As far as I understand, Europe will push for removable batteries by 2027.. So we might actually get back to those glory days.
Might is the key word. I honestly doubt it will be like in the old days where you just pop the lid and put a new one. EU requires replaceable battery by the end user but it doesn't state how simply that can be done. Am expecting to see something like few screws at the bottom of the phone and stuff like that. But even that will be awesome.
People misunderstand this rule.
It's not about popping batteries out, but instead about making them more easily replaceable (so no gluing them in place kinda thing)
But even then it only applies if the battery degrades by more than a certain amount over the course of 2 years. If it doesn't, or if it's over a certain capacity, they don't need to do anything different.
Yeah, the spirit of the idea is much better than it's implementation
I still won't buy a phone without a microSD slot.
GET OFF MY LAWN!
What phones even still do? Sonys? Low end Samsungs? Fairphone?
Why
Cheap, easily expandable expandable memory
I like that all of my media is on a removable card I can pop in any device I want and it doesn't interfere with system files and apps. Makes the initial setup of a new device much easier, not to mention backing it up to my hard drive (
cp -r * /media/user/whatever_diskand I'm done).What a dumb question
28 net downvotes so far for asking “why”. I think Lemmy is becoming more toxic than Reddit was.
That's actually making a comeback because the EU got pissed.
My phone's brand new and it has a removable battery, not even in the EU
I think it is because the EU listened to the people. This is what you get when elected representatives are not bankrolled by big business, and are allowed to enact legislation that doesn't only benefit one side.
The EU has politicians that manage to legislate against the interests of gigantic tech corporations because European tech corporations are far smaller, and thus have much less leverage. Even if the US political system was significantly less corrupt, they'd probably still have issues to legislate against them.
Coz batteries degrade over time, and this way you’re either forced to buy a new phone, or have to pay to have the battery replaced
It's also 10x easier to achieve IP67 water resistance with the battery sealed off. Having a removable battery would require more engineering contrary to shareholders' wishes.
This also contributes to the bulk of the device. IIRC, at the time things shifted to sealed designs, Apple and others were competing to make phones as thin, wide, and tall as possible. But that's not really an excuse; we can probably do better nowadays.
No headphone jack
No memory card slot
No ir blasterWhy are they making it a useless device??
My phone is a 2021 model and still has a 3.5mm jack and a memory card slot.
I love that my pixel 4a has a headphone jack. I'm overdue for an upgrade but I know I'm going to lose my fingerprint sensor and jack. Yeah it's a security risk but this phone still works and performs well. I hate stupid planned obsolescence. I wished tech was more about stability and long life. But I guess that doesn't make enough billions in revenue.
I'm finding plenty use in my phone without those things.
I still keep my old phone on my desk and put it in my bag because is has weeklong battery when i dont use it and it has an ir blaster.
IR blasters are fine, so few TVs even use them now. Storage, eh, 512 is default these days and I'm only using 25% of that (assuming you meant storage and not memory).
Headphone jacks and replaceable batteries are huge though. I'm still pissed about that.
i haven’t used wired headphones since a few years before jacks went away, and i have never missed that effing cable
To sell you more phones. Duh.
OP up in here learning about late-stage capitalism like 😲
They used to have microSD..
Who needs a micro SD when you can pay a subscription cloud service for the rest of your life???? - morons responding to me every time I lament the need for an SD card
Not to mention if your screen gets fucked you can remove the card and have all your photos / movies instantly
Why not both! I love SD but its also pretty handy I can access photos from my PC without needing any further action (I refer mostly to OneDrive right now) SD still rules tho.
They still do. My 2021 model phone has dual SIM, with one of the slots being enabled for either a SIM card or a SD card.
Many if not most new models don't have them though
Phones that use those are still relatively easy to find tho.
The only valid reason is waterproofing. If the phone isn't waterproof, it's only to limit repairability... Also one factor in that was, I believe, the thinness war, but that's pretty much over now as they all got to the practical limit I guess.
