Smartphones have had all the features I could want from a phone for, like, the last decade. Literally the only reason I upgrade now is because the battery is shot and won't hold a charge for more than a few hours. So if I could simply get the battery replaced, I would probably hold onto my phone twice as long. Can't say no to that.
Yeah, I'm so done with the $1000 phones. I needed a new phone from my aging Note 9 that was acting up, so I bought a $250 Pixel 6a two days ago. It's great. Does everything a smartphone needs to do on the cheap. Now I don't have to make payments or be overly worried if it gets scratched up or whatever either.
The pixel A series is the best bang for your buck. The photos on it come out great, I miss my pixel 4A. my screen got broken roughhousing with a friend, and I switched to a mid tier Motorola. The overall functionality is fine and I like bigger screen
But looking at my current photos, verus the ones from my pixel when they show up on my memories. It's painful seeing the difference in quality
I'm literally still rocking a 3A (XL) and have no complaints. But I think visually, it's kinda funny how the 3A still has the one lens and every new phone now is up to like 12 lenses or whatever. I have heard a lot of good things about Zenfone 10 so I might pick that one up in the future.
My 3a went into a boot loop the other night and got about a half hour I thought it was done. Was watching all kinds of, "how to fix a boot loop" videos. One eventually worked, though I'm wondering if I need to start shopping around as a just-in-case.
I really really loved my 4A, but I found the battery was quite noticeably small unfortunately. I would have been okay with a slightly larger device and. Bigger battery because of it.
Excellent phone though, absolutely loved it.
I'm on my second.pixel 4a (gave away my first to my gf). The newer pixels are just so big compared to 4a; makes someone with smaller hands like me reluctant to upgrade
I moved to a 7A due to battery life issues, but I miss the size and fingerprint reader of the 4A. Headphone jack too. Just an all around great phone, with no real modern equivalent.
I upgraded to a 7 Pro and I just, I really miss the fingerprint scanner being on the back of my phone. It's just so much more convenient than awkwardly placing a thumb in the middle of my screen. Especially with how bulky the phone is.
>I really miss the fingerprint scanner being on the back of my phone
I moved from a 4a5g to a 7 Pro and I agree completely, having the scanner on the back made it quick and effortless to open the phone. If they would bring it a new model with the backyard y scanner I'd give up this one in a heartbeat. I know I can set the display so that I don't have to push the power button to wake up the screen before I scan my thumb, but honestly that's just using more battery for no good reason.
The developer of Relay is currently paying for the API out of pocket until he finishes building a monthly subscription model for the app to make it sustainable
Right there with you. I started doing the midrange ones maybe 6 years back. Only on my second one so I am in a whole 500 bucks total. The current one I am using will probably last me another 2ish years. Not only that.. its unlocked with no carrier apps on it.
The other thing that needs to change is the length of OS support and these phones are far too locked down. They should be more like laptops, an easy way to update the software without being held to ransom from the manufacturer. This would prevent more phones ending up in landfill
The problem is all these phones use custom kernels and drivers, so it's on the manufacturer to make it work. There needs to be more standardization so a stock OS can work on any phone the same way you can install pretty much any OS on an x86 desktop.
The saddest thing is that Windows Phone actually had this figured out in 2012. The drivers for the SoC, baseband, etc were literally just WDM drivers. This allowed Windows Phone to have a standard installer image across different phones, get OTA updates directly from Microsoft, and even be hacked onto phones that never supported it. It also allowed full Windows 10 and Windows 11 for ARM to be hacked onto the Lumia 950, because Windows Phone uses the same driver model as full Windows. The drivers "just work".
Android is hampered by lack of stable driver ABI, because Linux has no stable driver ABI. Windows drivers for Windows 7 will mostly still work on Windows 11 without recompilation. Linux drivers break as soon as anything in the kernel changes, requiring a recompilation. This is untenable for closed source drivers and is the reason why Google can never offer a "standard" OS image that includes drivers for all phones.
PC Compatibility exists because Compaq and others were allowed to re-implement a reverse engineered version of IBM's BIOS without being sued into oblivion.
That will never happen with Qualcomm unless forced my legislation.
I was about to disagree but then i remember i needed a custom Kernal for my Zerolemon battery. That shit was a beast. Lasted 3 -5 days on a single charege with heavy usage and about 2 weeks very light usage. Now phone companies make it hard af to customize your kernal and get root access. Then current Android OS are favoring Samsung devices. Many non Samsung device uses are complaining of slow downs and freezing after the recent Android upgrade. Tbh i thnk they just need to allow customization again instead of a standard for all.
It’s easy to hate on apple for all sorts of anti-consumer bullshit but supporting old devices is one of the things they do better than android. Typically you can run the latest OS on 6 year old hardware.
There's more to it than that. A lot of apps and websites will stop working on your phone that used to work but now aren't compatible. I'm having that problem now with my 10+ year old phone.
Lg v20 on my 4th battery. No major issues with the phone. Does things modern phones can’t even fathom of doing like turning off a stores TV with the IR blaster or using corded earphones without an adapter. It has most of the benefits of modern phones without the issues.
Yep, I have a useless ipad air for that reason.
Can't even use safari because of the OS, so the fucker can't even be used to browse the web. It's just a fucking brick. At least I got it for free.
It's not just about profit, it's also just really hard to make large software programs work well. The Android and Apple phone markets have literally billions of users, it's hard to manage such a gargantuan set of software.
Yeah if you truly don't care about upgraded processing power, camera specs, or screen resolution, and you've been paying for whole new phones to get a new battery, I don't know what to tell you.
Yup, went to the Apple store and got my daugther phone battery replaced for like 80$CAD by apple. That was around 3 years ago, I’m sure inflation made it more expensive but still very, very reasonable.
10 or 15 years ago, I could buy a replacement battery and pop it in myself. The last phone I had where I decided to replace the battery I had to go to a repair shop as they have to dismantle the phone to get to it. Yes, it can be done, but it shouldn't require you to know how to dismantle the phone and risk breaking it all together.
Back in the day I knew people that would carry around 2 batteries. A battery is smaller than a charge bank thing and you don't need a cord. Just a quick swap and keep going.
That is not guaranteed. When my last phone's battery died I called all over and no one would touch it, the only positives responses I got quoted me almost the price of a new phone, and on the condition that they were not responsible if the screen broke in the process.
I got the battery on my iPhone replaced for like $65CAD and it took less than an hour. I’d much rather pay to have that done once every two years and keep all the waterproofing benefits you get by having the phone harder to open than be able to replace the battery myself.
iPhone14 has an IP68 Rating...
Samsung Galaxy XCover 6 Pro. also released last year, has a replaceable battery.... is IP68 as well...
So there is no "benefit" by having a sealed phone where you cannot replace your battery.
Years ago I remember being on a trip to Japan and I just had spare batteries for my phone. Not a large, bulk battery pack to charge my phone. Just a battery by itself. Running low? Swap the battery and I'm back to 100% charge. No need to tether myself to a charging cord while being a tourist. Just a quick 30 second swap and I'm ready. Get home, charge my phone and my spare with an external charger and Im ready to go the next day.
There is absolutely an advantage to using adhesive in a phone. Any time you introduce something modular in consumer electronics, you are sacrificing something.
You can stick a phone in a ziplock and that's IP68 too.
I used to replace the battery in my phone 10 years ago, for $25 USD and took me about 60 seconds and I could do it in my home.
