Comment by pastel8739

21 hours ago

Citation needed. It seems pretty clear that a mechanism to allow a user to access a battery will increase complexity, making all the other properties harder to achieve.

You're asking for proof that effective waterproof phones with removable batteries exist?

https://m.gsmarena.com/results.php3?chkRemovableBattery=sele...

  • You're proving the point.

    1) iPhones for example are ip68 rated while those are just ipx8/9

    2) Do you want to be limited to the universe of those search results? Do you want to buy a Sony Xperia?

    You can't make batteries directly replaceable at the same quality and price. There are tradeoffs. Obviously waterproof non-embedded batteries exist. Just like you could make a removable battery the same slimness as embedded. With massive tradeoffs. It's capacity will be terrible. No one is surprised a removable battery can be waterproof but the point is there are tradeoffs.

    • I don't see those options in the search results either way

      In any case we heard the same sort of rationalization for getting rid of the headphone jack, so color me extremely skeptical-- yes of course there's going to be trade-offs, but what a coincidence that headphone jacks, replaceable batteries, SD card slots have all gone by the wayside, which just so happens to allow for upselling Bluetooth and cloud storage

  • No, the list was "Cheaper, higher battery capacity, water proof, smaller, stronger". I don't think it's all that controversial to say that there are engineering tradeoffs to be made here. You can make a waterproof phone with a removable battery, but you can't make a waterproof phone with a removable battery that is as good or better than an iPhone in every other respect too. If you could, iPhones would already have removable batteries.

    • > If you could, iPhones would already have removable batteries.

      A crazy take since apple has very clearly made anti-consumer moves in the past.

      If having a baked in battery caused there to be 1% more iphones sales which would they choose.

      You were likely nodding along when Jobs was out there telling people they were holding the phone wrong.

      5 replies →

  • Oh yes, the famous Galaxy XCover 7 Pro. People are camping out in the rain waiting for their release because replaceable batteries are under such high demand.

    • So we're moving the goalposts from "these features can coexist" to "such a phone has to be popular"? Why don't you skip to the end and tell me where they're going to end up?

      If phones are not for sale with features, how does that allow drawing any conclusion about popularity? I've yet to meet a single person who says, "I sure am glad I can't use fingerprint unlock on my iPhone anymore", but obviously it's not worth leaving the entire ecosystem

      Recall also that building Android phones barely makes any money, so it's not exactly a business teeming with disruption

It'll increase the size of the case by a small amount but a battery cell is a battery cell... Rip open an old device and you'll see.