My Fairphone 3 already has replaceable batteries. What is really missing is an industry-standard form factor, like ATX/ITX exists for desktops.
If there were a standard, we’d be able to upgrade the components as needed. We wouldn’t be forced to waste perfectly good displays just because we would like to upgrade the CPU. Companies wouldn’t be pushing for new upgrades every year. Apple/Samsung wouldn’t be able to hold their dominance because it would be easier for smaller players to specialize in specific components. The entire maker community wouldn’t have to be fighting over Raspberry PI and we could even have a cottage industry around upcycled consumer electronics.
That would be quite utopian, however I feel such a thing would be incredible hard to achieve. Different form factors require different layouts, space is much tighter and should not be wasted. In desktop PC land, you have plenty of room to fit things as you want.
It may not be showstopper, but it’s certainly a challenge. And of course, companies won’t like it :PI feel like the opposite: the constraints are so well-known and so well defined that most phones end up looking the same anyway, we might as well just take one of them (any of them!) and make it a standard.
companies won’t like it
Apple/Samsung surely won’t. But I’d bet that the smaller ones would like to have some type of level-playing field. Also, imagine the amount of startups that could come up in the space.
mm you bring good points! hadn’t thought of how it would level the playing field
It’s the first time I hear about Fairphone. How they embrace repairability is amazing. I hope they’ll expand to North America at one point.
I’ve had this thought in the past, but upon further research, on a smartphone scale it runs into a few issues.
A PC has relatively divorced components because it has the space to accommodate slots, but that already goes out the window for laptops; the best you get is RAM and maybe MXM. People generally want slimmer and more battery-dense products, so motherboards with everything soldered can manage to be absolutely tiny (see: newer macbooks) compared to ones where everything is slotted. Newer smartphones don’t just last longer on battery because they’re bigger; much of the internal volume of a smartphone is now to hold the battery as everything around it shrinks. Modular connectors cost volume and money, for a use case where both are at a premium; most people would generally rather buy a non-modular phone that gets better battery life and offers better water resistance.
As evidenced by the Note 7, batteries also need a decent bit of structural integrity around them to be safe, and the best way to accomplish that is just a 2-part box that’s been glued together. This has the side effect of making water resistance easier and slimming the phone down. Any swappable battery inherently has worse water resistance and volumetric efficiency than a pouch csll in a glued box, and manufacturers value both good battery life and things not blowing up.
Smartphone CPUs (or rather SoCs) contain not only the CPU bit, but important parts of the radio, camera processing, location processing, and GPU. Therefore Android ones come with driver packs from manufacturers that make it all work, but if you’re swapping components around you need to make sure your sensors like cameras have a way to install drivers (and a general compatibility standard); which means at best you’re swapping pretty big chunks of a smartphone at a time.
Even without forced obsolescence, smartphones have a relatively fixed lifespan of ~5-8 years due to software upgrades, how carriers buy up new radio frequencies, physical damage, battery degradation, vibration motor wear, camera focusing mechanism wear (from vibrations) and in the case of AMOLED display wear. This isn’t a knock on standardization, but you can already achieve this lifespan out of a smartphone if you use something like Advanced Charging Controller to limit battery charge to 80%.
If you look at Project Ara (which is the most extreme case of modularity), it failed because of all of the above. The battery life, structural integrity, cost efficiency, compatibility, and waterproofness would all be awful compared to a standard phone.
People generally want slimmer and more battery-dense products
I call BS on that one. People say they want slim electronics and the first thing they do is to slap it in a protective case. It’s like SUVs and light trucks in the USA. People don’t even have the choice anymore because smaller cars are not as profitable, so then Ford goes to sell one gazillion F150s to soccer moms and then they claim “we are just fulfilling the demand of the market”.
My Fairphone seems bulky in comparison (and it is), but it is small enough that I can have it in my pocket.
(laptops) the best you get is RAM and maybe MXM
Is it really? With things like M2 slots you can get separate wifi adapters, fast storage. With Thunderbolt, we don’t even need a high-end graphics card in the laptop. We can do plenty with an iGPU and have an external, upgradeable GPU for those that want to game or do heavy work.
which means at best you’re swapping pretty big chunks of a smartphone at a time.
