> If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't.
This argument gets thrown about every time companies make anti-consumer changes, and it completely ignores the information asymmetry and other dynamics at play. When I go to the store to buy a new phone, where does it list on the box how repairable the device is? Where does it show how expensive the repair will be? If I'm locked in the apple ecosystem, where do I buy an iPhone with a replaceable battery?
Your assumption that the market is driven by informed consumer choices presupposes that every buyer is an expert.
I don't have the evidence to say either way, but I do know that at least my city has a lot of cellphone repair businesses, including mall kiosks. Presumably they have enough clientele to keep them going which suggests a lot of people are repairing their phones.
My Kyocera will work in orbit and withstand intense radiation. In fact, this very moment my new Duraforce Pro 3 is having fun in a launch-testing thermal/vac chamber.
Kyocera's 'flagship' is high-reliability phones in absolute garbage environments.
Samsung's 'flagship' overheats and earns them class-action lawsuits.
Motorola's 'flagship' is a hinged throwback to the 90s.
Apple's 'flagship' is an overpriced piece of vendor lock-in.
Meanwhile my phone takes serious abuse and laughs at it. I've dropped it and watched it go more than 700 feet down the side of a mountain (Chambless Skarn) and BARELY chip the screen protector. Waterproofing still intact. Case barely scratched.
What you consider a flagship phone is a brittle piece of junk in my hands.
That's not a radiation hardened chip, it's regular off-the-shelf consumer electronics. The "solar radiation" test they advertise is part of MIL-STD-810H. It tests whether the electronics survive regular sunlight on earth. The only ionizing radiation this phone is rated for is UV light.
At least if it had registered memory there might be an argument that it has some radiation resistance, but no it's plain old LPDDR4x.
Ulefone Armor 29 Ultra has the same MIL-STD-810H conformance with "radiation hardening", 16GB of RAM and a flagship Dimensity 9300+. Just not a removable battery.
Funny because the Qualcomm sm7450-ab snapdragon 7 gen-1 page lists itself as only supporting LPDDR5.
>also do you mean perhaps Strontium-90?
Nope. Strontium-60. 25 year half life compared to Sr-90's ~29. It's what we like to use in real space-environment testing on the ground. Nasty stuff.
>source?
You can actually probe your hardware and see what sort of ECC is enabled on a Droid phone. In this case, in-line ECC, so that means some of the RAM is actually sacrificed for error correction instead of having a dedicated extra chip (256 bit, 240 of that is data 16 bit is error correction.) What's awesome about that is that enabling ECC is simply a bit flip in firmware and you don't need the extra RAM modules installed - the installed memory can already do it. You don't need the extra hardware.
> Nope. Strontium-60. 25 year half life compared to Sr-90's ~29. It's what we like to use in real space-environment testing on the ground. Nasty stuff.
So you're suggesting we all just need to buy exclusively flip phones for a few years to send the market a signal that it wants replaceable batteries. Then the free market will do its thing and keep the engine of innovation running
Speaking of which, does anyone want to do a list of "features added to smartphones over the last 10 years" vs "features removed from smartphones over the last 10 years" so we can see just what innovations are at risk?
I'm not suggesting anything, I'm simply offering the reality of the smartphone market. What you are suggesting is a contrived, exaggerated take of how markets function.
People generally like small, thin phones, as evidenced by the billions sold. It really isn't much more complicated than that.
I want removeable batteries in my phone, largely because it means I don't have to buy them a lot!
I ran my LG G5 with replaceable batteries from 2016 through 2021, at which point there were no affordable replaceable-battery phones left. I bought quite a few replacement batteries, even trying aftermarket batteries with varying levels of success after the OEM LG ones were discontinued.
That is, of course, a problem for manufacturers that want to sell a lot of phones.
> "If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't."
For that to happen there obviously needs to be a supply worth writing home about. Furthermore, speaking purely for myself, a removable battery is not a must but a nice-to-have. A lot of slabs that have removable batteries are out of the game for entirely different reasons.