Unfortunately we still see too many people push the "but my IP rating" narrative without realising that engineers are perfectly able to design gaskets for all kinds of applications.
Some phones with removable batteries even had them and were (to a certain degree) waterproof.
The ONLY reason phones are no longer servicable is profits. Why extend a product's lifespan if you can just frustrate the consumer to the point where they will just buy another one?
The Galaxy S5 was IP67 waterproof and had a removable battery and a headphone jack.
I'm not even sure thinness was something consumers ever would have demanded (at the sacrifice of battery life) if the mfrs hadn't pushed it as a selling point.
In the flipphone days I didn't know many people who didn't have at least one spare battery, so they could swap to a fresh one on the go without having to charge, or bought extra thick batteries with higher capacity, extending the back of the phone.
Then when smartphones had removable batteries, lots of people still did those things. And all during that time I remember many reviewers and consumers reacting to many of the "thinness" claims with "I'd really like a bigger battery instead."
I also remember it being proven that apple's removal of the headphone jack impacted neither waterproofing nor thinness, despite their claims. (But then of course one by one others started following suit.)
I think it's better for mfrs and that's the only reason. It saves them money on mfr, or gets phones tossed in the bin faster. Possibly both.
I'd still take 2 or 3 more mm of thickness for an amazing battery.
I’m not even sure thinness was something consumers ever would have demanded
I am entirely convinced that most "features" on modern devices are not "something consumers would have demanded". Sure, different lenses is nice if you're a hobbyist photographer, but do most people really need more than a single back-facing camera? Do most people want to have wireless earbuds at the cost of not having a headphone jack? Do most people want glass backs and other such gimmicks that make their device more fragile? I've been told for decades that the modern economic system is great because competition forces manufacturers to prioritize what is best for the consumers. But in the context of smartphones, it feels like the roles are completely reversed. Manufacturers come up with some bullshit and then mount psy-ops (ad campaigns, online astroturfing) to convince the population that it's worth their money
About thinness: I also like my phones bendy and snappy (iPhone 6), as well as exploding batteries (Galaxy Note 7 or 10, I don't remember the exact model tbh).
Or you have to 'hold it right' (OG iPhone).
These were all huge issues that could be fixed without sacrificing the thinness.
Thinness shouldn't be used as an excuse for otherwise shitty phones, since it's clearly a non-sequitur.
Well, there's another change that made it more viable - back then people had spare batteries cause they needed them. Now most devices will last a full day of normal use, so the 'average user' doesn't care much about swapping batteries.
My gripe was physical keyboards. Until they basically disappeared entirely, I tried to buy exclusively devices with physical keyboards. I liked my T-Mobile Sidekick except it could stand to be thinner.
I'm not even sure thinness was something consumers ever would have demanded
Something popular back in the removable battery days was to replace them with thicker extended capacity batteries. So no, battery life was more important to a lot of comsumers.
My casio watch is waterproof. [100M Water Resistant] And it has a user replacable battery. With a gasket inside and cool looking screws. (yes, I consider screws to be cool) Also, it costs less than $20
You can have ip68 removable battery phones. Check out samsung xcover
You can, but every hardware feature you add takes physical space in the phone. Making a phone waterproof requires adding stuff to the phone, which takes away space for other things. Usually battery size ends up being one of the things that takes a hit. You want a phone that's waterproof and has a removable battery? Then the battery size gets reduced by X%, or some other features people care about get dropped.
Why do you think my old ass bought a fair phone
Same here
They say stuff like repairability, durability, not using child slavery, yada yada not important
the easily replaceable battery is what really caught my eye and brought me to the yard!
I wouldn't...
You know what, never mind. Don't sell past sold lmao
I kinda hate the fact they took of the headphone jack. Conveniently, they started selling their own buds with that launch
I miss that too. The perfect phone doesn't exist.