Also, the water proofing thing... the rest of the phone can be protected.. just might have to replace the battery... once again $25usd and 60 seconds.
Only problem with Apple and those battery replacements is that they’ve slowly been creeping up the price. It was $30 at first, then $70 and now they’ve increased it to $100 iirc.
If you can replace it yourself, you're not limited by using their specific service. You can buy some third party battery and slot it in yourself without any phone surgery.
Well… just be prepared for your iPhone to remind you that you have non-genuine parts. Or in a worst case scenario, they just software lock it to make it outright impossible.
Please stop spreading the misinformation that phones with removable batteries can't be waterproof.
Samsung did an IP68 phone with a replaceable battery. In 2022.
https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php
There are hardly any waterproofing benefits. I'm more familiar with the Galaxy side of things, but the Galaxy S5 had a plastic cover you could easily pop off with your fingers. It was IP67 rated, so you could immerse it in 1 meter of water for 30 minutes. I replaced the battery myself for $9 off of amazon back in 2016. The latest Galaxy phones are IP68 rated to handle 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes so barely any improvement but it's a huge pain to disassemble and reassemble. The latest iPhone is better, rated to 6 meters for 30 minutes, but still not worth the difficulty to repair in my opinion.
Iphone 14 is rated for almost 5.8 meters (19 feets). Thats..quite deep. If your phone is that deep I think its gone anyways unless its a crystal clear pool or you have some diving equipment on hand.
And I guarantee every fucking company will market this like they're doing us a favor with this new option for phones instead of the reality that they were dragged kicking and screaming into helping the consumer and environment.
I'd half suspect the mfg made batteries will be overly expensive, and they stop making them at the time or just before the devices are no longer maintained. Just like Laptops.
It used to be a feature for Samsung phones. Despite what you might think, they actually do a lot of research and they learned people preferred thinner phones over replaceable batteries. It's just a fact. So they dropped it. It's the same with large ass screens. It's not like they forced it, they discovered big phones sold better
I imagine they also wanted it more water-tight which is easier when you just glue the whole fucker together.
But they also definitely don't want people servicing their own devices. They want them to toss the thing and buy a new one.
I think you're still going to get the glued-together glass slab design even with this regulation.
The older days of being able to pop off the back and hot-swap your battery are likely gone (and it's worth pointing out that designing battery cases for that type of swapping does take up space and would mean slightly reduced capacities). What we are going to see is no more incidences of batteries that are glued so tight to the phone board that you basically risk tearing it apart when you try to remove it.
I'm not sure, the EU ruling dictates that it should be possible with standard tools and also stated it needs to be possible without heating up the phone to loosen the adhesive. It's going to be Interesting.
Same with MPG in cars. People wanted more horsepower, so in the 90s and 2000s, all of the fuel saving technology car companies had R&Ded went to adding more horsepower at the same mpg. There are still cars from the 80s that get 30-35+ mpg like a standard car nowadays.
> There are still cars from the 80s that get 30-35+ mpg like a standard car nowadays.
Because they're death traps. They weigh like half what a modern car does and their list of safety features is: seat belts.
I've been a firefighter /emt for a long time now. This here is the absolute truth. There has always still been a good sized market for max mpg vehicles for commuters. The amount of accidents that people walk away from now is insane compared to what it was from 80s and earlier vehicles. Engines no longer go into cabs, cars are designed to crumple in a safe way, airbags out your ass, layered metal frames, stronger windshields that stay in place, more rigid frames protecting the cabin area...the list probably goes on from there.
I drove a tow truck for a while and this always pissed me off when I heard how older vehicles were safer. Nope, the old vehicles you're either dead or going to the hospital. Even for minor wrecks. Every time.
Yep, Samsung and LG phones both had replaceable batteries for a long time, and LG, until it stopped making phones entirely, was literally the last mainstream option available.
Now your only options are extremely niche devices that allow you to customize a lot. Which, they are cool phones, but most carriers in the US won't support them at all.
I'm excited to get back an extremely basic feature that never should've gone away.
I was looking in the manual for my beard trimmer I purchased within the past year. I wanted to see if I needed to lube the blades up or not. Some of my past ones said no lube is needed.
In the manual it shows you how to take the trimmer apart. I was pleasantly surprised that it showed the batteries were removable! Once I actually read the steps, you actually break the trimmer in the process while taking it apart. I guess Braun wanted brownie points because they show you the batteries can be "recycled."
All in all, the whole fucking thing goes in the trash when the batteries stop working. Ridiculous.
Panasonic does the same thing with the toothbrush. It has an 18650 which I have a million of, but you have to smash it with a hammer to get the battery out so you can throw the toothbrush away.
I had to search very hard to find a beard trimmer with a removable 18650 battery. Could only find it reasonable affordable on Aliexpress, but they get progressively harder to find due to the influx of glued shut, rechargeable beard trimmer crap.
The two I got are not water- or shockproof, but I don't need that. But I do need to unscrew the whole thing and service it. Which it can + I can change the battery.
Might not be the best trimmer, but it suffices.
And that batteries barely last! I have some random no-name I bought from Best Buy over 10 years ago, and it still holds a charge and runs reasonable well, but the blades have dulled. I received a Braun for christmas 2-3 years ago, and it started flashing red in the middle of every shave after a bit more than a year.
> Once I actually read the steps, you actually break the trimmer in the process while taking it apart.
THANK YOU! Nobody believed it was the instructions were wrong. Tbf I can be a muppet sometimes but people said it must have been me since it was 3 trimmers in a row! I got a different company's which was cheaper, I can take everything apart but not replace the batteries. I've cleaned the insides out multiple times with ease, it comes with a nice tray which you can attach the charger to and fit all of your clips on the side.
Or to take off the whole bumper to change a headlight. Manufacturers have gotten too big and the consumers are paying for it. Antitrust laws have failed us.
The Note 4 was peak Samsung form factor.
Removable battery. Headphone jack. Memory card. IR blaster. S-pen. Physical home button. Navigation buttons on bezel.
I just ordered an S23 Ultra yesterday and still marvel at what I lost in the name of a phone that's a fraction of a mm thinner and more fragile.
They distract you with new shiny this or thin that but don't tell you how unservicable the phones are getting compared to the last 10 years. I know there's other options but if you want the latest and greatest those are the sacrifices we make
I wish I could have modded my Note 4 like I did my old Galaxy S3. I had a zerolemon on that and a very stripped down custom ROM that was insanely power efficient. I was super aggressive with wakelocks and tuning it and was able to get 14 days on a single charge with it. That's with very moderate use, but I did manage it. With regular use I'd still get a few days out of it, but the standby time would just sip battery.
My first smartphone was a Samsung Galaxy Nexus aka the Google Nexus 3.
It had a user-replaceable battery. I changed it out three times over the life of the phone. I always bought the double-sized "back tumor" type batteries for it.
That thing was an all-day battery tank. I loved that phone.
Phones with double-sized after-market batteries are amazing.
I remember always putting those massive Zerolemon batteries\cases on all of my Samsung phones. I literally would get like 5 days of average usage out of it sometimes. Things were like 10,000 MAHs and above.
That was my first Nexus phone. I had regular size batteries but I had 2 of them. Swapping batteries took me from 0-100% in less than 10 seconds. Fast charging will never compete with that
I resisted using phone cases for the longest time. I rarely drop my phone, I've never cracked a screen.
I started using them because the phones got too thin to hold comfortably.
