this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2023
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Back in the day this was even better:
Original Galaxy S battery was getting weak? Order a new battery from Amazon for 13€. Battery arrives, pop the back of the phone off, pull battery out (just like that, no soldering), push new battery in. Push the back of the phone back on, done.
New battery in and it had more mAh than the original one. Despite overclocking that phone it ran a day longer after the replacement.
There was an even bigger benefit that most people maybe didn't realise at that time or even now, but when the phone fell that energy got distributed into the parts flying apart, which used to reduce the damage the phone took
That's part of what makes the Noikia 3310 so infamously hard to damage from dropping it, even at extreme heights. It's designed to come apart on impact instead of staying in one piece and taking the full brunt of the impact.
Or, better yet, you should be able to hot swap the battery, which means that you can change one half of the battery, then the second half and the phone won’t shut down at all. Foldables make it easier since they already use 2 batteries, 1 for each half. Just wire them up in parallel and the voltage won’t drop when one is taken out for replacement by the user.
Thanks for reminding me of how I used to never worry about battery life cause the moment one got low, I'd just pop a spare out of my backpack and continue on with my day. Batteries were so freaking cheap!
If the EU has its way we might all get this.
One can hope.
People can babble about water proofing, etc. There is no legitimate engineering problem.
The battery could power the device wirelessly at this point.
They could even claim they're saving the environment by not including the battery after a couple release cycles.
Oof i didn't think of them selling the battery separate possibly with an upcharge. monkeys paw curls
You probably also didn't think about them no longer making the battery two years after releasing the phone.
I had that issue with an Otterbox case. Bought it, it was bulky but protected the phone well. After 3 years the rubber tore near the charging port. They offer "lifetime" warranty (5 years). Well, wrote them for a replacement and they simply said nah, they don't have that case any more for a phone this "old". So they didn't honor the warranty and just told me I'm out of luck.
What the hell do I buy an expensive phone case for when they can't even honor a 5 year warranty? That was the last Otterbox for me, Spigen was the choice I went with afterwards. Can't go wrong with a 10 buck phone case, I don't care if it breaks in a few years.
When it comes to phones every manufacturer just gives you the finger if it's 3+ years old it seems.
Third party has always been the solution to this.
Yeah but then you have to wade through a million crappy Chinese products and be thankful when they merely don't hold a charge (as opposed to exploding).
I've been through this back when batteries were replaceable, decent 3rd-party were not easy to find. Best you could hope for was that the original manufacturer kept making them. Nokia went as far as making one battery model work with multiple phone models.
Honest question, are phone batteries recycleable? Because if there's going to be a ton of them being made I have to wonder what's worst for the environment, replacing phones or replacing batteries.
I'm not sure if you're being serious but replacing a phone is the same as replacing a battery, but worse for both consumer and environment. Of course you'd want to do some research before purchasing the first thing that crosses your path, but both me and my wife have done this before many times with very good results.
Lol this post reads like grandma telling her kids about how phones were in her day!
"When I was young, we'd just pop the back off the phone and replace the battery ourselves."
"Yea yea grandma. Let's get you to bed."
New Fairphones still have that feature.
But those were also made with repair in mind.
You can literally replace your usb-c port for 15€ with original parts by yourself, by spending 15 minutes with a screwdriver.
And the parts of a Fairphone 2 are still available, nearly 8 years after it launched.
There's never any soldering involved when replacing batteries tho?
But customers want water-proof devices! Therefore we cannot make batteries replacable, it's not what the market wants you know /s
Just buy a Fairphone end enjoy the exact same thing
Fairphone sounds great but currently has a poor price to performance ratio
You pay extra because the materials were sourced through moral means and not sweatshops.
I for one like that feature.
I only stick to my Note 9 (peak Samsung) because of stylus support that no one else offers. When Fairphone stars offering as awesome stylus support as Samsung does, I'm moving immediately.
The batteries are not soldered even in the newest Samsung phones. Everything you'd want to replace is modular. Not sure about Apple.
Also not soldered on any iPhone but for sure stuck behind several layers of adhesive.