If you don't mind me asking, what country are you in?
I know murena sells in the US, but I've always avoided it because it seems like buying parts is still going to be a PITA, and what's the point of a repairable phone if you can't get parts?
Take away user choice, use really bad excuses like water proofing and space saving, and you can be sure consumers will iteratively buy more frequently and spend more for cloud services.
Bye battery Bye bye headphone jack Bye bye user expandable storage.
Capitalism has steered us to this as the preferable product.
It really sucks that they charge so much money for the storage difference. Why are the pricing tiers based on the storage? It's so strange.
Anyways, I recall having a lot of issues with external storage in the past. Like Android just didn't integrate that shit properly. It was kinda painful having the phone data and photos in separate places. Don't remember specifics, I just know I constantly wished they were a single location.
It's fine now, external storage. Been that way for 5 years or so. Works as any computer does.
I blame Apple. They slowly got rid of features and still sold a shit ton of phones. This is obviously more profitable so other companies followed.
So you're telling me that capitalism works, and that it's working as intended.
I agree that this is a result of capitalism. But I would surmise that this is exactly the standard by which capitalism is based. Reduce complexity, reduce operating costs. That generally means that whatever you're making is going to be generic with no customizability and no ability to be repaired or changed by the end user. Complete vertical integration with optimizations in productivity, materials cost, and other operating expenses, all while charging "as much as the market will bear"
Thank you for defining capitalism.
I ended up buying a Motorola razr because at least the fucking thing fits in my pocket for once. That's honestly the biggest tangible benefit I've gotten out of a phone purchase in a while.
Each iteration of phone seems more like something I don't want to even be involved with. Maybe I'll just buy a light phone next time.
A lot of anti-user design choices were first introduced by the iPhone. As someone who has owned iPhones since the iPhone 3G, I blame myself.
My Fairphone 3 still has a removable battery. I replaced the battery myself last year. It took me 10 seconds once it arrived.
All Fairphones, not just the 3, of course.
Awesome! Now plug in a set of wired headphones without using a dongle. Oh, wait...
Fairphone 3 still has the headphone jack, it was removed with Fairphone 4. Still worth it because you can swap out any component with a single screw driver within minutes and you get years of updates. Also while not perfect, they make an effort to source their materials as ethically as possible and pay the factory workers a living wage.
You really still use wired headphones? I can't remember the last time I used mine. My phone and laptop still have the jack but I hate them. Catch on everything, having to keep the device by me at all times (which I don't always have pockets for), God forbid I forget I have em in and go to move around, get em yanked out of my ears or send the phone flying. I mean I get it if the wireless ones die, but even then, I'd rather wait for them to charge.
Integrating the battery saves a small amount of space and weight. That makes the phone very slightly thinner and lighter, which is what most people seem to prefer. Same with not having expandable memory. IMO it's a bad tradeoff, but I still miss physical keyboards.
The stupid part is that they will buy phone cause it's 0.1mm thinner and then slap on 3mm phone case on top.
Don’t think anyone has actually bought a phone for the thinness since like, 2016, but also a case isn’t a decision of thinness. The people who use their phones without a case continue to do so because they like the look and feel, and those who use a case for protection will want it regardless of whether the phone is 5mm thicker.
I've got an Otterbox Defender on my phone. It's the only reason my phone is still operational.
I still want a user-replaceable battery though.
I never met anyone that said they wanted a thinner lighter phone.
I've met tons of people that would take a half inch thick brick of a phone if it came with an equally big battery that could last days between charges.
Go on Amazon and search for a "outdoors phone". I have one that is about that size and weighs a lot, but I can go a week between charges easily. I can play games with my headphones for 8 hours straight without needing to charge.
But ... The battery is not replaceable.
I want a thinner and lighter phone!
But you haven't met me.