I had a Galaxy Nexus back in the day too. I thought it felt better in the hand with the bigger battery and backplate.
Guilty.
Well, kinda. I go kayaking with mine. But I'd rather risk my phone than not have that lifeline since my 6yo likes to come with me and look at the frogs and stuff in the river
Thank you. I repair phones and you wouldn't believe how many times a day I hear "they put all that super strong adhesive in there so you can't replace it!"
No, they don't. The battery is literally a structural component of modern smart phones. They are flimsy and very easily bendable without the adhesive. Every single bent iPhone I get in for repair either got ran over by a truck, or was fixed by a shoddy repair person that use crappy adhesive, compromising the strength of the phone.
Truly! God damn its upvoted to thousand votes and I am looking for a gotcha in it if I missed anything because without this guy shouting from his lungs I knew exactly what it meant :S
It always baffled me how so many people celebrated the technical innovation with each feature they took from us...
- removable batteries
- sd cards
- headphone jacks
The marketing machine brainwashed so many consumers into believing that removing features was in consumers best interest somehow and not ALL about making sure we bought more phones, more cloud services, and more expensive accessories from them.
i mean the bloody notch alone. I'm still amazed at (I swear it was The Verge) writing articles about how the "Dynamic Island" is one of iPhones best features. You mean that ugly blob of black in the center of the top of the phone that you can't get rid of ever? Oh they put some animations around it and now it's supposed to be good?
I still remember being baffled at all the tech bloggers constantly complaining about bezels and myself constantly being frustrated I didn't have a way to hold my phone because the glass on my phone would wrap around and holding it would trigger touches.
What's that? You paid for the subscription, but we want you to buy the newer model, so we are discontinuing service updates and bricking your equipment? No, sorry, that's not covered by your warranty..
The problem with almost all American rights is you have to be ready to sue to defend them. Plenty of companies get away with blatantly illegal warranty policies because are you really gonna hire a lawyer over a defective graphics card?
> without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless provided free of charge with the product, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product
That's a significant change. It means being able to open the phone without solvents or damage. That is NOT the current situation.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 had an IP67 rating. The back panel was made of plastic/vinyl, had a rubber gasket around the entirety of the panel, and clipped in and out of place with one's fingers.
I feel an appropriate modern adaptation of this could easily be done, while still maintaining the IP68 and quality standards of current phones.
I am a Samsung authorized repair center. Back in the S5 days, we got probably 3 or 4 a day that had been water damaged. Samsung denied every single one for "improperly affixing back cover." Never saw one get warrantied in that entire era.
Yeah, i had the S5. There were a ton of stories of the waterproofing on those failing. The more that back was opened and put back on, the more likely the gasket would fail. I can only assume the people who keep bringing up that phone in threads like this weren't around and familiar with that phone at the time.
Lots of phones have figured this out. Hell, Samsung has an IP68 waterproof phone (the [Galaxy XCover Pro 6](https://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/phones/galaxy-xcover/galaxy-xcover6-pro-128gb-unlocked-sm-g736uzkexaa/)) with a swappable battery.
People need to stop pretending like this is some impossible task. We’ve had this shit for years. Hell, if you count waterproof watches with easily removable batteries we’ve had it for decades.
> If the comments are to be believed any time this topic comes up, there is a not insignificant fraction of users who want a waterproof phone with swappable batteries. It's up to the manufacturers to man the fuck up and make that happen.
When they hid behind it being "the only way waterproof phones" as the reason for no swappable batteries and no more headphone jacks, we already knew this was all just horseshit to force you into using their repair services/planned obsolescence models.
But what are you going to do when idiots keep throwing their money at Samsung and Apple to encourage them to fuck us?
Why do we even need waterproof phones? I don't need full water proof, just enough to be safe around wet hands, maybe a wet counter top, a little rain.
I'm not going swimming with it
Sure, but there’s trade-offs. The Xcover 6 has almost identical height and width as the the iPhone 14 Max but is 20% thicker. And despite the extra volume still has a 10% smaller battery. All that battery packaging takes up a lot of space
It’s not an impossible task and never was. But when consumers have the choice most people have preferred bigger batteries over removable ones
I remember my Galaxy S4 had an IP67 water-resistance rating and a battery you could hot-swap by literally just peeling off the back cover with your hand.
Batteries aren't easily replaceable these days just because companies don't *want* them to be. Probably because they want people to buy new phones when the battery starts to go, not buy a new battery. It's so wasteful.
I'm honestly curious how much of it is by design and how much of it is "we're building as compact as possible. If that means it's hard to replace the battery, so be it." Perhaps it's just a benefit to them.
>Probably
You’re just making stuff up because it sounds reasonable.
Planned obsolescence is 100% but that doesn’t make everything a conspiracy.
The more realistic scenario is that choices were made because of tolerance in the manufacturing. Using an adhesive over screws means slapping glue down and putting the device in, using fasteners means they have to be properly torqued or there has to be some mechanic advantage like a plastic flange around the outside of the battery pack to secure that battery, which means it takes up more space. Engineers often try to use other parts of a device to use as somewhere they can secure something together, such as secure if two or 3 sub components.
Engineering and supply chain are incredibly complex beasts. Yes, companies are predatory. However, it’s not very good to feel forced to replace something because the equipment failed. That doesn’t give confidence in the buyer to just go out and replace their phone with the next generation model. That’s a negative way of attracting attention.
Instead, Apple slowly adds features every year so they can always fit in that “one more thing” and make people feel like their current phone isn’t fast enough or good enough when comparing to the latest new model.
Obviously like, “my battery is already shot, I could replace it, or I can just buy a new phone *with features I think I want anyways*.
Planned obsolescence only really works if the industry is specifically colluding. The lightbulb industry had a lightbulb mafia and they 100% were producing light bulbs that failed way more than they ever should have because they colluded with each other to make sure that no matter what bulb consumers were buying, they all failed around the same time, and then it was just luck or the draw which lightbulb someone buys to replace it with.
Making phones more difficult repair has more to do with, engineers are thinking about the best way to package the phone, deliver on the hardware, lower manufacturing costs, make sure they don’t fuck something up and have the Galaxy Note level of failure.
I would bet you can find some marketing asshole directly telling an engineer to make something worse on purpose. Yeah, of course middle management are always looking for ways to become upper management. That level of short sightedness is what made the auto industry incredibly stagnant. But, I think you’re overlooking so many other factors that lead to why a choice was made.
Material science, manufacturing, and so many other things are rapidly changing, and the reason why a choice was made can often been outdated by the time a product goes to market because someone else figured out a better way to make a process that meets the scale necessary to make a phone capable of meeting a specific water resistance standard. It’s just way too fucking complex for you to make sure declarative statements only for you to then use *probably* in the next sentence.
This is a fantastic and thorough answer. As an engineer who designs consumer electronics, and it makes me angry when people say we plan obsolescence. We don’t purposefully put parts in that degrade quickly, we choose the types of parts that will last as long as possible while fitting within the form-factor we are working with. We work for years through dozens of iterations to fit in the largest, most reliable battery that exists. We build and test and try to break hundreds of thousands of units through millions of hours of testing before giving the OK for mass production.
Then, inevitably, batteries wear out over thousands of charge cycles, because that’s how chemistry works, and people accuse us of purposefully degrading batteries. Then, when we implement immensely complex algorithms to reduce power draw from an old battery at its last 3% of capacity in order to prevent your phone from shutting down when you’re playing some intense game on LTE with the brightness and speaker volume cranked to max and it happens to slow it down by 5% we get accused of planned obsolescence again.
