[peterfirefly]

> Removable batteries were the industry standard in the early days of mobile phones, and it worked perfectly.

Phones back then were bad (so accommodating replaceable batteries was easy), and batteries degraded quickly (so it was a necessity).

Modern phones are smaller, need to be more water proof, stuffed to an unimaginable degree with components -- and modern batteries last a really long time.

I am not so sure it's a good idea to force them to become consumer replaceable again.

My iPhone SE (1st gen) ended up being pushed apart from the inside last year because the battery had swelled up. I could have had it replaced but the CPUs were a bit too weak for the modern world and the RAM too limited. A fresh new battery would not have upgraded the CPUs or the RAM.

Li-ion batteries have improved since 2016 so I expect the battery in my iPhone 16e to outlast the useful life of the CPUs and RAM in it.

> extract the remaining rare earths

More for the gold, I believe. There are youtubers who do it semi-professionally and are remarkably transparent about how they do it. It looks like the only really toxic fumes they contend with are a tiny bit of sulphuric acid vapour from their electrolytic baths.

I don't think we should ship the trash to Africa or poor parts of Asia. I don't see how replaceable batteries would have prevented my iPhone SE from becoming trash or have prevented my iPhone 16e from becoming trash in the future. Or preventing them from ending up in Africa/Asia, for that matter.

Edit: had accidentally written "back" in the first line when I meant "bad".

Edit 2: used the past tense by mistake ("expected the battery in my iPhone 16e").

[vladvasiliu]

>Modern phones are smaller, need to be more water proof, stuffed to an unimaginable degree with components -- and modern batteries last a really long time.

This argument always comes up when talking about replaceable smartphone batteries and headphone jacks. But Samsung had waterproof phones before Apple, and they still had replaceable batteries and, gasp a headphone jack.

I actually had a Galaxy S5 which I used as a GPS attached to my motorcycle's handlebars under heavy rain. It never skipped a beat. The only problem I had was that raindrops on the screen made it difficult to see the map. It was also thinner than the iPhone 7 which replaced it. Now I have an iPhone 14 pro which is even thicker than the 7.

I also had to replace the battery on that iPhone 7, which was an unbelievable PITA. Had to stand in line to talk to the service person even though I had an appointment, go away for a few hours, come back, stand in line again to pick up my phone. Fuck that. I'd much rather go to some store, buy a new battery, and replace it in less than one minute, on my terms.

So, yeah, pardon my French, but these tired arguments are just bullshit. There is prior art that proves them wrong.

[protimewaster]

> Samsung had waterproof phones before Apple, and they still had replaceable batteries and, gasp a headphone jack.

Also, Apple (and I assume others) were building stuff with non-replaceable batteries before they were building stuff that was waterproof. Clearly they're not sealed off in order to make them waterproof, because they were sealed off back when they weren't waterproof too.

[lyu07282]

Yeah, we have ultrasonic fingerprint sensors underneath displays, infrared structured light cameras, periscope telescopic lenses, foldable displays, computational photography, ... The mobile 5G infrastructure uses beam forming arrays ffs! and they want to tell us they can't make the battery replaceable??? Bullshit

[jszymborski]

Tell that to my Pixel 6a which hardly holds a charge over a day.

[peterfirefly]

I don't know what's wrong. Maybe an app that runs too much when it shouldn't? I know that the Facebook app used to be a battery killer roughly a decade ago.

The battery on the Pixel 6a should be good enough to make the phone run a whole day with no problem. It's almost exactly the same size as the battery in my iPhone 16e that has excellent battery life.

[ruszki]

My iPhone, when it was new, 3 and a half years ago, could handle two days, while I used it heavily, with hotspot on for hours at places where signal was terrible. GPS was almost always on. And I used it heavily because I was on the go a lot. Two years later it couldn’t handle 12 hours if I use hotspot the same way for half the time as before, because I travel less, and even for that I needed to optimize already some apps.

My watch could handle a day (about 22 hours) with occasional direct network access. Nowadays, that’s out of the question. I cannot use it for the night, only if I charge it twice per day. I bought the exact same time as the iPhone.

I bought a beefy laptop two years ago. I used it with some battery saving option, and never charged more than 80%. I could use it for about 4 hours on battery. At first. Then now, I already can use it an hour less than back then with the same usage.

All of these devices lie to me, that I lost less than 20% of battery health. Where in reality it’s somewhere between 25-50%, and when they wouldn’t pretend that maximum output is any way a good indicator of the real battery life, aka how long you can use a device.

And yeah, apps. If we pretend that I don’t have misbehaving apps all the time. The difference is, that when I bought these devices, I could ignore them completely.

[joecool1029]

> All of these devices lie to me, that I lost less than 20% of battery health. Where in reality it’s somewhere between 25-50%, and when they wouldn’t pretend that maximum output is any way a good indicator of the real battery life, aka how long you can use a device.

FWIW, I've only directly witnessed this so far on Oneplus devices, others have remarked the health gauge on these seem to use gacha mechanics where health % will be all over the place. (like >10% variability). I have theories as to why this happens, it's in firmware not OS as LineageOS shows same behavior.... but tough to really know for sure if this was by design or not.