> For that to happen there obviously needs to be a supply worth writing home about.
Not really. If there’s no supply, it’s probably because the manufacturers did a market analysis and decided it’s not even worth it to offer that. So either their analysis is extremely wrong and it actually would sell, or the consumers don’t want to buy it that bad.
> "If there’s no supply, it’s probably because the manufacturers [...] decided it’s not even worth it to offer that."
You got it surrounded. Why offer devices that you have to support for a longer time (e. g. enterprise models) when there's more money to be made when you enshittify (which obviously goes beyond just batteries)?
Because you’ll be the only manufacturer making the desired product and have 100% of this market? If there are multiple manufacturers competing, surely one of them would do it if it’s profitable?
Yeah, sure, some of them already do. Their market share is practically negligible, enterprise players (e. g. Samsung with their Galaxy Xcover line) notwithstanding. That, on a strictly personal level, still doesn't mean they offer a desirable product.
Yes, but it’s an indicator that the general consumer doesn’t care that much about it.
And I say that as an absolute supporter of the mandatory USB C. But I don’t think the average consumer cares enough about it that apple would have switched without being forced.
If we talk about the same "average consumer" it describes an individual that doesn't care for technical minutiae beyond a couple of specific use cases (telecomms, photo/video shooter, socials). These people are precisely the reason for why a regulator has to jump in if a government wants to implement sustainability efforts.
So really it's not about phones having a removable battery, but a whole host of other features plus a removable battery. Which is just untenable from a regulatory POV.
Well, strictly from a regulatory standpoint, at least given the thread's topic, it's just the batteries. So or so, the loophole is already in the package as well, so as long as you meet the relevant certs the point is moot.
that isnt how markets really work. you could say that if apple had two otherwise identical iphones except one has removable battery and one doesn't. but the enshittification cycle works via a ratcheting effect. once you achieve a certain level of dominance and lock-in, you can start getting away with all kinds of anti-consumer strategies to make more money and not get punished for it, and your competitors will follow suit. as long as you can ratchet above whatever detrimental thing you want to get away with is you'll probably be fine.
you can look at the lightning connector as an example. if you said "if people wanted usb connectivity they wouldn't buy iphones", nobody would take you seriously. and when apple was forced to switch, it absolutely didnt tank their sales because people just loved the lightning connector so much. the bad thing went away and it was great.
If Apple could make money from removable batteries, meaning there was a market for it and people wanted it over some other alternative, are you suggesting they are not smart enough to do the research and work necessary to accomplish that?
The reality is people don't want it, at all. At least not enough to warrant action. So the story ends there.
Also, the lighting connector is better than USB in every way. Mandating an inferior technology is an odd choice.
False dichotomy. The question isn't whether you can make money with a replaceable battery, but whether you can make more money by selling specialized service (or an entirely new phone) than a battery. What else are people going to do, not buy a phone? Switch operating systems entirely?
This whole thing becomes more obvious in the Android world, where models with various features do exist, but only in certain markets
Even then, this whole line of argument seems moot because if the battery still holds enough charge over time the regulations don't even require it to be replaceable
> If Apple could make money from removable batteries, meaning there was a market for it and people wanted it over some other alternative, are you suggesting they are not smart enough to do the research and work necessary to accomplish that?
sort of missed the point. market dominance and lock-in means they already are the 800-lb gorilla, and removable batteries sit below where it'd move most people to switch
Sourcing a tiny, esoteric, tech-heavy, developer website poll about smartphone batteries is not a fair sample of the billions of people in the world that use smartphones.
That's not the point. It being done in a local shop for a few bucks with no small letter text saying that "we may break your screen in half because this thing can't be repaired properly". It mentions that it should not use glue, not need solvent and only commercially available tools may be usable (or they have to be provided next to the phone).
Nonsense. It just mandates easier repairability and spare parts availability, not ad-hoc replacement. Also this does not apply if the battery is able to retain 80% of its original capacity after 1,000 charge cycles so "innovative" manufacturers just need to use high quality batteries.
If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't.