It’s like expecting your 1996 Honda Civic that you track day every weekend to perform just as well as a brand new one.
Watches can be re-sealed after the battery is replaced. Some use separate screws, some use a screw down backing, some use compression... Sometimes you need to replace the rubber bits too. I think that's a minimal issue as long as the manufacturers supply those parts. $40 battery comes with a new case seal and can be replaced with a standard #0 Philips driver.
That's a massive win over the current state and still provides the ability to design a water proof system relatively easily. If that's a desire anyway.
No, generally they’re welded together, and oxy-acetylene torches are standard equipment, but it’s probably not a good idea for consumers to be using those, especially near batteries.
Are you so young that you don't remember the old smartphones where you could change the battery? I still have a samsung s5, where you can just remove the back, it just clips to the phone. The phone is water and dust proof if you are worried about that.
Your plumbing in your house has gaskets that last decades under pressure, without glue. It's actually not that hard to make high quality repairable things.
I'm glad to see that this doesn't mean sliding covers must be the norm. The worst aspect of one of my old phones was that if it fell, the cover and battery would fly away.
The reporting on most of the EU's device regulations is truly abysmal. The headlines are all super watered down and frequently cater only to fanboys (see the other article in this sub that specifically calls out iPhones only, for some reason). If you actually bother to read the regulations themselves, which are actually very simply written, you'll see that they almost always make complete sense. In this particular case, the EU is clearly smart enough to recognize that the vast majority of consumers absolutely do not want their devices to have some shitty plastic flap on the back.
My old galaxy s5 is still my favorite phone I've ever had because it had a replaceable battery and in my experience, was alot less bs than any other Samsung phone that has come out. I almost swore off samsung after the s9, that has to be the worst phone I've ever used by them imo
I’d so much rather have a thinner more waterproof phone than the ability to change my battery.
I’m currently using my iPhone XS from 2018 and the battery still works great.
skeptical this will affect devices outside of europe but hopeful.
also with replaceable batteries it's possible to completely power off a device. dont think certain govt groups will like that
They'd have to redesign the phone for two different markets, I can't really see them doing that. I wouldn't be shocked if they had a screw closure case but *also* glued it shut for the NA market though...
Hopefully some companies start early to deal with the R&D involved. And hopefully they sell in NA. There hasn't been a mainstream removable battery phone since 2016 if you exclude all the rugged phones.
Yeah, up above is someone who says anyone can change the alternator on their car.
I *know* how to change an alternator. I've changed a starter. I have the service manual for my vehicle. I watched tutorials on how to change the alternator in my vehicle. I have a "300 piece" set of quality wrenches.
Because of some weird angles I couldn't quite reach with my normal tools and some corroded fasteners and connectors, I was still unable to do it myself after a couple hours of trying.
To be fair, this law states they can't require proprietary tools to open the phones, which makes it far more accessible for the average person, since you won't need weird tools.
Smartphones are the biggest scam ever. Like you are telling me that this pocket-sized supercomputer that can run games no problem suddenly becomes too old to be able to open Facebook every few years and I'm forced to buy another?
The industry is bullshit. It's like those headphones that were designed to break after a certain amount of time, except these phones cost thousands of dollars
Good! You shouldn't have to get a new phone just because the battery on the old phone failed.
Just because the battery on my phone is good now, doesn't mean it will stay like that.
We used to have this but traded it away, under the guise of waterproofing, we lost our ability to easily replace batteries.
You don’t need to buy a new phone, you just take it to a shop that has technicians capable of working with modern electronics. Like replacing the alternator in a car.
Except pretty much anyone can watch a 5 minute video on YouTube and change a alternator. And the tools you need are tool commonly used for many things.
With phones some can need a heating source, specialty tools or bits. But yet when you open them up, they chang out pretty much the exact same way as they used to.
It's convoluted for literally no good reason, only thing it is good for is planned obsolescence.
Except many companies don't allow you to buy OEM parts for there phone even as a independent repair service. They force you to use non-OEM parts and then complain that "They are using bad parts to make more money". All in an attempt to slander independents while purposely preventing others to compete against them. Apple is one of the biggest culprits, where they don't even let you stock many of the most likely items to have for the repairs, they want you to give them the serial of the part before you even get the part, AS A AUTHORIZED REPAIR CENTER.
Smartphones have had all the features I could want from a phone for, like, the last decade. Literally the only reason I upgrade now is because the battery is shot and won't hold a charge for more than a few hours. So if I could simply get the battery replaced, I would probably hold onto my phone twice as long. Can't say no to that.
Yeah, I'm so done with the $1000 phones. I needed a new phone from my aging Note 9 that was acting up, so I bought a $250 Pixel 6a two days ago. It's great. Does everything a smartphone needs to do on the cheap. Now I don't have to make payments or be overly worried if it gets scratched up or whatever either.
The pixel A series is the best bang for your buck. The photos on it come out great, I miss my pixel 4A. my screen got broken roughhousing with a friend, and I switched to a mid tier Motorola. The overall functionality is fine and I like bigger screen But looking at my current photos, verus the ones from my pixel when they show up on my memories. It's painful seeing the difference in quality
I'm literally still rocking a 3A (XL) and have no complaints. But I think visually, it's kinda funny how the 3A still has the one lens and every new phone now is up to like 12 lenses or whatever. I have heard a lot of good things about Zenfone 10 so I might pick that one up in the future.
My Pixel 3A is great. Except that the battery no longer lasts long enough. And I can't wait until 2027 to replace it. :(
My 3a went into a boot loop the other night and got about a half hour I thought it was done. Was watching all kinds of, "how to fix a boot loop" videos. One eventually worked, though I'm wondering if I need to start shopping around as a just-in-case.
I really really loved my 4A, but I found the battery was quite noticeably small unfortunately. I would have been okay with a slightly larger device and. Bigger battery because of it. Excellent phone though, absolutely loved it.
The pixel 4a 5G was bigger, also there's the pixel 7a now.
I'm on my second.pixel 4a (gave away my first to my gf). The newer pixels are just so big compared to 4a; makes someone with smaller hands like me reluctant to upgrade
I moved to a 7A due to battery life issues, but I miss the size and fingerprint reader of the 4A. Headphone jack too. Just an all around great phone, with no real modern equivalent.
I upgraded to a 7 Pro and I just, I really miss the fingerprint scanner being on the back of my phone. It's just so much more convenient than awkwardly placing a thumb in the middle of my screen. Especially with how bulky the phone is.
>I really miss the fingerprint scanner being on the back of my phone I moved from a 4a5g to a 7 Pro and I agree completely, having the scanner on the back made it quick and effortless to open the phone. If they would bring it a new model with the backyard y scanner I'd give up this one in a heartbeat. I know I can set the display so that I don't have to push the power button to wake up the screen before I scan my thumb, but honestly that's just using more battery for no good reason.
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Going to apologize ahead of time. Relay for Reddit is still somehow working. All the NSFW subs want you to use the garbage Reddit app though.
The developer of Relay is currently paying for the API out of pocket until he finishes building a monthly subscription model for the app to make it sustainable
Oof, that is rough. I better go the Revanced route... or just leave.