Oh and charge thresholds only do so much, heat kills batteries reliably fast. Deep discharges under 20% or so seem to run more risk of electrolyte breakdown. Don't fear fast charge in bulk charge range, it causes less wear than other factors. I slammed the 65W charge into my 8T's and still got years of >80% battery, replacement wasn't too hard to do on these.

[vladvasiliu]

I'm starting to think there's some variation / luck of the dray to these things. My iPhone 14 pro is like what you describe: when new, it held a great charge; now, not so much. But my HP laptops have the "limit charge to 80%" thing, and the battery held up very well. I don't use those laptops on battery very often, but they usually last several hours. They were rated for 5 hours I think, so it's close enough.

I'd really love to know the reasoning behind not allowing this charge-limit thing to older iPhones, since AFAIK the 15 and up have it.

[mancerayder]

Pixels have lasted about 1 year for me historically (I started with the first pixel and had every other one in the lineup, now the 10). It forced me to buy new ones. ETA 1 year of battery before it noticeably degrades.

I might be doing something wrong, but battery life always degraded for me. I've even bought the same Pixel on eBay when it stopped being sold by Google, so I can save money on buying the latest.

My Pixel 8 had to be replaced because the screen starting randomly detecting presses in a spasmic fury, which would happen with no known correlation.

There are NO new features worth getting on the new Pixels. I love taking photos - insider tip - huge megapixel sensors don't make better photos.

I liked the pixels that had the fingerprint sensor on the back best

Years ago I had and loved the Samsung phones with replaceable batteries.

I buy new ones because they make me, not because I chase as aesthetic novelty like a stereotypical Apple consumer.

[tim333]

I had the battery go in my first gen iPhone SE. I had it replaced for £40 and the thing is quite handy as a spare handset although as you say it's underspeced as an everyday phone.

[peterfirefly]

It's still in my drawer because I am considering doing exactly that.

[joecool1029]

> My iPhone SE (1st gen) ended up being pushed apart from the inside last year because the battery had swelled up.

Let’s put aside that this is a 10 year old phone now and well and truly obsolete, you actually didn’t get the basic maintenance done. Batteries all fail and degrade with time, especially if abused and left in extreme heat.

The original SE had perhaps the most user replaceable battery in an iPhone. No parts serialization, aside from the touchid cable being a little finicky it is an easy and cheap battery swap. Also it was probably degraded for some time so you were getting CPU throttling to keep it from randomly shutting off.

I do not understand people like you. Do you buy a car and never change the oil or tires, then complain it breaks and buy a new one?

It is pretty much a requirement now to either greatly overpay for a battery replacement from Apple or get a service plan from them, or just limp along with worn out shit and hope it doesn’t blow the back off. Can’t DIY or goto a third party repair shop, the battery is paired to the device.

Finally, before we even get into the ‘trivially easy to replace’ end user design, it’s not going to fix the problem of the asshole that won’t pay $10 for a batt in their bulging $500-1200 idevice. I saw this all the time with laptops that did have easily replaceable packs, people just didn’t do it. They’d just live with 20min battery if they were lucky and run it into the ground.

To top it all off you then go onto weird virtue signaling about children breathing recycling fumes, how about you climb off your high horse and maintain your own equipment for a change? Maybe stop fighting against the people that DO want to be able to maintain their own equipment.

[peterfirefly]

Please reread what you are replying to and who wrote what.

[joecool1029]

> To top it all off you then go onto weird virtue signaling about children breathing recycling fumes, how about you climb off your high horse and maintain your own equipment for a change?

Apologies about this part, you are correct that this wasn't your words, the rest of what I wrote I still stand behind. Mostly, it's a problem that you seem to believe that because of incremental improvements in battery technology, we're at a point where it's acceptable to make devices an end-user can't service. That we can't design for water/dust ingress protection and have an easier to replace battery.

Realistically batteries currently made reach end of service life around 3 years, previously it was around 2. People using devices heavily (gaming/videoconferencing) or living in hot climates will have shorter service life. You can push them past the 80% health threshold, but then it's throttling, risk of bulging, etc. You got 9 or so years out of a SE using the battery long past its service life.

But you, (yes, you!) act like everything's currently fine with designs and that we won't burn up the batteries sooner. I'm saying that is misguided and it doesn't line up to the reality you've experienced directly (which is that batteries are still a consumable that need to be replaced eventually). You probably haven't got your hands dirty to DIY, nor are you aware of how they made it harder than it has to be (some manufacturers don't put adhesive tabs on the batteries to pull off). You don't understand that it's possible for the engineering divisions to design a no compromise device that's easier to service and the only reason manufacturers don't is because of the pervasive mindset of: 'Well the battery is cooked, time to buy a new device'. Apple basically still designs their devices for maintenance, but they did it in a way to require specialized equipment.

You're clearly not a device lessee if using the device that long, so why have lessee mindset?

[peterfirefly]

> Realistically batteries currently made reach end of service life around 3 years, previously it was around 2. People using devices heavily (gaming/videoconferencing) or living in hot climates will have shorter service life.

I was perfectly happy with the battery life of my iPhone SE and my iPad Mini 4 far longer than just three years. Those batteries were not "currently made", were they? And it was not like I was a light user of those two devices...