[ggreer]

Removable batteries are a trade-off. They improve repairability and device longevity, but they increase manufacturing costs, reduce the effectiveness of waterproofing, and increase customer support issues. Battery contacts can degrade or become loose, causing phones to power off unexpectedly when handled roughly. Customers buy cheap 3rd party batteries and then complain to the phone manufacturer when battery life is poor. In some cases, 3rd party batteries malfunction and damage the phone (or even cause injury), and the customer blames the phone manufacturer. Samsung and Apple don't want to see news articles about their phones blowing up, even if it's obviously not their fault. And yes, they do tend to sell more phones if they use integrated batteries.

Rather than mandating a specific solution, a better strategy would be to tax electronic waste so that manufacturers have more financial incentive to make phones that last longer. It might also be helpful to limit the liability of anyone who sells phones with removable batteries, or have more standards for battery manufacturers, as most malfunctions will be due to 3rd party batteries.

[mmis1000]

Most phones don't have battery that is removable. But they are indeed serviceable. The battery alone is generally about 10 to 20 usd. And depends on where you are, add the service fee. Your phone is again good for 2 or 3 years. It's really just a tiny portion of new phone consider high end phones today went up to 1000~1500 usd range.

The official vendor normally have an artificially high service fee because they want you to buy a new one instead which is much more profitable. But servicing it in third party vendors isn't that expensive.

[ggreer]

That's true, but it's also true that the inconvenience of paying $50-$100 and not having your phone for a day (and risking it being damaged) is enough to cause quite a few people to buy a new phone.

I've replaced the battery in most of my phones over the past decade, but that's because I don't like the larger form factor of new phones. Right now I'm on the iPhone 13 mini. Before that I had a 2nd gen iPhone SE (the same form factor as the iPhone 5). If I could get the form factor of an iPhone 4 and the specs of a modern phone, I'd probably be willing to pay $1,000. Unfortunately, like the headphone jack enthusiasts, people with my preferences are too small of a market segment to be worth going after.

[maeil]

> That's true, but it's also true that the inconvenience of paying $50-$100 and not having your phone for a day

Not sure about the US or Apple, but over here if you go to Samsung a battery replacement generally takes less than an hour.

[mmis1000]

> not having your phone for a day

It's generally about 2 or 3 hours here. Probably just watch a movie at theater or workout at gym for a while and it's finished.

[Qwertious]

If people will replace their phone over a one-day wait, then there should be lots of dirt-cheap refurbished options.

[zaroth]

That doesn’t mean the first phone is waste! There’s nothing wrong with wanting to buy a new phone.

The law won’t reduce smartphone ewaste. It will just satisfy the people who want removable batteries over sleaker design.

The battery is serviceable and it can be done quite easily and cheaply. In fact it’s done billions of times over.

Really just nanny state regulation, which as typical, will not bring any benefit and impose tremendous compliance costs and actually make some products worse.

[hulitu]

> Most phones don't have battery that is removable. But they are indeed serviceable

It depends on costs. When both service and a new phone cost 120 €, guess what will the user prefer ?

[merb]

Before the iPhone came we actually had replaceable batteries on most phones and it worked really well. Battery contacts degrading is definitely not a problem for a phone that has a lifetime of maximum of like 7 years. Yes waterproofing becomes harder but it is not impossible. Manufacturing costs are also not an issue since most phones have margins beyond 300%.

[tgma]

Most phones sold have very low and sometimes negative margins, actually. The high-end phones arena which Apple dominates is actually a minority of total phones sold.

[fragmede]

How do you get a margin over 100%?

[Qwertious]

If you spend $100 making a phone and sell it for $200, you have a margin of 100%. If you sell it for $800, you have a margin of 700%.

[fragmede]

that's markup, not margin. At $200, the margin is 50% → (200 - 100) / 200 = 0.5.

[econ]

Many repair shops will put old or cheap batteries in your phone. Even if they buy an expensive one they don't necessarily know what it is.

There are a lot of waterproof connectors on the market. They pretty much all work but if a standard is chosen it will absolutely be one that works.

I've used a good few battery powered tools, even cloths. If any manufacturer made [say] a drill with a glued battery I wouldn't use it if you paid me for it. You just walk to the charger, swap the battery and get back to whatever you were doing. There is nothing special about phones that deserves special consideration.

I wonder if the battery can be smaller if you can easily bring a few extra. My cameras have very small ones 700mah-ish specially when compared to the size of the camera. It is never a real issue. Just bring more batteries. Say phones have 4-5 times the mah and last 8 to 30 hours. You could slide on a battery with a bump and get 60 hours or a slim one with only 4-15 hours. That will eventually outperform the degrading cell.

I don't know where innovation is at but I imagine we could see new batteries with much better size to power ratio. If you already have the newest phone it would be a no-brainer.

[bmicraft]

The Galaxy S5 had a replaceable battery and IP67 10 years ago. It's not that hard.

[wqaatwt]

Wasn’t it made out of plastic? Why would anyone buy a phone like that these days..

[NorwegianDude]

Considering how many people are using cases and even wallet cases, probably very many people. The case/wallet can be attached to the phone as a replacement to the normal backplate, making it much less bulky, just as Samsung did forever ago.

[wqaatwt]

Yet nobody is making high-end plastic phones anymore. Because nobody would buy them (just like no nobody cared about replaceable batteries so all companies stopped making them).

I don’t think that the case situation is necessarily rational but people generally seem to prefer more fancy/expensive/better looking phones these days.

[bmicraft]

The pixel a series is made of plastic too, today. I'm not seeing anybody bothered by that.

[lenkite]

Umm..late comment, but people are still buying smartphones made out of plastic, even recycled plastic these days.

[hulitu]

> reduce the effectiveness of waterproofing

If your phone has a hole (usually the charging port), the water will get in.

[Dilettante_]

That's like saying you get water into your brain through your earholes when diving

[viraptor]

That's just wrong. A port is not necessarily a hole through the case. It may be just a concave area. The water doesn't necessarily get in through ports either - there's lots of water-tight designs there.

[vincnetas]

well, batteries must be also certified. so yeah if you buy black market discarded faulty batteries on random site, you can expect a problem. of course catching all these sellers of crappy fake certified batteries becomes the responsibility of market regulator, but that is their job as far as i can tell.