[tim333]

I was wondering about that. I lost my iPhone 13 mini the other day, did the find my phone beep thing and got a distant beep from my washing machine which was on wash cycle.

Surprisingly the phone was fine and works fine after a brief rinse under the tap. It must be hard to combine that sort of water resistance with easy user changing.

[mentalgear]

Don't fall for the 'glue cuz of protection' myth - there are and had been water-resistant phones way before Apple started glueing to avoid customers doing their own repairs and them losing out on new sales.

[Alupis]

Which phones? I ask as someone that's had to replace multiple phones after a trip through the washing machine.

Modern phone water resistance is incredible. I've even seen people literally swim with their phones and not even question if it was a bad idea.

[mattkrause]

Fifteen years ago, I had a Garmin GPS (admittedly not a phone, but similar form factor) that survived a week of knocking around the bottom of a raft.

The battery compartment had a rubber gasket and some very tight screws.

[nine_k]

How much of the total volume of the device was the case/housing?

I suppose the glue-everything approach is partly due to the desire of making a device very thin. There's no room for strong, load-bearing outer case, the internals are load-bearing.

[kennywinker]

I suspect manufacturing has something to do with gluing too. Afaik screws are expensive compared with glue, and their assembly involves slow humans or expensive robots.

[PunchyHamster]

You just need well designed rubber gasket. Thickness is impact resistance thing in those devices

[mattkrause]

It's been a long time, but the gasket itself was probably a millimetre or two thick, squeezed extremely tightly by the screws in the battery cover. It ran on AA or AAA batteries, and they took about about half or a third of the depth.

[Groxx]

Honestly I'd expect that to be SIGNIFICANTLY easier to waterproof than a laundry machine. Partly because laundry is sometimes done warm, and warm softens materials (like gaskets), but mostly because laundry has surfactants that considerably reduce surface tension, making it far easier to slip past gaps.

There is a good reason waterproofing claims are specific about the kind of liquid (usually just fresh or salt water, usually without significant movement (i.e. jets, like you get in a shower)).

[wolvoleo]

Samsung still make the rugged Xcover range which has both replaceable batteries and waterproofing. And 3.5mm jacks too.

These devices are mostly sold in enterprise environments (eg field use, factories) and as such get a lot of wear and tear. But they hold up well. They're not ultra rugged but a good compromise. We use tons of them in our factories, we replaced DECT handheld phones with the Xcovers loaded with ms teams. Not an ideal setup (teams for mobile kinda sucks) but at least this way they can easily communicate with people in the offices.

[Barbing]

Dimensions well worth it:

Samsung Galaxy XCover7

  169 x 80.1 x 10.2 mm (6.65 x 3.15 x 0.40 in) 

Apple iPhone 17 Pro

  150 x 71.9 x 8.8 mm (5.91 x 2.83 x 0.35 in)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_Galaxy_Xcover_series

[wolvoleo]

Yes but they just don't make a small model. Same as their consumer midrange line (A36/A57). They did before.

The Xcover 4S was 146.2 x 73.3 x 9.7 mm (5.76 x 2.89 x 0.38 in)

Also, these are business rugged models, unlike the iPhone.

[tencentshill]

Samsung Galaxy S5 was the last one that attempted it. IP67 with a removable back cover and swappable battery.

[Alupis]

Yes, but IP67 is not nearly as water resistant as IP68, which all modern phones are for the most part.

I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if IP68 could be achieved in a phone without glue. There's no clamping mechanism for the backs, they're just press-fit with small clips.

[cannonpr]

From a mechanical perspective ip68 is perfectly achievable mechanically and watches have been achieving it for a long time, however… with what sort of margins for the manufacturer and what sort of cost for the consumer ? Additionally a lot of them require pretty carefully adherence to instructions torques and tolerances to achieve the same waterproof rating. Personally I’d be very happy to have a phone that says, if you swap the battery you might lose the ip68 rating unless you follow the resealing process within tolerances.

[retatop]

My phone (A Furiphone FLX1, which is kindof a variant of a Gigaset GX6) has a removable back with a gasket and is IP68. One of their promotional videos had them change the battery on video then boot the phone and and unlock it underwater

[seba_dos1]

Who cares though? Sealing the battery in makes the device less drop resistant. I somehow managed to avoid water damage to my phones for decades, while none of my phones managed to avoid being dropped in a way that would most likely be fatal to them if their batteries were sealed in - and yet most of them survived to this day.

A phone needs to handle some rain droplets falling on its screen, anything more than that is a gimmick that's not worth the downsides it comes with.

[kube-system]

> A phone needs to handle some rain droplets falling on its screen, anything more than that is a gimmick that's not worth the downsides it comes with.

I submerge my phone as a matter of normal use because I can. I take it into pools and hot tubs, and I clean it in the sink -- I personally wouldn't trade that for a battery door.

[jamiek88]

I’ve done it and seen it many times. People throw their phones to each other in pools and the beach for photos all the time. One of the best things about modern phones is the waterproofing. IP68 level is amazing.

