[trustingtrust]

Almost nobody cares about saving batteries. Those are replaceable and cheap to replace every couple of years.

Innovating more battery life and leaving 20% battery life on the table sounds extremely pointless for what costs 20-30$ a year but lets you use the device all day instead of just shutting before the end of the day.

[fragmede]

I'm an "almost nobody". I care about saving batteries. I get all the dead disposable vapes my friends will give me so I can recycle the batteries in them. Lithium is a limited resource and one day we're not going to have more to dig up out of the ground. There are others like me out there, I just need to find them.

[bdamm]

Lithium is not a limited resource in the same way that Iron or Coal or Silicon are not limited. There is so much of it that we really cannot run out.

Cobalt, Neodynium and the other rare earth metals, though, those are highly valuable; and the processes to manufacture them are usually toxic. So do it for the rare earth elements, but don't do it for Lithium.

[jenadine]

The lithium is not disappearing though.

At some point in the future, we can start mining old landfill.

But yes, it's easier (and more efficient) to recycle before putting them in landfill.

[p1necone]

> Those are replaceable and cheap to replace every couple of years.

If you specifically seek out devices with cheap replaceable batteries, sure. But this isn't the case with a lot of devices.

[Kirby64]

The cost to replace the battery on iPhones, which most people would consider to be “difficult to replace” is only $100 directly from Apple. Really seems like paying an extra $100 every 2-3 years is a decent deal for something that has 20% more battery.

[circuit10]

> Really seems like paying an extra $100 every 2-3 years is a decent deal for something that has 20% more battery.

Maybe if you have a lot of money to waste, but people should have the option to choose

[Kirby64]

They do on modern iPhones? You can pick: 20% less battery life, and your battery likely won't need to be replaced for 5-6 years, or 20% more and you'll get normal battery longevity.

Also, we're talking in the context of a $1000-1200 phone for the base config. 10% of that cost for a replaced battery does not seem outrageous to me.

As someone else pointed out, the cheaper phones Apple sells have correspondingly cheaper battery repair costs.

[circuit10]

You seemed to be arguing that no one needs this feature and it doesn’t need to exist. Not everyone buys the latest iPhones straight from Apple, I’m typing this on someone’s old iPhone 7 and it works fine. The battery life isn’t great but maybe if Apple had implemented this feature earlier it would be better. Replacing the battery would probably cost almost as much as the phone if I did it via Apple.

[Kirby64]

I'm not sure what you're arguing for here? I'm not aware of any phone that offered a charge limiting option (Android included) 7 years ago. And replacement parts for super old phones remain relatively high in comparison to the value of the device. This is just like cars; at some point it isn't worth fixing/repairing it.

[boppo1]

Does apple reslly replace the battery, or do they transfer your OS to a refurb and give you that? I'm very wary of apple repairs.

[hilux]

Even better - for some models it's $69 from Apple, and around $50 from third-party providers.

Source: I replaced my iPhone battery last week.

[fiddlerwoaroof]

Replacing an iPhone battery is cheap, especially compared to replacing the whole phone: at the Apple Store it’s either $99, $69 or $49 and I’ve had other stores do it for like $40. That’s not too bad for a once every couple years cost.

[arcanemachiner]

Yeah but then you have to buy an iPhone.

That's not snark. I want things from my phone that an iPhone can't give me.

The battery replacement ecosystem in Android land is pretty dismal.

[pmontra]

It depends on your definition of dismal. Any phone repair shop can open phones and replace batteries. There are also disassembly videos for most models on YouTube. I looked at them, ordered parts and replaced the battery on my Samsung A40 when it started to discharge too quickly. I also replaced the camera after a hard crash on the floor broke the autofocus. Maybe not having Samsung shops makes all of that dismal but I actually prefer to have many small independent shops around the country.

[KennyBlanken]

Market fragmentation among Androids means that nobody stocks parts for anything and the margins are so low, a lot of shops will only do the brands they want to.

I couldn't find anyone to replace the battery in my Google Nexus phones, every time I tried, in a major metropolitan area. Ended up having to do it myself.

You can walk into nearly any cell phone shop in the world with an iPhone and walk out with a replaced battery because the staff know them and they stock parts for them.

