I have a Samsung Galaxy xcover 5. It has a battery that I can pop out and replace with no tools (like in the olden days). I bought an extra battery, and now when I go traveling I just swap batteries if needed. It's better than having to attach it to a battery pack while moving around.
The only problem is that it's full of Samsung garbage, and unrootable
> Is there a technological constraint that causes that?
Yes. We went through all of this when iPhones were first released, and it subsequently turned out people would rather a single battery that lasts longer than buying and carrying around multiple batteries.
An old school replaceable battery means that the battery is smaller because the cells themselves needs a case, so you lose a half mm or so battery size in each dimension, which based on https://www.devicespecifications.com/en/model-battery/c36252... would be 3.5% battery loss without even considering further volume loss due to the new mounting hardware you'd need, then additional structural elements to compensate for the loss of structural rigidity.
In terms of device lifetime: the clips and what not used to keep batteries in place were always the first parts of phones to fail, so reintroducing the highest failure element is going to impact device lief time.
Then there are other aspects to device construction that benefit from being a functionally single solidly connected component: the total device rigidity can be much higher as you aren't losing a bunch of the device chassis, the device can be much more impermeable to water, etc.
Is that still a constraint? Why can't we make clips that don't fail? We made USB connectors reliable with type-c, and cylindrical batteries are reliable.
What if batteries attached via small screws? A little strip on the top could contain the protection electronics and screws, and the strip could be standard across all battery sizes, you could use a too-small one in a pinch and just have some empty space. Add a little flexibility to prevent damage from flapping when dropped due to only being secured at one side so you don't need a screw hole wasting space on the other end.
I think the bigger concern is NFC, batteries seem to get in the way of that.
Clips failing is a product of mechanical wear with minimal physical space available meaning any design is a forced tradeoff of clip lifetime vs battery capacity.
> cylindrical batteries are reliable
Uhhh. Phones and laptops didn't move away from cylindrical cells for fun and excitement. A cylindrical battery uses less than 80% of the available space, and as a byproduct necessarily has <80% of the capacity.
> What if batteries attached via small screws?
Then you're requiring tools to replace the batteries, so you aren't getting easily replaced batteries that seems to be what's on the table.
> A little strip on the top could contain the protection electronics and screws, and the strip could be standard across all battery sizes,
Not sure what you're saying here - it sounds like a single standardized power logic board that every manufacturer uses regardless of battery size? Seems like that would necessitate low end devices have a massively over provisioned control board.
How is it more e-waste? With a glued-in battery you throw away the battery and the whole of the device. With the battery it's just the battery, and that probably is easier to recycle?
Glued in batteries can be replaced, and frequently are, and if nothing else refurbishing companies exist. Refurbishing fails however if there isn't any software support for the hardware, and that's what causes a phone to become e-waste.
The old school swappable batteries had batteries that died in negligible time and had to be discarded regularly, mechanical failure on the mounting bracket/clips to support the battery swap on the other hand send the device to the trash because they can't be fixed.
You get a weaker phone chassis, a less robust device (think IP water ratings), etc.
What kills phones these days is not the battery or screen dying, it's the phone ceasing to get software updates. If you want to reduce e-waste, you should have legislation that requires manufacturers to provide full software support for say 5 years of major OS updates, and another 2-5 years of security updates after that.
HN skews the discussion - the vast majority of people are not buying a new phone a year, nor even every two.
Moreover even when people do replace a phone they tend to pass on the old one, not just throw it in the trash, but again, that's only possible if the phone is still usable.
In addition to extra waste with every battery, and smaller batteries that have a shorter usefully life, replaceable batteries mean a weaker phone that is more prone to breakage.
I didn't have any wear issues with the battery retention on my Motorola Droid A855.
The designers of modern phones were willing to accept a reduction in battery capacity in the name of thinness. I am willing to accept a minor reduction in capacity to get back replaceable batteries.
> I didn't have any wear issues with the battery retention on my Motorola Droid A855.
I've never had any issues with batteries dying in any phone I've had this decade, and those have chemically/physically determine lifetimes. I assume that they have decayed (because physics/chemistry), but that the decay is not enough for me to think anything is wrong. OTOH we know that enough batteries were decaying that apple included software that down clocked older phones to avoid browning out the SoC (an at best questionable "solution").
The issue is not "all things do X" but "X is the most common failure", historically the most common failure were the battery cover/shell clips, and modern "non-removable battery" powered phones simply do not have that failure mode at all.
> The designers of modern phones were willing to accept a reduction in battery capacity in the name of thinness.
Something they were able to do due to the capacity gains from not having the paraphernalia to support hot swappable batteries. I'd also question whether the existing chassis of high end phones has physical space needed to support any kind of latching, or whether that alone necessitates making the phone thicker, before even considering the battery changes.
> I am willing to accept a minor reduction in capacity to get back replaceable batteries.
We know there are people who want trivially replaceable batteries, but we also know that in general most people don't: there were android phones with hand replaceable batteries in the early days, and it turns out that people would rather have a single battery that lasts longer, than potentially needing to carry additional batteries with them solely due to the loss of capacity that came with supporting the ability to swap batteries.
I don’t see how. User replaceable batteries require extra protection around the battery and extra volume for the mechanisms required for taking it in and out.
They’ll never get the difference in lifespan and charge capacity to go to zero, but it might be able to get it low enough that a few more years of hardware improvements will cancel out the difference.
If user replaceable batteries are so much worse, which makes sense, we need to force companies and customers to return their devices once they're done with them. That it makes one each cycle worse doesn't matter if it makes it so the materials only have a single cycle.
The only problem is that it's full of Samsung garbage, and unrootable