[john01dav]

Such phones with removable batteries are incredibly rare, such that finding one is quite likely to fail if you have any other concerns at all.

If a truly well made phone was common and made by many people, then there'd be much less argument for this regulation.

[chroma]

Phones with removable batteries are rare because only a small fraction of people want phones with removable batteries. Phone manufacturers also dislike removable batteries because customers buy cheap 3rd party batteries and complain when these batteries perform poorly or malfunction, sometimes by exploding. And then the headline is, “Phone made by company X explodes.” not, “Cheap battery explodes.” Removable batteries also introduce new failure modes like contacts degrading, causing phones to power off unexpectedly when jostled or flexed in certain ways. That increases the risk of a recall and bad PR.

I and millions of others want a phone that is smaller than the current offerings. Heck, my 13 mini is too big for my tastes. But I don’t think that means the government should force phone manufacturers to make smaller phones. So too for features like removable batteries, physical keyboards, or headphone jacks.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

What do you mean by "rare"? You just click "order". It's not like you have to go on the quest for the lost arc or anything like that. They are uncommon in the sense that people don't actually get them, but that's not because of a lack of availability. People do not want them.

[ToValueFunfetti]

They mean the models are rare, not the devices. The claim is if you want feature X + removable battery, it's unlikely that you will find it. People's willingness to forgo the battery for feature X therefore doesn't tell you if people care about removable batteries in an absolute sense, just that they care relatively less than they do about feature X.

You could argue that the market already reflects people's desires via, eg., Apple's market research. They could argue that democracy in the EU also reflects people's desires.

[umanwizard]

They're rare because outside of the tiny minority of people who complain loudly on HN, nobody cares about this feature.