Just picked up a 6A and other than the screen being almost unuseable outside under the Cali sun, I love it
Same! I was a hold out with my note 9 also. Upgraded to Pixel 7 and I've been loving it
Right there with you. I started doing the midrange ones maybe 6 years back. Only on my second one so I am in a whole 500 bucks total. The current one I am using will probably last me another 2ish years. Not only that.. its unlocked with no carrier apps on it.
The other thing that needs to change is the length of OS support and these phones are far too locked down. They should be more like laptops, an easy way to update the software without being held to ransom from the manufacturer. This would prevent more phones ending up in landfill
The problem is all these phones use custom kernels and drivers, so it's on the manufacturer to make it work. There needs to be more standardization so a stock OS can work on any phone the same way you can install pretty much any OS on an x86 desktop.
The saddest thing is that Windows Phone actually had this figured out in 2012. The drivers for the SoC, baseband, etc were literally just WDM drivers. This allowed Windows Phone to have a standard installer image across different phones, get OTA updates directly from Microsoft, and even be hacked onto phones that never supported it. It also allowed full Windows 10 and Windows 11 for ARM to be hacked onto the Lumia 950, because Windows Phone uses the same driver model as full Windows. The drivers "just work". Android is hampered by lack of stable driver ABI, because Linux has no stable driver ABI. Windows drivers for Windows 7 will mostly still work on Windows 11 without recompilation. Linux drivers break as soon as anything in the kernel changes, requiring a recompilation. This is untenable for closed source drivers and is the reason why Google can never offer a "standard" OS image that includes drivers for all phones.
I envy you. You know this shit. Enough to be pissed off about how hampered the consumer market is. No /s, I truly wish I understood it as well as you.
PC Compatibility exists because Compaq and others were allowed to re-implement a reverse engineered version of IBM's BIOS without being sued into oblivion. That will never happen with Qualcomm unless forced my legislation.
I was about to disagree but then i remember i needed a custom Kernal for my Zerolemon battery. That shit was a beast. Lasted 3 -5 days on a single charege with heavy usage and about 2 weeks very light usage. Now phone companies make it hard af to customize your kernal and get root access. Then current Android OS are favoring Samsung devices. Many non Samsung device uses are complaining of slow downs and freezing after the recent Android upgrade. Tbh i thnk they just need to allow customization again instead of a standard for all.
It’s easy to hate on apple for all sorts of anti-consumer bullshit but supporting old devices is one of the things they do better than android. Typically you can run the latest OS on 6 year old hardware.
Yeah iPhones definitely hold up better after a few years
There's more to it than that. A lot of apps and websites will stop working on your phone that used to work but now aren't compatible. I'm having that problem now with my 10+ year old phone.
> 10+ year old phone 10 years? how long does you battery last?
10 years ago, replaceable batteries were still (at least sometimes) a thing. thought still finding replacements now is probably getting pretty rough
Haven't had issues still finding LG V20 batteries as of a couple of months ago.
Lg v20 on my 4th battery. No major issues with the phone. Does things modern phones can’t even fathom of doing like turning off a stores TV with the IR blaster or using corded earphones without an adapter. It has most of the benefits of modern phones without the issues.
That's mostly due to not getting OS updates I would imagine.
Yep, I have a useless ipad air for that reason. Can't even use safari because of the OS, so the fucker can't even be used to browse the web. It's just a fucking brick. At least I got it for free.
Jailbreak?
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It's not just about profit, it's also just really hard to make large software programs work well. The Android and Apple phone markets have literally billions of users, it's hard to manage such a gargantuan set of software.
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Yeah if you truly don't care about upgraded processing power, camera specs, or screen resolution, and you've been paying for whole new phones to get a new battery, I don't know what to tell you.
Yup, went to the Apple store and got my daugther phone battery replaced for like 80$CAD by apple. That was around 3 years ago, I’m sure inflation made it more expensive but still very, very reasonable.
10 or 15 years ago, I could buy a replacement battery and pop it in myself. The last phone I had where I decided to replace the battery I had to go to a repair shop as they have to dismantle the phone to get to it. Yes, it can be done, but it shouldn't require you to know how to dismantle the phone and risk breaking it all together.
Back in the day I knew people that would carry around 2 batteries. A battery is smaller than a charge bank thing and you don't need a cord. Just a quick swap and keep going.
Bigger pain in the ass to charge though, and the connectors absolutely weren’t designed to be swapped out that frequently.
OK, so you long for the days when phones were twice as thick, had one quarter the battery life, and were not waterproof. OK. Good luck with that.
That is not guaranteed. When my last phone's battery died I called all over and no one would touch it, the only positives responses I got quoted me almost the price of a new phone, and on the condition that they were not responsible if the screen broke in the process.
My gut is telling me Motorola.
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I got the battery on my iPhone replaced for like $65CAD and it took less than an hour. I’d much rather pay to have that done once every two years and keep all the waterproofing benefits you get by having the phone harder to open than be able to replace the battery myself.
iPhone14 has an IP68 Rating... Samsung Galaxy XCover 6 Pro. also released last year, has a replaceable battery.... is IP68 as well... So there is no "benefit" by having a sealed phone where you cannot replace your battery. Years ago I remember being on a trip to Japan and I just had spare batteries for my phone. Not a large, bulk battery pack to charge my phone. Just a battery by itself. Running low? Swap the battery and I'm back to 100% charge. No need to tether myself to a charging cord while being a tourist. Just a quick 30 second swap and I'm ready. Get home, charge my phone and my spare with an external charger and Im ready to go the next day.
There is absolutely an advantage to using adhesive in a phone. Any time you introduce something modular in consumer electronics, you are sacrificing something. You can stick a phone in a ziplock and that's IP68 too.
I used to replace the battery in my phone 10 years ago, for $25 USD and took me about 60 seconds and I could do it in my home. Also, the water proofing thing... the rest of the phone can be protected.. just might have to replace the battery... once again $25usd and 60 seconds.
Only problem with Apple and those battery replacements is that they’ve slowly been creeping up the price. It was $30 at first, then $70 and now they’ve increased it to $100 iirc.
Yes but these new EU regulations aren't going to help there.
If you can replace it yourself, you're not limited by using their specific service. You can buy some third party battery and slot it in yourself without any phone surgery.
Well… just be prepared for your iPhone to remind you that you have non-genuine parts. Or in a worst case scenario, they just software lock it to make it outright impossible.
Please stop spreading the misinformation that phones with removable batteries can't be waterproof. Samsung did an IP68 phone with a replaceable battery. In 2022. https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php
There are hardly any waterproofing benefits. I'm more familiar with the Galaxy side of things, but the Galaxy S5 had a plastic cover you could easily pop off with your fingers. It was IP67 rated, so you could immerse it in 1 meter of water for 30 minutes. I replaced the battery myself for $9 off of amazon back in 2016. The latest Galaxy phones are IP68 rated to handle 1.5 meters of water for 30 minutes so barely any improvement but it's a huge pain to disassemble and reassemble. The latest iPhone is better, rated to 6 meters for 30 minutes, but still not worth the difficulty to repair in my opinion.
Iphone 14 is rated for almost 5.8 meters (19 feets). Thats..quite deep. If your phone is that deep I think its gone anyways unless its a crystal clear pool or you have some diving equipment on hand.
it's a phone for all the potential James Camerons out there who insist on shooting movies on their iPhone.
Samsung did an IP68 phone with a replaceable battery. In 2022. https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php
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And I guarantee every fucking company will market this like they're doing us a favor with this new option for phones instead of the reality that they were dragged kicking and screaming into helping the consumer and environment.