[pmontra]

I'm not sure that the problem is fragmentation inside an operating system. It's how widespread some brands are. I never had such problems with any Samsung phone I owned, even a Sony Xperia one years ago. I guess that it means that Apple, Samsung and even Sony (back at the time) are more mainstream than Google and for shops it's not worth to keep spare parts of Google phones. To be fair, the last time I had to replace a screen of a Samsung because it dropped down flat on the screen instead of on a corner, I had to wait one day for the replacement part to arrive to the shop. I put the SIM in the old phone or in my tablet and went back the next day. I'm not replacing the screen myself, it looks to require some extra skills compared to a battery.

[Symbiote]

It's always cost me around $40 to have an Android battery replaced at a "We repair phones" sort of place. That includes the cost of the battery.

[datameta]

Cheap for the wallet, but not the biosphere. Unless you mean to imply that people would get new phones less frequently?

[fiddlerwoaroof]

It’s cheaper for the biosphere than replaceable batteries were, because you just switch out the battery and don’t need the plastic case for the replaceable part.

[hilux]

It's well-established that iPhones have longer average lives than Android phones.

[dandy23]

Really? If that is true, I wonder how much is due to the fact that the phones are more expensive so people take care of them more or delay their next purchase. It's not because the actual quality would be better.

If you pull statistics you also have to filter out the sub 150 dollar Andoid phones which may well have shorter average usage life.

[kergonath]

> Really? If that is true, I wonder how much is due to the fact that the phones are more expensive so people take care of them more or delay their next purchase.

Even if it were the case, it does not matter. What does matter is the amount of matter that ends up in landfills. As a matter of fact, we should be pushing for better built, longer lasting devices even if it means spending a bit more in the short term.

> It's not because the actual quality would be better.

Second-hand iPhones are all over the place here in a way that Samsung Galaxies are not, even though they are more popular. You can argue that it is not a proof of high quality, but it is at least a proof that build quality is high enough that 4 years old devices are on average in a good enough state to retain a high resale value.

> If you pull statistics you also have to filter out the sub 150 dollar Andoid phones which may well have shorter average usage life.

Which precisely is the problem. “But they were cheap” is a terrible excuse as we keep burning more non-renewable resources and shovel up heaps of electronic waste in landfills. Besides, we need to look at cost per year, not cost per device as a cheap device you have to change often is more costly over the long term. I am not saying only Apple devices can have high build quality, but it seems nobody is pushing OEMs towards that direction in Android-land.

[_cenw]

Software support is an important one, and Apple has managed to slow down the RAM baseline inflation that Android seems to experience every other year. Even people who regularly upgrade usually trade in their old phones because they still have enough value to bother, so a lot more phones get used all the way to the end of their support.

[nottorp]

> If that is true, I wonder how much is due to the fact that the phones are more expensive so people take care of them more or delay their next purchase.

Delay because it's more expensive? How about delay because it's good enough? My iPhone XS is just fine thank you. There's no point in upgrading it yet.

[incongruity]

How is that all that damaging? I’m sure those batteries are recycled in basically all cases and yes, I’d expect battery replacement does indeed forestall replacement for many phones.

[hyperific]

The most common processes for recycling lithium ion and lithium polymer batteries are not environmentally friendly. They consume a lot of water and energy and produce toxic byproducts the require further processing and energy to be rendered safe.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsenergylett.1c02602

[hyperific]

byproducts that require

[quickthrower2]

Let the user choose! Some people tether their phone a lot and use the battery only when out. For them 80% max is OK.

[nottheengineer]

My Oneplus 5T got replaced because it has a small crack in the screen so it's impossible to disassemble without breaking the screen. I used ACC to only charge that to 90% so I could get three years out of the battery instead of just two.

I'll probably get a fairphone next so I don't need to worry about this. But the people with glued-in batteries definitely have to.

[kragen]

most recent phones and laptops have batteries that require advanced tools and chemicals to remove and replace

[crashmat]

Laptops also? I didn't realise it had gotten this bad anywhere but in Macbooks.

[alpaca128]

Pretty much all thin modern laptops, Surface Pros etc use copious amounts of glue for different parts. With the worst offender iirc being the Surface Laptop which can't be opened at all without damaging the keyboard.