this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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I have seen countless videos on tiktok of people being against this move, and my question is why? why wouldn't anyone want to be able to extend the life of their expensive devices, why wouldn't people want easily repairable batteries that take less than 5 minutes to swap out?
the only argument ive seen against this is "OOH BUT BUT BUT THE AESTHETICS OF THE PHONE" who cares? function should always be over looks. and if anything it will end the trend of phones being glassy slabs and bring some innovation and new designs to the table. which will be interesting to see.
"Oh but the aesthetics of the phone" proceeds to put phone in case and never see the actual device it's entire lifespan anyway
I owned a case for my iPhone 1.0 and used it for about two days. I kept taking it off to show people the actual phone and then realized, "Why do I have this stupid thing on the phone?"
I have never used a case since then. My phones have been fine because I take care of them. I've had a few dings over the years, but I've never shattered the display or killed one. I like that my phone is sleek and nice.
This is not a vote against user-serviceable batteries. I can't predict whether this will make my phone shittier until I see how it plays out.
What about aesthetics? They used to have removable back covers before and there wasn't any seam visible. This is not even a valid argument imho.
Battery pull was always a great way to unfuck a frozen phone
What do you have against waiting a day or two, not being able to use the phone, for the battery to run out so that you can reboot it? Simply removing the battery seems like to much effort. /s
Honestly that is mostly solved, all have some mechanism to reset it even if is completely frozen. Plus nowadays is not a that common occurrence.
Sure, it doesn't happen often. Those mechanisms are often just some software running in some microcontroller, which can also fail and manifactorers like to cheapen out where possible.
It did happen to me maybe 2 times in >5 years, where not even long pressing power button helps. I was traveling by rail the last time and luckly had my ticket physically.
Phones have a hardware interrupt. Just hold the power button for 30 to 45 seconds.
I had issues with my phone (OP8P) where that didn't helped.
I pressed the power button for minutes and the phone stayed unresponsive, only letting it run out of energy solved it.
They removed physical buttons and access to batteries and now I can't do shit when an app freezes (other than attempting to turn it off, but even then the "turn off?" Can't pop up)
Why do we love do design things like shit so much? It seems that every fist world struggle I ever had was due to bad design
Phones have a hardware interrupt. Just hold the power button for 30 to 45 seconds.
even fairly modern ones are slick, LG G4 (ok not exactly modern) is light and thin and with replacable battery. Gigaset smartphones are quite the bricks but it's actually quite hard to open the batt compartment, that's how well they're fitted.
Aesthetics are the same bogeyman excuse used to justify really any significant change in a phone since IP ratings first came in with. I recall back when USB-C was first showing up in smartphones, there was a time where simultaneously some manufacturers were pushing for the change and others trying to push back on it, with both groups citing aesthetic reasons.
I want a laptop keyboard like ThinkPad T60, and usually the explanation why not is "aesthetics". Because we don't type on keyboards, we bloody look at them all day feeling fancy.
Yeah besides aesthetic preferences change over time and people just grow to prefer what's ever modern. Or to tolerate it and then that becomes the standard. I don't remember people bitching that phones were too thick back in the day. Obviously their primary motivation is planned obsolescence and increased phone sales.
It's incredibly naive to assume there's any other reason. I'm just absolutely no reason for them to stick glue on the battery or the serialize parts, other than to sell more phones and warranty plans.
People are so deep in the corporate drug. They defend anything against their own interests.
I don’t use TikTok and welcome replaceable batteries, but I also still hope for a waterproof iPhone I can take swimming. Probably be harder to do.
There are a few Samsung phones that are water tight and have removable batteries. They just stopped making them since glued in batteries are more profitable.
I do. I still think it's a good idea to have swappable batteries, but I indeed do care about how it looks.
while yes i do agree that i want my device to look nice, its more of a secondary to me,
I also feel like there's ways companies could make new designs that incorporate a removable battery that dont look ugly or old, hell even if the design is not as easy to take the back door off as some of the older phones thats fine, as long as i dont have to disassemble the entire phone just to swap the battery im happy.
TikTok is for the brain dead.
You're smart enough to be on Lemmy, you deserve better.
Well a lot of it is just people that identify culturally with Apple for some reason and we'll basically oppose anything that they lobby against like right to repair. Side loading...etc ..
Also some people have wrongly interpreted this to assume it means batteries have to literally be hot swappable. I kind of wish that was the requirement but I don't think it's that militant. I think it's just requiring that the end user could remove the battery with one screwdriver as opposed to having to find proprietary screwdrivers and use multiple different tools and remove multiple different parts.
The reality is: "oh but Samsung gives me money!"
You can tell them that this regulation does not seem to target phones or tablets.
It doesn't target phones or tablets specifically, but that doesn't mean that they aren't include in "portable devices and appliances". The sentence you quoted simply suggests that there should be additional regulation on top of the currently pending in the future.
Aesthetics are a huge deal for the vast majority of ppl? Personally, im all for repairable phones, and therefore repairable batteries. As in theres no artificial hurdles to replace a battery like limited access to the components needed or silly proprietary tools or loss of functionality.
Hot swappable batteries are a feature, a niche one id say, that will necessarily require tradeoffs. Be it less or worse water/dust resistance, increased thickness, marginally easier to steal as anyone can pull the battery, or aesthetics.
I find hot swap batteries adds no value to me. I don’t want it. Id also wager thats the case for plenty of people. My phone is 2yo and battery still lasts the whole day and then some. External batteries are cheap and universal. Its fine that a repair takes a bit of know how and finesse as long as companies aren’t adding unnecessary hurdles.
If you don't think aesthetics is a valid argument I don't know what to tell you. Just because you don't care about it doesn't mean other people don't, or that it's an invalid opinion.
I don't care hugely about aesthetics, my concern is non-standard form factors. I don't know how a phone like the Z Folds can be made with removable batteries, one of the 2 batteries is literally sandwiched between 2 screens. Implementing this would take it from feeling like a brick to being literally the size of a brick. Hopefully tech improves enough by 2027 to negate my concerns but I don't see how.
It improved enough in the last years to allow foldable smartphones.. it can improve enough by 2027 to make batteries replaceable.
Always possible, and given the choice between a phone without a replaceable battery vs [functionally] the same phone with one I'll always take the latter, but consumer battery tech has moved at a glacial pace compared to screen tech. Samsung plays in both industries though so maybe this'll light a fire for them to speed up battery development.
I guess because they're used to the current state of things where they are replacing their phones every 1-2 years for a newer shinier one anyway. Getting the newest shit regulaerly for them is a central point of using their phone status as personal validation.