Fine by me. If we break down as CPU/storage/camera module/“everything else board”, then it’s 4 modules. Which is a lot more than what we are getting now and it’s the complete opposite of what manufacturers are giving us.
Given the state of technology the battery decaying wasn’t the issue in my latest phones. It was performance of the device. Apps keep evolving and at some point your device just can’t keep up anymore.
Went from a Moto g6 I think to a Pixel3 and now a pixel 6 pro. Batteries can be charged everywhere, CPU’s can’t be overclock without limits.
In general, that’s definitely a problem too. Just look at Windows 11. Now M$ wants you to buy a new laptop such that their OS can run at all. I use a >10y old laptop with Linux. No performance issues for everyday use.
Going from Google-Android to LineageOS boosted the battery life of my old Smartphone by a factor 3 roughly. There where some Google-things consuming battery in the background, probably spying on me. Also using simple Apps from F-Droid helps to get a smooth experience.
Now it seems Apple will need to figure out how to allow access to the battery inside future iPhones, as will every other smartphone manufacturer.
There’s nothing to figure out. All manufacturers have already used removable batteries in the past. Just blow the dust off the old designs and adapt them!
There will be a lot to figure out. The new designs provide features that the old ones couldn’t- and there are very few people who would prioritize a replaceable battery over other features.
I don’t know if you ever see the ifixit tear downs, there is no new tricks. The battery is still replaceable, it’s just that the manufacturing process adds more stuff to “anti-tempering”. Let me list a few:
- special kind of screw, some screw can’t be unscrewed without special screw driver
- we all know about glue battery so they are fixed in place AND harder to remove safely.
- they add more of those tiny ribbon around so if you don’t know the internal layout there is a chance you break the ribbon.
- plastic wedge that might be broken when you try to pry it open(so when you put the cover back it’s a bit loose, and lose water resist), even with proper tool. They designed it so it was not suppose to open again. ( I have a old casio slim camera that can still be water resistant with removable battery, there is no reason why a phone can’t do the same with modern materials. )
I think it’s extremely hard to tell what people would prioritize. If you aks them hypothetically, everyone probably is some green warrior for mother earth. But then when push comes to shove, the industry will give them the choice between a flagship phone, glued all around, and a phone with a removable battery with all the greatest specs from five years ago. Of course many will chose the glued one, and then some people will be like “welp, the free market has decided”. 🤷
edit: typo
greatest specs from five years ago. Of course many will chose the glued ond, and then some people will be like “welp, the free market has decided”. 🤷
This whole practice infuriates me to no end. The market has never truly been given a choice in any of these changes since every phone worth buying has copied the others (removing headphone jack, replaceable batteries, SD card slot, no charger, etc) all around the same time. Never stops sycophants from telling the rest of us that nobody wants these features ‘becuz da market sayz so.’
They sure will fight it. The main counter-argument I see is water proofing, but I believe I’ve seen a phone with good proofing but still accessible. Don’t remember the brand and model though.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 was a good example of this. The back panel and battery was removable, and the charging port had an extra plastic cover that went on top to protect against water ingress
Dang, looking at those phones from back then, they were such good designs. Simple yet effective.
Being able to have a spare battery in case of emergency (or simply app train/bus tickets) is going to be nice. It’s going go be exciting to see how apple will try to circumvent this.
Say what you want about the EU, but at least they keep greedy companies in check as much as they can.
They could certainly do better, but they do quite a bit yeah.
For sure, but it’s better than nothing. Imagine the world without the EU… shudders
Yeah, agreed
I love what the EU does to technology. Thank you EU!
For real, as an American I’m super grateful.
I think we reached a point where flagship phones are good enough to be used for more than 5 years. But the battery won’t live that long, for. most people. I’ve replaced my previous phone, after four years of using it, for the most part because of the battery. I’m looking forward to replaceable batteries returning and helping at least some of us keep our phones for a few more years.
