remember, the decision to use glued in batteries that required tools to access and remove happened before iPhones even had any water resistance rating
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Report: Apple Planning to Debut New Battery Replacement Method With iPhone 16
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Look at the thread, tons of users seem to be mystified by how to use a screwdriver 🤷♂️
I see a whole bunch of "those people" who come to me after they've screwed up a DIY repair on their device or car...
Because of safety. I think there is a huge difference between life-threatening and battery regulation. And I think it has little to do with selling more phones. I can the buy the argument of “it’s better because you can replace your battery on the go”, but I don’t think many people are going to consider a once-in-two-years replacement so inconvenient that they spend a big amount of money on a new phone when they didn’t want to. And if that’s the problem, extending repairability availability would be a much better solution.
And you got a bigger battery capacity from it, which was required. We're talking mm's here which when factoring in the size of the device makes quite a difference in usable battery cell space.
I've never had a problem replacing batteries for people since the original iPhone 4 sandwich design came out...
Umm, I've been carrying a cell since 1999 and I've never clipped them to my belt. That always looked too dorky for me.
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And you want these people to run current through a battery enclosure??
How many articles are we going to see in two years about people that accidentally shorted their batteries?
You you are saying that you are not as skilled as a Chinese minimum wage factory worker, who installs those scres in 10 seconds. We should require that Apple makes it's products repaiable. But it is unreasonable to require them to be repaiable by the average untrained consumer using common household tools.
As for the "Philips" screw. I bet it is not a Philips but some other style of cross-point head. That would explain the problem you had. THey might be "torq-set" or "TS". THese are drivable with a tiny philips but it is far from optimal. Also in the same phone are pentalobe screws
The same is true with cars. They are repairable but we don't expect the average person to be able to swap out a timing chain with just pliers and a screwdriver.
I'd like to so phones made to the same standard of repairability as cars. Repairable by trained professionals who own a set of professional quality tools and diagnostic equipment.
I think the vast majority of people have no business opening up a device like this in the first place. They may have every right to, but that doesn't mean they are capable.
That should not be viewed as an insult. I have decades of experience fixing electronic and mechanical equipment, its a learned skill. Unless a mandate comes down that requires an externally serviceable battery, I don't think people really appreciate what miniaturization means when it comes to serviceability.
If you bring your car to a mechanic, why do you think you're the type that has any business replacing a battery in an extremely small enclosure with delicate components?
Oh I don’t think we have any way of knowing what the “majority” would pick.
It’s not like Apple ever sold both versions side-by-side and consumers could pick. Nor is it like Apple tends to follow market trends. Apple decides what it thinks is best and you can either buy it or not.
As for the camera module, yes, I know it’s thicker than 1 mm, I was more thinking that if you decrease it by millimeter, you might get to the point where the phone lies flat once you put a case on.
Lastly, what other disadvantages do you see other than bulk? The battery would still be inside the phone, so it’s not like you’re losing any waterproofness.
I'm sure the Apple party line is self-serving to some extent, but "securely" is probably the sticking point. I used an iFixit battery kit and its adhesives on an iPhone 6S some years ago and the new battery very obviously wobbled around inside afterwards, clunking noticeably if the phone was shaken. (It also went on to fail within six months.)
Mark the day Turbine, we’re in complete agreement on an Apple subject!
I don't see why not. We should be empowering end users to take care of their products, it's better for our culture, environment and wallets.
How hard would it be to provide clear and concise instructions, including a breakdown of the necessary tools? Ikea pulls it off, and people trust their products enough to sleep on them.
How was Microsoft able to make their new devices intuitively repairable without changing the form factor of the machine? The new Surface devices have all labeled screws and nothing is glued down, and the machines are outwardly identical to their predecessors.
Because a phone is an order of magnitude cheaper than a car. I trust myself to change my phone battery or screen, but definitely not enough to fix my alternator.
Are we talking phones or laptops?
It’s not hard to get into a macbook…
Comparing miniaturized electronics to IKEA furniture…come on.
Yes I would love to live in a world where everyone was empowered to work on their own stuff, be it electronics or anything else. But being someone who people constantly turn to in order to do the repair on their behalf…people are scared of what they don’t know. That’s why repairing things is a learned skill. I absolutely believe almost everyone (barring physical reasons) is capable, but the vast majority of people seem to have no interest or courage to DIY especially when it comes to tech.
I don’t know, can the average person do an oil exchange on their ICE vehicle, yes, sorta kinda but how many WANT to do that/choose to do that?
I can see the appeal, but does really every single phone model have to be this way? No imho, should there be models that support this? Absolutely.
I can see the appeal, but does really every single phone model have to be this way? No imho, should there be models that support this? Absolutely.
Exactly, there’s largely no ultimate solutions but tradeoffs.
What all this is doing is getting absolutely everything to be exactly the same, likely minimum common denominator.
In the future if you want a 100% water and dust void-sealed phone (for some reason) with a tiny proprietary mini-tiny-nano USB connector (for yet another obscure reason) you won’t be able to: all phones need to have USBC (which I agree is nice today, but its specs were introduced already 10 years ago) and these specific type of achievable seals from absolutely all manufacturers else they get in trouble.
I’m torn with the forced steering of technology like this.
My entire point is that we should be making it easier to learn that skill. And while not everyone has a laptop, virtually everyone has a phone. Why not make that a great place to start?
Right-to-repair is a great idea on its head -- but properties like dust and water proofing, or battery safety, are far more valuable to the longevity of a device than the ability to replace a battery.
A battery held in place with static electricity sounds kind of brilliant, actually, and a great example of engineering to unblock repair.
I just worry that legislation is very likely to throw the baby out with the bath water. I've been repairing my own iPhones since the first model (including several screens and batteries) and I would much rather retain features which prevent repairs than to have legislated easier repairs.
Hopefully we can maintain a balance like this!
A battery held in place with static electricity sounds kind of brilliant, actually, and a great example of engineering to unblock repair.
I just worry that legislation is very likely to throw the baby out with the bath water. I've been repairing my own iPhones since the first model (including several screens and batteries) and I would much rather retain features which prevent repairs than to have legislated easier repairs.
Hopefully we can maintain a balance like this!
…why would the starting point for learning to work on electronics be arguably the most important device people have?
That sounds like a recipe for breaking a ton of stuff and scaring masses of people off DIY for life.
Be realistic. It’s takes a steady hand to work on things this small. You don’t start learning to work on a car by doing a head gasket. Maybe start with changing your own oil and spark plugs? Idk what the equivalent path for electronics would be, but I absolutely would never advocate starting with something so important/expensive to people’s personal lives.
Note that I’m not even talking specifically iPhones here. Smartphones are not a great place to learn such a skill.
We can’t replicate a parallel world where Apple does that, but we had many cases of flagship Android phone with easily replaceable battery in the past, and they failed in the market compared to their non-replaceable equivalents. All recent “modular” projects like the fairphone haven’t gained traction either. So at least I’d say there is no huge customer demand for it.
The problem with waterproofing is not (mainly) the battery itself but the fact that you can’t seal the phone nearly as good with clippings, you can’t ensure the effectiveness of gaskets after opening the device, etc.