[virtualritz]

Not sure what replacable has to do with thickness.

When I bought my first smartpone, a Moto G (1st gen) it was as flat as any phone most people carried around at the time (2014, I think). And the battery was replaceable.

I think also Samsung phones had replaceable batteries then. And this was the case for a few years after. Until it wasn't.

Devices didn't suddenly get thin when batteries were glued in. Why would they?

[petterroea]

The Samsung S5 was very thin. Too thin imo. And it had a replaceable battery

[stodor89]

My grandma is still daily driving my ancient Galaxy S5 Neo. When someone says thinness is opposed to removable battery, or water resistance, or headphone jack, or durability, or SD card... I always think of it.

[gnabgib]

I'm not sure about too thin (although I switched to the qi-charging back after a year), the replacements /where/ thinner.. but lost the IR blaster, replaceable battery, eventually μSD housing, eventually headphone jack.

[petterroea]

I don't know, it just felt flimsy. But in almost a "flimsy meaning it can handle a beating" way. It sure did.

I did ruin the water protection on mine pretty quickly though, because the back panel was made of plastic and was... flimsy. It basically became a fidget toy.

When thinking of how flagship phone producers are going to keep making sexy phones that also keep their watertightness, my biggest worry is repeated stress from any removable component becoming a fidget toy

[jpollock]

A replaceable battery needs protection. One in the device gets protection from the device.

[virtualritz]

The replaceable battery is still inside the case. How is it more protected because "glue"?

I also replaced glued batteries in phones following ifixit instructions a few times (using a hair dryer/heat gun).

They didn't have any less or more "protection" than the replaceable ones. They looked exactly the same apart from the connectors ofc.

Please substantiate your claim. Until then I call it BS.