictly less choice on this axis when they no longer have the option to buy a non-removal battery phone.
      - munk-a 5mo ago

Aurornis 5mo ago

And all of the commenters complaining they would never buy this phone is great proof that the removable battery movement is DOA. These phones exist. Companies have been producing them intermittently. When they do, few people buy them and there are always complaints that it's too big, too ugly, not fast enough, or something else. The vocal minority demanding this feature but refusing to buy phones with the feature believe they can have their cake and eat it too. They want phones with all the benefits of built-in batteries and none of the downsides of removable batteries.

gwbas1c 5mo ago
> And all of the commenters complaining they would never buy this phone is great proof that the removable battery movement is DOA. I had to reflect on that statement for a bit. I've always bought a new phone when there are battery problems or something else. BUT, that's because I can easily afford it. There are plenty of people in this world who just can't go out and buy a new phone because one part wore out. Or, to put it differently: I'd really like to replace the battery in my spare phone that I bring into my hot tub.
- Aurornis 5mo ago
  > There are plenty of people in this world who just can't go out and buy a new phone because one part wore out Why is this strawman all over this thread? Battery replacement services are well known and honestly affordable. Apple will even do a first-rate job of replacing an iPhone battery for a fraction of the price of a new phone. This topic is so strange on Hacker News because everyone is either actually unaware of how cheap/easy it is to get battery replacements, or they're feigning that you have to throw away the entire phone to try to make a point.
  - gwbas1c 5mo ago
    I don't think you understand just what it's like to be poor. Every penny counts, and something that you can do yourself without specialized tools is a life saver. I don't think you understand just what it's like to be rich. Every minute counts, and ordering a replacement part that shows up on your doorstep instead of needing to go somewhere to have someone do something (or coordinate a repairman) is a life saver. Likewise, money saved on an easy repair is spent elsewhere. These aren't strawmans; you're using fancy words to justify your lack of empathy.

vrighter 5mo ago

galaxy s5 from 2014 also achieved all of this. It was a solved problem literally over a decade ago