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.
Every phone with removable I had had a pretty flimsy back cover that started to crack during the lifetime of the phone. The gaskets started to go or weren’t even there in the first place, so they weren’t even splash proof (so better avoid getting rained on or even get sweaty).
And none of my phones ever required a battery replacement during its life time. My Galaxy S4 mini ram out of support, I flashed it with a custom rom then that stopped being supported (and the hardware really couldn’t deal with later android version). My Fairphone 2 started crashing regularly which ended its life. And my iPhone 6s had a solid 5 year life with no battery issues before I retired it to get a better camera.
So for me requiring every phone to have an easily replaceable battery has pretty much zero upsides but a bunch of potential downsides.
I think you're assuming that the new phones have to be hot swappable. They don't, they just want it to be relatively easy for someone to do with a screwdriver. The phones can look virtually identical to the way they look today with the exception of a couple of non proprietary screws. This would be no more of an obstacle to water resistance than a button.
This is not a requirement that people can hot swap the battery while they're out. It's just getting rid of the egregious obstacles like glue or hiding a battery behind a bunch of other parts or using different types of screws.