| 1) Power. It's no great technical challenge to build electronics that would last a lifetime--but using anything resembling normal current semiconductors means that to get that life your system must run cool. Put your finger on the hottest point in the system type cool. But note that this is the enemy of computing power. Your lifetime computer is going to be a total wimp. (Yes, I realize that many of the old devices don't actually run that cool--but note that neither do they run 24/7.) Remember the claims that the light bulb makers were conspiring to sell bulbs that would wear out when they could make ones that lasted longer? Especially since there are some pretty long-lived examples out there. Yes, they could--but you make an incandescent light last longer by running it cooler. But that means more of the energy in the infrared rather than the visible spectrum. Long life bulbs produce less light for a given amount of power. 2) Weight. Yes, we had replaceable batteries--but that meant extra material required to make it easy to change the battery. Batteries always have housings. While lithium secondary batteries without housings exist they must be treated with a certain amount of respect and are incapable of self-defense against sloppy electronics. Your phone with an easily replaced battery is inherently bulkier and heavier than one without. Likewise, building something so it can be taken apart makes it bigger and heavier than the glued-together equivalent. 3) Waterproofing. I am not aware of any way of making an efficient waterproof, easily replaceable battery. And waterproof seals that you can open are troublesome, especially if you want to make them small and light. 4) Efficiency. My understanding is that in most cases the optimal design devotes enough to reliability/lifespan that half of the specimens will wear out before something bad happens to them. The market wants light, powerful, as close to waterproof as possible phones. That means sealed units that are typically uneconomic to repair. |
it doesn't need to be easy, nor user-replacible. It just needs to be _replacible_ by a professional, with readily available equipment that you'd expect a repair shop to have. Make the parts available for purchase, or have the specs be open for third-party production.
But companies, such as apple, deliberately make their parts incompatible, even if salvaged from a different phone. It's to thwart repairs specifically, and they cite theft prevention as the reason (which i claim is bs - they could allow repairs by having the owner authorize secondary sale of old phones as parts, which still prevents thefts).