That's genuinely one of the things people look for; iPhones are incredibly dense designs, in a very sleek, smooth, light package, and people love them. A very basic phone case and a screen saver adds nearly half the OE thickness of the phone to the package, and look how many people forgo those, even on a phone that's $1500. If I added that much thickness to a phone that started out at .5" thick, it would end up feeling like I was carrying a brick on my pocket all the time.
I would still take the brick with replaceable battery though.
Computers were not stopping you from running any software you want, until they got small enough for people to forget they are still computers.
Ah yes, the software battery.
Just a similar thing that also could be for this meme, not a comment to the situation with batteries 😆 .
"There removable, see all you need is 7 specialized tools!"
"We cant have users replacing there own batterys what if they puntchure or swallow the battery?"
"Making the battery removable would make the phone more bulky and limits innovation"
-Companys BS reasons
Apple did it. The rest followed.
More like, "what if it cuts our incessant growth in sales?!"
Some still do. I just started working at Walmart, and they give you a Samsung phone to do your job. You use the camera for scanning tags, shelving, check item status, and a bunch of other shit. It's a modern phone, with USB c, fingerprint sensor in the power button, android 13, stupid hole-punch camera, etc. And when I pulled off the otterbox case they gave me with it, I found that the back pulls off and the battery pops out, like all of my phones used to do back in the day. I assume that's so they can more easily keep these phones in use, as they can pull out a failing battery and pop a new one in without having to send the phone sent off for servicing.
Likely being provided to a business rather than a consumer means that there's incentive to make a product with what the purchaser wants.
This is so the spyware can't be disabled via battery removal
I remember when my mom had a phone with a removable battery, she would drop it a lot and it would separate into a gazillion components but it wouldn't break. I miss the days
I feel like the parts separating had a lot to do with saving the phone as a whole. It must be absorbing and dissipating some of that energy from the fall rather than all that energy being directed into the phone when it stays together.
I remember my old phones would fly apart from a fall but they'd never suffer any meaningful damage.
Recently switched from a certain predatory fruity phone to a phone from a certain Dutch manufacturer that has removable battery and replaceable parts. At some point, it got water damaged, and the charging circuit stopped working. While I'm waiting for the replacement part to arrive, I can continue using it by charging the battery with a bench power supply. Feels good man!
But the biggest reason for non removable battery is protection from water damage soo.....
Come on, give us a name. I need to replace my phone and something repairable appeals.
Probably the fairphone
Planned obsolescence
EU, I belive in you!
The EU, despite (valid) criticisms and pravacy mis-steps, is right now the only large, powerful organization fighting for consumer rights. I wish I, as an American, could support them, because the laws the EU is passing benefit me as well.
Go EU, indeed!
Fairphone is doing it
Did they solve their quality problems in the newest iterations? I had a 2 and a 3, and boy were those pieces of crap. Not the 3 I had to replace so many modules over its life span of 5 years that it kind of defeat the purpose, as it probably was a total of electronics enough for three phones. And it had so many weird bugs which took months to fix (the mic stopping to work after using a certain app, the not working auto brightness, just to name the annoying ones).
I really, really like the idea behind the Fairphone, but I just could not see past the crappiness of the phone (especially at their price point).
Is fairphone compatible in the US? Or would another phone work with US carriers?
Couldn't tell, I'm from Europe
I know the newest one isn't available in the US, not sure about compatibility
I suspect that this was considered a feature when it was fist envisioned and technology progressed so quickly that you needed a new phone each year just to use available services. In that light, it didn't matter if your battery only lasted 2 years.
Now that you can run your cell phone easily for 5 - 7 years, batteries are important again. Thank you EU for requiring replaceable ones in the future, you may have helped the entire world.
The craziest part to me is that it wasn't until they started forcing them to be stuck inside phones all the time that they started exploding. And yet the FTC still doesn't give a shit
I mean it's not that crazy. If they're removable, you need to design the batteries themselves to be a bit more rugged and harder to puncture.
