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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
just like that, no soldering
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.
"your phone is missing some parts"
I'm sorry what? Did they fall out when I turned it to the side?
I used to do 3rd party repairs, and it's impossible to describe how fucked up some devices were that came to me from other repair places. Missing screws, shields, screws put back int he wrong places and occasionally they had worked with a bad tech that damaged the mainboard.
This makes no sense. How does a working phone "miss a few vitals parts" necessary to replace battery?
The genius bar is pretty infamous for largely being staffed by idiots
Well that's because there all college kids. Apple is all about the perception not the reality.
Apple but more effort into designing the aesthetic of the store than they do training the staff.
They claimed my daughter's phone had a cracked screen and couldn't replace the battery, while showing a picture of the very clearly not cracked screen.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
there's a channel on YouTube, by louis rossman. you'll find plenty of examples of bs answers from apple tech support in order to make you spend a great deal of money.
~~furthermore, nowhere it talks about "vital parts". So yeah, it makes no sense, but for other reasons.~~
Read your comment twice, now I got what you mean. took me a bit, but you're definitely right.
I imagine this is how Apple would justify it - if there are internal screws or shields missing then it's a sign that it has been repaired previously by a 3rd party. It might work fine, but it's not to the original Apple specification.
The Apple store don't want to take responsibility for those repairs so refuse to do further work in case it leaves them with liability.
It's almost like Apple is incredibly anti-consumer, and go out of their way to make buying a new phone more appealing than trying to repair the one you have
You think Apple is bad, let me tell you about a company named John Deere.
Oh mate, I'm aware of John Deere and their "but we can't let the farmers repair their own equipment because the environment"
Yes, because independent repair shops are definitely going to sabotage your tractors to make them worse for the environment if you don't step in and stop them!
It's totally not about establishing a monopoloy to force farmers to pay exorbitant repair charges, or face paying for a whole new tractor entirely when you refuse to do repairs. Not at all!
/s in case it wasn't obvious
It's not a competition, they can both be shit.
I'm honestly glad that Apple products aren't popular in my country.
Thanks for being honest
Apple was shit during the Steve Jobs iphone years, too. Just ask Louis Rossman (used to do mac repair videos on YT, nowadays mostly talks about current computer stuff)
Oh, and the iphone 4 had a "feature" where holding the phone "wrong" made it lose all signal.
How are they only just now coming to that conclusion.
A screen replacement for an iPhone is like 80% of the price of the new phone. They've been doing this for years now. This isn't a great revelation.
I mean, they own an iPhone to begin with, slow on the uptake is part of the aesthetic
Happened to my friend. His son dropped his phone one time too many and facial recognition didn't work from them on.
He took the phone to the service center and was told the true depth sensor was broken and would need to be replaced. Cost was 38000 INR to replace when the entire phone cost around 65000 INR.
He said fuck it and came back. After a couple of weeks, it started working on its own.
Genius scamsters, alright.
And it sells like fresh cookies
This is such a fake and dumb story and largely why 4chan post 2005 is so shallow. These kids don't have the writing skills to write anything remotely convincing
Yeah, everyone knows apple fix things for free, instantly with magic and a blowjob on the side. Apple anti consumer? Never heard of it