Yes, for sure. My last phone lasted two months shy of 6 years, and was replaced because of a touch issue (a little strip across the screen no longer acted on touch, which made typing and other stuff completely impossible), and was only “fine” in regards to battery because it was a huge one to begin with (+4Ah for a 5" screen). The battery was definitely way worse than original, but still on par with some new phones today lol
I’ve always wondered if there is a physical limitation why the battery couldn’t go in like a sim card? Just a slot where it goes in. I’m curious how this all will work out.
That’s pretty much how it used to work.
The main reasons why it changed are:
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Space, as a connector is slightly bigger than a soldered connection, and the battery itself has to be slightly bigger and stronger too to be safe to transport and handle without being protected by the phone’s case.
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Water resistance; it’s far easier to make a phone’s case waterproof by just glueing the whole thing shut than having to use seals and gaskets and such to make it possible to open and close it at will.
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I don’t see an issue, but perhaps nobody ever thought to really try shipping a device with something like that. Specially since the water proofing advent.
LG had some phones like that in 2016ish, on the G5 the entire bottom of the phone slid out to reveal a big battery slot and on the V20 there was a button that let the metal back of the phone pop off so you could change the battery. I had an external battery charger and a couple of spare batteries for my V20, so I could just pack spare batteries and swap them whenever it got low. I never even bothered to plug my phone in, it was always just faster to pop in a battery that was already fully charged. It didn’t have any water resistance, but it was a pretty small price to pay for endless battery life
It’s a shame that LG’s whole phone division went under, because they were making some of the coolest phones that came out that whole decade
Well… for iPhones (and other smartphones) I’m not sure if anything changes. There is a exception in the regulation: if the device is waterproof, it is enough if the manufacturer or repair shops can change the battery for you. They do not need to be user replaceable.
But probably for MacBooks, there will be replaceable batteries in the future. I don’t see, how Apple will find a way around this regulation.
Apple Watch: they are waterproof —> nothing changes.
AirPods: well… are they waterproof? I don’t see user changeable batteries ever. Perhaps they will become waterproof in the future too? :) AirPods, now also for swimming and diving!
iPads: well: probably there will be changeable batteries in the future. Or we will have underwater Tablets soon. We just need another input method. Probably gestures like the VisionPro?
How is “water proof” defined in the legislation? Apple carefully says their devices are water resistant. There is a possibility that it will not qualify.
The industry standard is the IP rating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_code The first digit is dust protection grade.
The second digit is water protection grade.
IP67 is a common consumer electronics requirement.
Had to replace my previous phone due to bad battery.
Kept it safe, used cover and screen protection, but the battery got so bad it was not mobile anymore.
Now? Now all the complexity that went into making the phone is e-waste, what a shame.
Exactly! It bums me so much that the vast majority of the money you spent buying the device and of the money spent making the device is completely thrown out because you can’t replace a little component that was perfectly replaceable 10 years ago… 🙄
And not only money - resources and energy as well.
Yeah, exactly.
But they stopped including chargers so it’s basically carbon neutral now! /s
Well, the chargers were at least a step in the right direction (though probably with the focus more on consumer friendliness than environmental impact).
So there’s going to be a catch here and I’m curious how it will work out. Integrating the battery directly into the phone without it being easily removable is going to mean less capacity since the battery will need a heavier-duty shell since you can’t rely on the phone itself for protection. I get the e-waste angle but generally I wouldn’t keep a phone past the end of updates anyways, and usually battery life is still acceptable at 4 years with good practices (not charging to 100% and holding it there overnight, etc).
I’ve had my current phone for around 5 years. I’m on the latest LineageOS. I have no speed issues. The battery is starting to show signs of age. My previous phone had a longer life and got through two batteries. It was up to date with LineageOS until it’s last days. It was lack of RAM that did it in. My current phone still has mid level amount of RAM.
EU needs to look at updatablity next. If the vendors no longer provides real updates, they should unlock the bootloader. Really I want phones to like PCs and not require a custom OS each…