I.e. cladding the cells in a relatively thick metal casing rather than a thin pouch
It didn't have a removable battery, but I used to use an older Asus Zenfone 3 ZE552KL that really kicked arse.
It had cards slots, a headphone jack, a built in radio that used wired headphones for signal, and the damned thing was as reasonably waterproof as I could imagine a smartphone to be. It's camera was pretty great for the price, too.
Well, one day it fell very hard on a sharp rock, and the screen shattered. The crack made a hole a few milimeteres deep, and it was about a centimetre wide. It might not sound like much, but the crack in the screen was very much there. My happy arse managed to then have it fall out of my pocket and right into the flush of a high-powered toilet.
I left it to dry for one day, and it worked almost like new again. It still powers up today, but the since security updates stopped years ago, i don't use it anymore. IIRC, it wasn't too expensive, but I forget if there was a sale going on at the time.
I hope I can find another phone like that around that general price point one day. I can dream haha.
What the fuck is a high powered toilet? I want one of those!
i think he means those like commercial/hospital/doctor office toilets that, when they autoflush and you are still on the seat, feel like you are going to have your insides sucked out by the full concentrated force of a galactic core black hole.
for what? high powered diarrhea?
Mine still does. 2 Sim slots and a SD slot. Not one of those Sim/sd combo ports.
Fp 3?
EU to the rescue
Having worked in the industry at that time, there were 2 main reasons they did it like that
- batteries were quite unreliable and failed often
- mfgrs couldn't afford to have one year warranties and send out field replacement units for a battery
And the reasons they stopped doing it..
- batteries got better
- battery contact failure was higher than battery failure.
- replaceable batteries compromise waterproofing
I think they should still be replacible, but they should have better connectors that are sealed off from the rest of the device. It costs a tiny bit more to do that engineering though.
battery contact failure was higher than battery failure.
quite a feat, only doable if you try to make it fail
replaceable batteries compromise waterproofing
this is in no way true, and is a bold face industry lie. There is no shortage of water PROOF and not just resistant electronic equipment that feature replaceable batteries.
the reason replaceable batteries were removed is entirely due to planned obsolescence.
mfgrs
Muthafuggrs? Or what's that supposed to be?
Basically. Manufacturers
AlL tHe bEtTeR tO wAtErPrOoF yOu WiTh, My DeAr
More and more they are trying to turn everything into a black box. I am assuming it is more convenient and profitable for them.
A couple of years ago I got fed up with replacing phones because the battery wouldn't hold a charge, so I bought a new-in-box, then-six-year-old LG V20. It has some problems, chiefly bizarrely poor reception, but by God it has a removable battery and a headphone jack! I was going to replace it with the Fairphone when that came to the USA but when I saw how expensive the Fairphone was, I decided to stick with the V20.
(The funny thing is that by the time I need to replace the battery, I probably won't be able to buy one anymore.)
With early smart phones generation there was basically a race to thinner smartphones. Replaceable batteries need a protective shell so it wouldn’t get damaged easily when idiots fumble with it when they replace the battery. But the protective shell takes up space. So the first thing they did to make phones thinner was to remove the replaceable battery and just use a battery without a protective shell. Also Apple proofed that most people don’t care so all the Android phone makers followed suit.
Grandma is right on this one!
It was stopped because Apple wanted you to deal with their service technicians in their stores using their parts directly. They make zero dollars if you replace your spicy pillow with a 3rd party amazon battery.
Water resistance.
That's what they want you to believe
I used to have a water resistant Samsung Galaxy with a removable battery. The just put a seal on the battery cover.
I just don't get this. I've had to get new phones twice now because the battery life got bad enough that my phone wouldn't last even a single day on a charge, but I've never even gotten close to dropping my phone in water. Are people that clumsy that they loosely hold their phone when they're in the bathroom or on a boat? It's the same with dropping it in general - I've dropped a phone twice since getting my first smartphone in 2010, and both times it was luckily onto carpet. Yeah, survivability is nice, but it's trumped by everyday usability.