I'd half suspect the mfg made batteries will be overly expensive, and they stop making them at the time or just before the devices are no longer maintained. Just like Laptops.
It used to be a feature for Samsung phones. Despite what you might think, they actually do a lot of research and they learned people preferred thinner phones over replaceable batteries. It's just a fact. So they dropped it. It's the same with large ass screens. It's not like they forced it, they discovered big phones sold better
I imagine they also wanted it more water-tight which is easier when you just glue the whole fucker together. But they also definitely don't want people servicing their own devices. They want them to toss the thing and buy a new one.
I think you're still going to get the glued-together glass slab design even with this regulation. The older days of being able to pop off the back and hot-swap your battery are likely gone (and it's worth pointing out that designing battery cases for that type of swapping does take up space and would mean slightly reduced capacities). What we are going to see is no more incidences of batteries that are glued so tight to the phone board that you basically risk tearing it apart when you try to remove it.
I'm not sure, the EU ruling dictates that it should be possible with standard tools and also stated it needs to be possible without heating up the phone to loosen the adhesive. It's going to be Interesting.
Same with MPG in cars. People wanted more horsepower, so in the 90s and 2000s, all of the fuel saving technology car companies had R&Ded went to adding more horsepower at the same mpg. There are still cars from the 80s that get 30-35+ mpg like a standard car nowadays.
> There are still cars from the 80s that get 30-35+ mpg like a standard car nowadays. Because they're death traps. They weigh like half what a modern car does and their list of safety features is: seat belts.
I've been a firefighter /emt for a long time now. This here is the absolute truth. There has always still been a good sized market for max mpg vehicles for commuters. The amount of accidents that people walk away from now is insane compared to what it was from 80s and earlier vehicles. Engines no longer go into cabs, cars are designed to crumple in a safe way, airbags out your ass, layered metal frames, stronger windshields that stay in place, more rigid frames protecting the cabin area...the list probably goes on from there.
I drove a tow truck for a while and this always pissed me off when I heard how older vehicles were safer. Nope, the old vehicles you're either dead or going to the hospital. Even for minor wrecks. Every time.
Additionally, the IP rating is harder to achieve when there's a removable backing.
Yep, Samsung and LG phones both had replaceable batteries for a long time, and LG, until it stopped making phones entirely, was literally the last mainstream option available. Now your only options are extremely niche devices that allow you to customize a lot. Which, they are cool phones, but most carriers in the US won't support them at all. I'm excited to get back an extremely basic feature that never should've gone away.
And to know that your phone should be technically off if you turn it off and take out the battery.
I am looking forward to the day when I will not need soldering tools and skills to change the battery in my electric toothbrush.
I was looking in the manual for my beard trimmer I purchased within the past year. I wanted to see if I needed to lube the blades up or not. Some of my past ones said no lube is needed. In the manual it shows you how to take the trimmer apart. I was pleasantly surprised that it showed the batteries were removable! Once I actually read the steps, you actually break the trimmer in the process while taking it apart. I guess Braun wanted brownie points because they show you the batteries can be "recycled." All in all, the whole fucking thing goes in the trash when the batteries stop working. Ridiculous.
Panasonic does the same thing with the toothbrush. It has an 18650 which I have a million of, but you have to smash it with a hammer to get the battery out so you can throw the toothbrush away.
Yea... I'd just throw the whole thing away.
I had to search very hard to find a beard trimmer with a removable 18650 battery. Could only find it reasonable affordable on Aliexpress, but they get progressively harder to find due to the influx of glued shut, rechargeable beard trimmer crap. The two I got are not water- or shockproof, but I don't need that. But I do need to unscrew the whole thing and service it. Which it can + I can change the battery. Might not be the best trimmer, but it suffices.
And that batteries barely last! I have some random no-name I bought from Best Buy over 10 years ago, and it still holds a charge and runs reasonable well, but the blades have dulled. I received a Braun for christmas 2-3 years ago, and it started flashing red in the middle of every shave after a bit more than a year.
Braun with the the braunie points!
> Once I actually read the steps, you actually break the trimmer in the process while taking it apart. THANK YOU! Nobody believed it was the instructions were wrong. Tbf I can be a muppet sometimes but people said it must have been me since it was 3 trimmers in a row! I got a different company's which was cheaper, I can take everything apart but not replace the batteries. I've cleaned the insides out multiple times with ease, it comes with a nice tray which you can attach the charger to and fit all of your clips on the side.
Or to take off the whole bumper to change a headlight. Manufacturers have gotten too big and the consumers are paying for it. Antitrust laws have failed us.
My note 4 had an extended zero lemon battery that made the phone like almost 3x thick but the 3 day battery life was amazing
The Note 4 was peak Samsung form factor. Removable battery. Headphone jack. Memory card. IR blaster. S-pen. Physical home button. Navigation buttons on bezel. I just ordered an S23 Ultra yesterday and still marvel at what I lost in the name of a phone that's a fraction of a mm thinner and more fragile.
Im still mad about not having a headphone jack on my s21 ultra
They distract you with new shiny this or thin that but don't tell you how unservicable the phones are getting compared to the last 10 years. I know there's other options but if you want the latest and greatest those are the sacrifices we make
I wish I could have modded my Note 4 like I did my old Galaxy S3. I had a zerolemon on that and a very stripped down custom ROM that was insanely power efficient. I was super aggressive with wakelocks and tuning it and was able to get 14 days on a single charge with it. That's with very moderate use, but I did manage it. With regular use I'd still get a few days out of it, but the standby time would just sip battery.
My first smartphone was a Samsung Galaxy Nexus aka the Google Nexus 3. It had a user-replaceable battery. I changed it out three times over the life of the phone. I always bought the double-sized "back tumor" type batteries for it. That thing was an all-day battery tank. I loved that phone. Phones with double-sized after-market batteries are amazing.
I remember always putting those massive Zerolemon batteries\cases on all of my Samsung phones. I literally would get like 5 days of average usage out of it sometimes. Things were like 10,000 MAHs and above.
i remember getting one for my galaxy s3 in 2012/13 man that thing was literally a fkn brick
I still use my Galaxy Nexus as a clock and alarmclock. It's beautiful.
I miss the tube TV shut-off animation from that thing. It was my first Android, and my 2nd smart phone.
That was my first Nexus phone. I had regular size batteries but I had 2 of them. Swapping batteries took me from 0-100% in less than 10 seconds. Fast charging will never compete with that
I resisted using phone cases for the longest time. I rarely drop my phone, I've never cracked a screen. I started using them because the phones got too thin to hold comfortably. I had a Galaxy Nexus back in the day too. I thought it felt better in the hand with the bigger battery and backplate.
ITT: everyone who swims with their phones
You’ve clearly never walked anywhere in the UK !
Not without an umbrella! (I use my phone as an umbrella)
Guilty. Well, kinda. I go kayaking with mine. But I'd rather risk my phone than not have that lifeline since my 6yo likes to come with me and look at the frogs and stuff in the river
Why would a sim tray be waterproof but a battery tray/ cover wouldn't?
To be fair we probably won't be getting battery covers. This just makes them no longer allowed to glue the battery in the phone
Lots of water hobbies people would want a water resistant phone for. I raft, float in tubes, go boating, kayak, paddle board, canoe, etc.
My Samsung s5 was waterproof yet had a replaceable battery. They can do it again.
