[thaumasiotes]

> Batteries have been used as part of planned obsol[esc]ence for too long and a whole small business industry of replacing phone batteries has appeared because of it.

Note that early phones had replaceable batteries and it was later phones that dropped that feature. The idea wasn't that making the phone impossible to open would compel people to replace their phone faster; it was that given that people didn't keep their phones long enough to wear out the battery, there was no need to make the battery accessible.

[darkwater]

That was true 15-20 years ago. Nowadays changing the phone is basically because:

1) battery dying / not lasting enough

2) shattered glasses whose replacement costs 35-40% of the cost of the phone new (for budget/mid-range phones, not everybody has iPhones)

distant 3rd) not enough free internal storage

[yangm97]

Unrelated note but, cheap/midrange phones are a scam, you almost always get better value purchasing a second hand premium one.

[aembleton]

How is buying a midrange phone new a scam? Just because a second hand premium one is better value (assuming you don't place any value on being brand new). You buy it knowing full well that it isn't a premium device but most people don't need a premium device.

Are non-premium new cars a scam too?

[garbagewoman]

How is it not a scam?

[aembleton]

It is clear what you are buying

[NoGravitas]

Eh, I don't find my Pixel 8 to be notably better in any way that I notice or care about than the Moto G that it replaced, except for the fact that it runs GrapheneOS.

[dathinab]

also camera just not being satisfying enough anymore is a big deal

sure on highest end phones you have very good cameras since a long time by now, but even there they find improvements here and there (e.g. zoom, low light pictures, even better image stabilization)

but middle to lower end phones are still have major improvements in every generation of a certain brand/line/price category. And you might be satisfied with a "acceptable" quality camera, until everyone around you has way nicer photos, or you now have a reason to make photes you didn't had in the past, or you get older and your hands a bit unsteady etc.

[darkwater]

TBH we are in the terrain of diminishing returns also for those phones and cameras, IMO.

[infecto]

Batteries are generally a cheap fix from third party stores. If you wanted to keep the phone why not spend the small dollars and just replace the battery?

[darkwater]

Because you need to bring it to a shop, sometimes they may keep it for more times, sometimes if they are not that honest they will find something else and factory reset it and a long etc. If it's something one can do at home by one self as an expected and supported by the vendor operation, why not? You can still bring it to a store if you don't feel like crafty enough to do it.

[rootusrootus]

Indeed, even directly from Apple a new battery is a whole lot less expensive than getting another phone.

[hgoel]

Upgrade cycles have slowed down in recent years, the improvements are relatively incremental nowadays. Screens, durability, processors, storage sizes, cameras, even battery life are okay-ish and aren't improving quickly enough to justify the same upgrade rate. Foldables are basically the only big innovation in recent years, but are still a little too fragile and expensive.

This is also reflected in the increasing support durations from major manufacturers.

[stavros]

This was true back when Moore's law was the driver of obsolescence. You bought a new phone every year simply because next year's phone was twice as fast.

Now that this doesn't happen, the driver of obsolescence is the battery, which is much less defensible because you can swap it much more easily than "the whole internals of the phone".

[haritha-j]

This might be partially true, but making them inacessible is still a great way approach to planned obsolescence and there's no way this was not part of the motivation. The fact that an entire industry exists to provide replacement batteries is proof of this, as is the fact that Apple offers a £100 battery replacement. They also replace the batteries of all refurbished models they sell, which again wouldn't be necessary if battery life wasn't a concern over the useful life of a phone.

Secondly, what you said may have been true in the past, when smartphones were rapidly evolving and upgrade cycles were short, but people are holding on to their devices for longer now, so its possible its becoming a problem again.

[detourdog]

Batteries on early cell phones needed to be replaced multiple times a day. I remember talk time of like 10 minutes on my motorola StarTec.

[Aachen]

1996, for anyone else wondering

Not sure how comparable that is when considering that the devices are also commonly required as ticket on public transport with no offline fallback (going so far as to include animations on the screen so you can't send a screenshot to a friend or print it out -- no, I have no idea why they think you can't send a video to a friend). Having 10 minutes of use time is simply not on the table, and GP was probably not talking about that class of phones (pre-"smart" phone) in the first place

[detourdog]

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/express-cards-with-...

[Aachen]

ok? If it dies after 10 minutes and then lets you use a select number of compatible smartcards for another 5, that's not quite the level I think people are talking about here

[detourdog]

If running out of power is super critical carrying a power pack is just as simple as replacement battery. It also more generally useful as it can charge lots devices other then phones.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/external-battery-packs/usb-c-po...

[m-schuetz]

Nowadays batteries seem to be doing pretty good, though. I've got a galax s20 fe, and the battery is still fine after 5 years.

[Aachen]

Nice! As a heads up, don't be tempted to replace the battery via a third party if the Samsung battery ever stops meeting expectations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834810