Smartphones will have removable batteries(at least i hope so)
because of EU laws, they will, but will probably still be hard to replace
It's a pain. I love replaceable batteries too. It took me hours to change mine on my pixel. But why is it hard to get out: phones are slimmer and processor more. So you need to get the battery wedged in there and properly thermally insulated. It's a lot harder to do that while also making it easily field replaceable
Well i wont argue about knowledge with Thoth, i will add to this that they want you to replace your phone instead of fixing it
For context
Thoth, Lord of Wisdom
Biography Not even the oldest or wisest of the gods knows Thoth’s true origin. Thoth can not remember the earlier part of his existence. He knows that he was very different and there is something in the back of his mind, but he just can’t remember. Thoth symbolizes wisdom, knowledge, and invention. Yet, despite his learning and knowledge, there is a bit of larceny in his heart, for he admires cunning, deception and people who use their wits and a quick tongue. Thus, he is the patron of magic, and of all fast speaking, thieving, quick-witted creatures. Thoth himself is a great orator, scholar, and author of many books about magic and history. Books about magic circles, symbols, wards, magic spells, a study of alchemy, an alchemy recipe book, and many others are among his credits. He writes all of his books in a secret code (hieroglyph and runes), although a few have been stolen and translated. Legend attributes Thoth as the inventor of rune magic, the runic alphabet, Diabolism and wards, pyramid magic, and all the sciences. He is cursed with eternal curiosity and cannot remember the days of his youth. Thoth is one of the few beings who has a complete knowledge of rune magic and it is he who has constructed many of the greatest rune weapons in the possession of the gods of Ma’ip, both good and evil. He is constantly experimenting, exploring or investigating something. Just about any magic device or component, herb, potion, magic component and the exotic are available to Thoth. He has dozens of magic wands, staves, enchanted cauldrons, manacles, amulets, books, and many other things of magic in his massive personal collection. Thoth also has a small zoo, and books and artifacts from dozens of different civilizations.
(Palladium Rifts)
Hurtful
I use an
HTCTCL vive. I can text, place phone calls, and barely take a picture, but god damn it I can replace the battery.Meh that's easy. Thin, glasslike, uniform exterior aesthetic.
Used to?
This message was send from a Fairphone
This format, man... It's hard. I fear its potential. It threatens me.
It wasn't all that useful.
Instead of the battery dying and you throwing your phone away, it just happened that the battery died, and you searched for a compatible one, that either didn't exist or cost 70% of the price of a new phone, so you threw your phone away.
Now, if you want to talk about standard battery sizes, I'm listening.
As someone who frequently changed their phone batteries and bought spares you are talking out your whole ass about their lack of availability and price, you just made up some shit then justified your argument with your made up shit.
It was extremely useful when it was more common than non-replaceable batteries. Most of the time, you could find a better battery than the stock one at a cheaper price.
Lemmy: "I want my removable batteries and headphones jacks!"
Manufacturers: "Are you willing to pay more because nobody else wants that and there'd be extra engineering costs to keep it to spec on things like water resistance?"
Lemmy: >:[ proceedes to buy it anyways and complain about it being so much bigger than other phones "I don't have giant hands!"
What pisses me off is the Note 4 had these things, plus an IR blaster, and was large for the time but reasonably so. 10 fucking years ago.
Phones have only lost features and repairability since. While the prices have gone up.
But stonks go up so win win /s
Lemmy users want something -> some money whre decides that strawmans must be applied to fix their sht Perspektive of the world (news flash phones don't habe to be so enourmus and Thema beging a tad bit thicker is structurally beneficial and not gonna annoy anyone except for people with unusable small pockets that can'tfitt keys)
Yeah people act outside of their own self interest all the time, it's why things get regulated in the first place and one of the reasons the invisible hand of the market is a myth.