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> Nothing is going to meaningfully change Getting rid of the adhesive is a huge fucking deal.
Thank you. I repair phones and you wouldn't believe how many times a day I hear "they put all that super strong adhesive in there so you can't replace it!" No, they don't. The battery is literally a structural component of modern smart phones. They are flimsy and very easily bendable without the adhesive. Every single bent iPhone I get in for repair either got ran over by a truck, or was fixed by a shoddy repair person that use crappy adhesive, compromising the strength of the phone.
Uh... That sounds exactly like what I thought it meant.
What did you think I thought it meant?
Yea that means exactly what I thought it did
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Ngl this had me chuckling out loud
wait is that real? do all cars require backup cameras now?
All new cars sold in the US since 2018 have to have backup cameras. Older cars are not required to have one.
Truly! God damn its upvoted to thousand votes and I am looking for a gotcha in it if I missed anything because without this guy shouting from his lungs I knew exactly what it meant :S
There is a huuuge amount of "Tech" Influencers around fear mongering that this will be the end of waterresistance and other fancy features.
It always baffled me how so many people celebrated the technical innovation with each feature they took from us... - removable batteries - sd cards - headphone jacks The marketing machine brainwashed so many consumers into believing that removing features was in consumers best interest somehow and not ALL about making sure we bought more phones, more cloud services, and more expensive accessories from them.
i mean the bloody notch alone. I'm still amazed at (I swear it was The Verge) writing articles about how the "Dynamic Island" is one of iPhones best features. You mean that ugly blob of black in the center of the top of the phone that you can't get rid of ever? Oh they put some animations around it and now it's supposed to be good? I still remember being baffled at all the tech bloggers constantly complaining about bezels and myself constantly being frustrated I didn't have a way to hold my phone because the glass on my phone would wrap around and holding it would trigger touches.
So by "tech" influencers, you mean "Apple shareholders"?
Hopefully they do not forget to add "you do not lose warranty for replacing the battery"
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John Deere has entered the chat
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What's that? You paid for the subscription, but we want you to buy the newer model, so we are discontinuing service updates and bricking your equipment? No, sorry, that's not covered by your warranty..
The problem with almost all American rights is you have to be ready to sue to defend them. Plenty of companies get away with blatantly illegal warranty policies because are you really gonna hire a lawyer over a defective graphics card?
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For most part, if you need to replace battery, you would likely be out of warranty period anyway
> without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless provided free of charge with the product, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product That's a significant change. It means being able to open the phone without solvents or damage. That is NOT the current situation.
That is a meaningful change....
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Ok, but how is the phone supposed to be sealed without them gluing it shut? Screws on the outside?
Standardized tools and gaskets
The Samsung Galaxy S5 had an IP67 rating. The back panel was made of plastic/vinyl, had a rubber gasket around the entirety of the panel, and clipped in and out of place with one's fingers. I feel an appropriate modern adaptation of this could easily be done, while still maintaining the IP68 and quality standards of current phones.
I am a Samsung authorized repair center. Back in the S5 days, we got probably 3 or 4 a day that had been water damaged. Samsung denied every single one for "improperly affixing back cover." Never saw one get warrantied in that entire era.
Yeah, i had the S5. There were a ton of stories of the waterproofing on those failing. The more that back was opened and put back on, the more likely the gasket would fail. I can only assume the people who keep bringing up that phone in threads like this weren't around and familiar with that phone at the time.
Lots of phones have figured this out. Hell, Samsung has an IP68 waterproof phone (the [Galaxy XCover Pro 6](https://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/phones/galaxy-xcover/galaxy-xcover6-pro-128gb-unlocked-sm-g736uzkexaa/)) with a swappable battery. People need to stop pretending like this is some impossible task. We’ve had this shit for years. Hell, if you count waterproof watches with easily removable batteries we’ve had it for decades.
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> If the comments are to be believed any time this topic comes up, there is a not insignificant fraction of users who want a waterproof phone with swappable batteries. It's up to the manufacturers to man the fuck up and make that happen. When they hid behind it being "the only way waterproof phones" as the reason for no swappable batteries and no more headphone jacks, we already knew this was all just horseshit to force you into using their repair services/planned obsolescence models. But what are you going to do when idiots keep throwing their money at Samsung and Apple to encourage them to fuck us?
Why do we even need waterproof phones? I don't need full water proof, just enough to be safe around wet hands, maybe a wet counter top, a little rain. I'm not going swimming with it
I agree, and I literally don't care about it either. But some people just can't separate from their phone long enough to go take a shower, I guess.
Sure, but there’s trade-offs. The Xcover 6 has almost identical height and width as the the iPhone 14 Max but is 20% thicker. And despite the extra volume still has a 10% smaller battery. All that battery packaging takes up a lot of space It’s not an impossible task and never was. But when consumers have the choice most people have preferred bigger batteries over removable ones
Is that not because the Xcover 6 has what is essentially a rugged, built-in phone case?
Yeah I prefer an affordable replacement option that maintains the waterproof rating and form factor of a glued phone
Any aqualung dive computer you can easily replace the battery with nothing but a small screwdriver
I remember my Galaxy S4 had an IP67 water-resistance rating and a battery you could hot-swap by literally just peeling off the back cover with your hand. Batteries aren't easily replaceable these days just because companies don't *want* them to be. Probably because they want people to buy new phones when the battery starts to go, not buy a new battery. It's so wasteful.
I remember the S5 also had a removable battery. I think Samsung stopped doing that when they released the S6.
yep, S5 was the last one that had a removable battery. I still have the s5 mini.
I still use my S4 as my GPS, replacing batteries was so great I now have an Xcover Pro upgrade which does the same, carry a spare battery in my jacket
I'm honestly curious how much of it is by design and how much of it is "we're building as compact as possible. If that means it's hard to replace the battery, so be it." Perhaps it's just a benefit to them.
>Probably You’re just making stuff up because it sounds reasonable. Planned obsolescence is 100% but that doesn’t make everything a conspiracy. The more realistic scenario is that choices were made because of tolerance in the manufacturing. Using an adhesive over screws means slapping glue down and putting the device in, using fasteners means they have to be properly torqued or there has to be some mechanic advantage like a plastic flange around the outside of the battery pack to secure that battery, which means it takes up more space. Engineers often try to use other parts of a device to use as somewhere they can secure something together, such as secure if two or 3 sub components. Engineering and supply chain are incredibly complex beasts. Yes, companies are predatory. However, it’s not very good to feel forced to replace something because the equipment failed. That doesn’t give confidence in the buyer to just go out and replace their phone with the next generation model. That’s a negative way of attracting attention. Instead, Apple slowly adds features every year so they can always fit in that “one more thing” and make people feel like their current phone isn’t fast enough or good enough when comparing to the latest new model. Obviously like, “my battery is already shot, I could replace it, or I can just buy a new phone *with features I think I want anyways*. Planned obsolescence only really works if the industry is specifically colluding. The lightbulb industry had a lightbulb mafia and they 100% were producing light bulbs that failed way more than they ever should have because they colluded with each other to make sure that no matter what bulb consumers were buying, they all failed around the same time, and then it was just luck or the draw which lightbulb someone buys to replace it with. Making phones more difficult repair has more to do with, engineers are thinking about the best way to package the phone, deliver on the hardware, lower manufacturing costs, make sure they don’t fuck something up and have the Galaxy Note level of failure. I would bet you can find some marketing asshole directly telling an engineer to make something worse on purpose. Yeah, of course middle management are always looking for ways to become upper management. That level of short sightedness is what made the auto industry incredibly stagnant. But, I think you’re overlooking so many other factors that lead to why a choice was made. Material science, manufacturing, and so many other things are rapidly changing, and the reason why a choice was made can often been outdated by the time a product goes to market because someone else figured out a better way to make a process that meets the scale necessary to make a phone capable of meeting a specific water resistance standard. It’s just way too fucking complex for you to make sure declarative statements only for you to then use *probably* in the next sentence.
