Comment by bigfishrunning
11 hours ago
Because people will buy that phone and keep it much longer. When phones had replaceable batteries, they needed replaced after a couple of years because they were terrible. I'm now on a several year old pixel phone that I'm happy with, but eventually the battery will wear out and I'll have to replace it. Google likes it that way.
I have a few IOS devices, you know what prevents me from using them?
It's not the battery, its the lack of OS updates. I can't install new certificates, or get access to app stores. They're useless.
In fact, the lack of a replacement battery has never prevented me from keeping something working, only software or physical damage.
Battery tech has gotten a lot better every year over the last hundred years.
I think OP meant the phone was going to be replaced in three years tops, so no one cared much about battery longevity. Nowadays, the battery can be the constraint for practical phone life, since few consumers can replace one themselves and by the time they pay someone else to do it, may as well trade it in and let Verizon subsidize a new one.
Having an easily swappable battery returns some power to the user.
Phones with swappable batteries are already legal to buy.
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Their still go down after two-three years. Needing to charge twice a day is literal reason why I ever change the phone - otherwise I could use 10 years old one.
You don't have to replace the phone. You can go to some repair shop and get the battery replaced. It will be several times cheaper than a new phone.
Very few people do that. I don't. Because a) general software enshittification makes me need a more powerful decice anyway, and, more importantly, b) people are just happy to have an excuse to get the the new shiny.
> You don't have to replace the phone. You can go to some repair shop and get the battery replaced. It will be several times cheaper than a new phone.
Still way more expensive than swapping a battery pack, and this mean leaving your phone to a stranger for a few hours or maybe a day if the shop is really busy. Anything that add friction to changing battery will help sell new phone.
I do it.
> a) general software enshittification makes me need a more powerful decice anyway
You don't, this is nothing but an excuse for
> b) people are just happy to have an excuse to get the the new shiny.
Nah, sorry, enshittification is not "just an excuse". My current 2020 phone(xperia 5-ii - I wanted that sd slot&jack) is noticeably slower than when I got it, even though the battery is holding up decently(it basically needs to last a day, and it usually does). Software shops seem to get focused on testing their stuff on "modern" devices. It looks like, once your device starts to slip out of that "testing pool", things get increasingly buggy until it eventually makes general use enough of a pain to require replacement.
I think last couple years' improvements to battery tech made software take over batteries as the bigger contributor to device obsolescence.
So this change, while welcome, is a bit late.
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I have been using the Pixel series for years and after a year of use the battery capacity is noticeable worse for me.
I'd just like to pay 100-300EUR to replace the battery with a brand new one but the device should still be IP68 water-"proof".
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