> A phone needs to handle some rain droplets falling on its screen, anything more than that is a gimmick that's not worth the downsides it comes with

It’s actually the opposite - a user replacement battery is a gimmick not worth the downsides.

Apple know this, and they know their customers a lot better than you do.

Your position is niche at best, anachronistic really.

[dmitrygr]

> Who cares though?

a lot of normal people who daily-use their phones near water and even jump into pools with them. I would bet you $100 that if you asked people "replaceable battery of water proofing to the same level you have it now", ~ nobody will puck the former.

[b112]

A phone needs to handle some rain droplets falling on its screen, anything more than that is a gimmick that's not worth the downsides it comes with

Some like to read in the bathtub. Statistics say women prefer the bathtub more than the shower. Therefore your position is sexist.

(Yes, I'm being an asshat)

[cozzyd]

quite a few people put their phones in their back pockets...

[bananamogul]

Maybe as a society it's better for people to have replacement insurance than to have sealed batteries that make phones so disposable. I wonder if we've defined IP68 as a "must have" without considering the alternatives. I'm thinking the percentage of people who actually "use" IP68 over the course of their phone is pretty small...yet that "requirement" drives a huge design choice.

I suspect it's a moot point. Makers have every incentive to drive replacement cycles.

[mustyoshi]

Phones aren't disposable because of the lack of replacement batteries.

I keep my phones for 3-4 years, and the battery life while degraded isn't really an issue.

And that's with recharging it just about every night even if it's not dead.

[kube-system]

Spills and drops were traditionally most common causes of mobile device insurance claims. We've only seen that change for phones because of their IP ratings in recent years.

While manufacturers do have an incentive to get people to buy new phones, many of them with first party insurance do have an incentive not to pay out as many claims.

[bananamogul]

Downvoted for daring to speculate. I love this place.

[VorpalWay]

Nothing stops them from adding a gasket and some screws though.

[numpad0]

Japan only, but KDDI/Kyocera never stopped IP rated phones with removable battery. TORQUE G07(2026) is IP65/68/69 rated with a coin key locked removable back cover.

It also officially support submersion in seawater as well as cleaning with soapy water. Most glued phones support neither.

1: https://k-tai.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/2088291.html

[nmeofthestate]

I googled it - nobody is buying that thing instead of a normal consumer smartphone. It's like a 'Panasonic Toughbook' in phone form.

[numpad0]

It's just a consumer phone sold through KDDI retail channels. Not a B2B thing. And it exists because enough consumers in Japan buy one.

The original claims in this tree is that waterproof phones with removable backs are somehow impossible and glued shut designs are somehow superior. That's a total BS, so I posted a counter example. Torque phones being rugged in addition to being waterproof, unlike iPhones that are just purified-water-proof, has nothing to do with feasibility of one-upping them with removable backs and rubber gaskets.

[wolvoleo]

You forget the Xcover and active lines which do IP68. They stopped making Galaxy active phones but the tabs are still there. The Xcovers too.

[mhandley]

Back when replaceable batteries were the norm, I had two Blackberries that survived going through the washer and dryer.

[Sohcahtoa82]

> I've even seen people literally swim with their phones and not even question if it was a bad idea.

Which is funny to me, because even with an IP68 phone, I get worried if I even splash a little water on it.

[markus92]

Samsung Galaxy S5 is the first one to cross my mind.

[e12e]

Not really comparable perhaps - but I had a Ericsson t18s or similar that went through a full 60C cotton wash cycle (being on at the start of the wash) and was fine after drying off.

The thing is - if the battery had been destroyed, that could have been replaced...

[chupchap]

I was wading through water with a 3310 in my pocket in 2006. Battery was fine and it worked after it was dried. There was a problem with the keyboard though but that was a cheap swap. And this was a phone without any water resistance.

[numpad0]

I've seen rumors that Apple started waterproofing phones after Chinese criminal groups started farming parts on AppleCare by dumping the mainboard into buckets of Shenzhen seawater to deny electronic serial number readout. Your logic board can't be so dead from normal use that not even its PMIC respond to commands if it's waterproof.

I've also had iPhone dying from gasket leaks, the circumferential double sided tape seal dries out after a while.

[tim333]

Re the repairs, I can get the battery swapped on the 13 mini for £49 which isn't that bad. (iSmash, not Apple).

[bitwize]

And they weren't bulky tactical phones that looked like the smartphone equivalent of Humvees?

[tastyfreeze]

Samsung xCover series phones are smaller than flagship phones with a case that many people add to achieve the same durability.

[prism56]

Also important to note that post is 1 datapoint. My "waterproof" phone fell in the bath for about 2 seconds and broke...

[nick49488171]

My brand new Pixel phone several years back, I was so excited it was IP68. Took some photos splashing around in water, not more than a foot or two. It died in minutes.

[iso1631]

Third parties offer new iphone batteries so it's clearly replaceable commercially

[dlcarrier]

Conformal coating is a little more expensive than gasketing, but it works much, much better under pressure. Motorola does this.

[fulafel]

Putting the battery outside the water insulation zone might work for that, it's a sealed pouch anyway.