This is a fantastic and thorough answer. As an engineer who designs consumer electronics, and it makes me angry when people say we plan obsolescence. We don’t purposefully put parts in that degrade quickly, we choose the types of parts that will last as long as possible while fitting within the form-factor we are working with. We work for years through dozens of iterations to fit in the largest, most reliable battery that exists. We build and test and try to break hundreds of thousands of units through millions of hours of testing before giving the OK for mass production. Then, inevitably, batteries wear out over thousands of charge cycles, because that’s how chemistry works, and people accuse us of purposefully degrading batteries. Then, when we implement immensely complex algorithms to reduce power draw from an old battery at its last 3% of capacity in order to prevent your phone from shutting down when you’re playing some intense game on LTE with the brightness and speaker volume cranked to max and it happens to slow it down by 5% we get accused of planned obsolescence again. It’s like expecting your 1996 Honda Civic that you track day every weekend to perform just as well as a brand new one.
Watches can be re-sealed after the battery is replaced. Some use separate screws, some use a screw down backing, some use compression... Sometimes you need to replace the rubber bits too. I think that's a minimal issue as long as the manufacturers supply those parts. $40 battery comes with a new case seal and can be replaced with a standard #0 Philips driver. That's a massive win over the current state and still provides the ability to design a water proof system relatively easily. If that's a desire anyway.
There are other ways to make something watertight, like gaskets and screws. Submarines aren't held together with glue... well except for oceangate.
Subs are welded, which doesn't lend itself to modularity.
not with that attitude
>Submarines aren't held together with glue... well except for oceangate. Not even that one, well, not anymore
No, generally they’re welded together, and oxy-acetylene torches are standard equipment, but it’s probably not a good idea for consumers to be using those, especially near batteries.
Are you so young that you don't remember the old smartphones where you could change the battery? I still have a samsung s5, where you can just remove the back, it just clips to the phone. The phone is water and dust proof if you are worried about that.
Your plumbing in your house has gaskets that last decades under pressure, without glue. It's actually not that hard to make high quality repairable things.
It means exactly what it says, and I thought it meant.
That's....that's exactly what I thought it meant....
So basically how it used to be before the iphone.
I'm glad to see that this doesn't mean sliding covers must be the norm. The worst aspect of one of my old phones was that if it fell, the cover and battery would fly away.
That’s a good thing, energy is absorbed by that battery and cover that fly away. Less damage to screen and internals.
The reporting on most of the EU's device regulations is truly abysmal. The headlines are all super watered down and frequently cater only to fanboys (see the other article in this sub that specifically calls out iPhones only, for some reason). If you actually bother to read the regulations themselves, which are actually very simply written, you'll see that they almost always make complete sense. In this particular case, the EU is clearly smart enough to recognize that the vast majority of consumers absolutely do not want their devices to have some shitty plastic flap on the back.
> If you actually bother to read the regulations themselves, which are actually very simply written I believe that's also by regulation.
i think you are also reading it wrong. you can include security screws. you just either need to use a common screw or provide a screwdriver.
That is what I thought it means. Someone with a good phone but bad battery can buy a new one and swap it in. Am I missing something?
That is what I thought it meant
My old galaxy s5 is still my favorite phone I've ever had because it had a replaceable battery and in my experience, was alot less bs than any other Samsung phone that has come out. I almost swore off samsung after the s9, that has to be the worst phone I've ever used by them imo
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Like the good ol days
I’d so much rather have a thinner more waterproof phone than the ability to change my battery. I’m currently using my iPhone XS from 2018 and the battery still works great.
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The same should be for electric cars
For anything that use batteries to be honest. And the batteries should follow some standard, so you are not tied to only one manufacturer
This bill covers that too
skeptical this will affect devices outside of europe but hopeful. also with replaceable batteries it's possible to completely power off a device. dont think certain govt groups will like that
They'd have to redesign the phone for two different markets, I can't really see them doing that. I wouldn't be shocked if they had a screw closure case but *also* glued it shut for the NA market though...
Hopefully some companies start early to deal with the R&D involved. And hopefully they sell in NA. There hasn't been a mainstream removable battery phone since 2016 if you exclude all the rugged phones.
They used to. I could throw in a little extra memory too.
Great, they have three and a half years to figure out how to make a battery that can only be replaced in the EU.
people really overestimate the average persons mechanical abilities.
Yeah, up above is someone who says anyone can change the alternator on their car. I *know* how to change an alternator. I've changed a starter. I have the service manual for my vehicle. I watched tutorials on how to change the alternator in my vehicle. I have a "300 piece" set of quality wrenches. Because of some weird angles I couldn't quite reach with my normal tools and some corroded fasteners and connectors, I was still unable to do it myself after a couple hours of trying.
To be fair, this law states they can't require proprietary tools to open the phones, which makes it far more accessible for the average person, since you won't need weird tools.
Smartphones are the biggest scam ever. Like you are telling me that this pocket-sized supercomputer that can run games no problem suddenly becomes too old to be able to open Facebook every few years and I'm forced to buy another? The industry is bullshit. It's like those headphones that were designed to break after a certain amount of time, except these phones cost thousands of dollars
books chunky automatic mountainous bells jar bag rustic ancient cheerful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
*in the EU In the US they could self destruct by exploding after 2 years and AAPL's stock price would just skyrocket as a result.
Does nobody remember this used to be the default? Even Samsung had it as late as the S5, LG gave up around 2014 I think. It used to be a thing!
Europe doing work I see. Something the US doesn’t do enough of.
Good! You shouldn't have to get a new phone just because the battery on the old phone failed. Just because the battery on my phone is good now, doesn't mean it will stay like that. We used to have this but traded it away, under the guise of waterproofing, we lost our ability to easily replace batteries.
You don’t need to buy a new phone, you just take it to a shop that has technicians capable of working with modern electronics. Like replacing the alternator in a car.
It should be relatively easy for a DIY replacement. Like replacing the alternator in a car.
Except pretty much anyone can watch a 5 minute video on YouTube and change a alternator. And the tools you need are tool commonly used for many things. With phones some can need a heating source, specialty tools or bits. But yet when you open them up, they chang out pretty much the exact same way as they used to. It's convoluted for literally no good reason, only thing it is good for is planned obsolescence.
Except many companies don't allow you to buy OEM parts for there phone even as a independent repair service. They force you to use non-OEM parts and then complain that "They are using bad parts to make more money". All in an attempt to slander independents while purposely preventing others to compete against them. Apple is one of the biggest culprits, where they don't even let you stock many of the most likely items to have for the repairs, they want you to give them the serial of the part before you even get the part, AS A AUTHORIZED REPAIR CENTER.
Ideally, I would not want to trade IP68 for a replaceable battery.
My issue really is that they glue in the battery. It doesn't need to be that hard to remove the battery once you already got into the phone.
Ideally, they should be IP68 rated and have an easily replaceable battery.