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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.)
I’m not denying your experience, but I replaced the battery in my iPhone 6S a few years ago as well and encountered no such issue. Since OEM and iFixit batteries are both secured with the same style adhesive, it’s either a bad adhesive in your particular case, or (no offense) user error.
 
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After removing the old battery, a tray and specialized machine are required to install a new one securely.

Uhh, really?! It’s been a few years since I did a DIY iPhone battery replacement, but back in the day, getting the old battery out was always the hard part.

Once the space for it was clear, you’d just peel the adhesive tape from the new battery and stick it into place.
 
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Even laptops had removable batteries. Even Apple devices 🙄🥴

They needed to be removable because laptop battery life back then was typically only 2-3 hours. And the batteries wore out much quicker and needed to be replaced frequently. It wasn’t a good time.

Now days, our laptop batteries go all day and can last for 1000+ cycles. You can blame better batteries (and better, less power-hungry devices) for the demise of removable batteries.
 
Someone send Apple an early model smartphone from the 2000s.

They have a removable back and you can swap batteries in and out in seconds.

The system was on windows smartphones, android smartphone's. Even laptops had removable batteries. Even Apple devices 🙄🥴
They lasted a couple hours at most and less than 5% of the horsepower today’s devices do. You’re welcome to go back and pick one of those useless antiques up though.
 
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.

I think what we can say with certainty is that consumers don't prioritise sustainability over other things.

What the Fairphone shows, in my view, is that you can build a decent modular device and companies with the resources of Apple or Samsung could probably do it much better.
 
I think this is likely a poor translation attempt from a Chinese leak. It doesn't make sense from either a manufacturing perspective or end user replacement perspective. If the battery has a metal chassis you can easily add tags to it and then screw the thing down. Why would you complicate the process further?
 
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.
My learned skills mostly happened in junior high school woodshop class, high school photography classes, and learning the printing trade during my college years. My dad showed me how to change the oil, rotate my tires, and change my transmission fluid and filter. Back then, we also had to grease our steering linkage fittings. I learned how to change front disc brakes as well as rear drum (and later disc) brakes.

Those things didn’t make me capable of doing just anything, no. But they did teach me how to apply myself and got me in the practice of always learning new skills, no matter what they might be. So when I learned how to write code in college, that was more “learned skills”.

Today, I never change my oil or do my won brake jobs. It’s not because I don’t know how, it’s because the body doesn’t like laying supine under a rusty, drippy engine block. But I know what’s needed for that type of work, because I learned it so long ago.
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?
Yes we should. If I had a kid today, I would teach him or her how to swap out an SSD or motherboard. I probably wouldn’t bother teaching him how to do oil or transmission service on his car. But I WOULD make sure he could always change a tire and put a spare on his car during rush hour on I-75. Or jumpstart his own car with the jumper cables he would naturally be carrying all the time in his trunk.

And he would understand just how confiscatory the US tax code is.

It’s a different world than the one my dad grew up in. But learning is forever, and I would still honor his memory by teaching TODAY’s skills to my kid.
 
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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.

Lets be honest here, a big factor of the repair business success is supply chain. Any company can go to Foxconn and get them to produce a repairable product but having a parts and distribution network there to back it up is something completely different.

The gushing praise of iFixit on those machines means they're going to take a cut somewhere. Probably on producing hooky non OEM parts for them at the tail end of their "planned" lifecycle where "planned" means where Microsoft doesn't invest in the supply chain any further.
 
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Remember the days when in an airport or grocery store someone dropped their phone? The phone went one way, the battery flew off in another direction and the removable battery case went under the trashcan or display case. Looks like the bureaucrats will be taking us back to the past. Sad
I would be more than happy to pick up a user-replacable iPhone battery from the floor. Thank you, EU! Keep up the pressure on Apple. Customers and environment an only benefit from it. Airpod batteries next please …
 
The gushing praise of iFixit on those machines means they're going to take a cut somewhere. Probably on producing hooky non OEM parts for them at the tail end of their "planned" lifecycle where "planned" means where Microsoft doesn't invest in the supply chain any further.

I dunno, MS themselves sells parts for a lot of older models still going back to their Laptop 3 from 2019. 5 Years isn't too bad.

Moreover, better iFixit to source quality parts than people having to source them from alphabet soup brands on aliexpress or amazon. You can read more about their ethics here.

Their tools are good, I have no reason to believe that their aftermarket parts would not also be of quality.
 
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We might go full circle

Instead of encasing the battery in metal, encase it in plastic and have a clip on clip off backing to iPhone.

It was popular 20 years ago

🤔🙄🥴😂
As nice as that would be, the water resistance that everyone loves would be at risk. I honestly don't have a problem with the current battery replacement process so long as Apple doesn't brick your phone for using a non-Apple replacement battery. If some features can't work as well, fine. But it's more about making the repair something that a non-official shop or someone with technical know-how can do. It doesn't need to be swappable by every person out there. I don't think many people would want to give up the water resistance for it. But maybe they do.
 
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There are 4 different types of screws in an iPhone. What possible reason could Apple have for this complexity? You need a pentablobe screwdriver to open the phone and is used nowhere else. The ribbon placement likely has nothing to due with the repair or reassembly process .
Just go buy yourself an iFixit screwdriver kit and you hit pretty much any small screw type you need. Seriously this isn't the issue here.

 
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Like, didn't we used to have replaceable batteries in the days of 'dumb' phones? I always carried a spare with me - and my battery used to last for a week!

Edit:

Note: I posted this comment before my morning coffee, and it wasn't intended to be taken seriously. However, seeing that several people have quoted me, I realize I should clarify that this was meant as sarcasm.
well true, I say it there is no such thing as dumb phones But Dumb users :p 🤣


Note..... I woke up 5 minutes ago before serious life starts
 
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This functionality is available with an iReplacePro subscription, but only if you have been continuously subscribed from the first day you bought your iPhone to the present, at a very low cost of only $49.99 per month.
 
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Remember the days when in an airport or grocery store someone dropped their phone? The phone went one way, the battery flew off in another direction and the removable battery case went under the trashcan or display case.
Yeah, and then you'd pop them back together and it would still work. Unlike current phones, which shatter immediately because we've put glass on the back.
 
EU wants phones to last longer, but also wants Apple to allow zero commission apps. Apple needs to figure out how to keep users in the App Store when alternate app stores are 30% less (or free, if someone makes a pirate alternate App Store). They need to come up with more perks for using the App Store, allow more emulators, free security guarantee for apps downloaded through the App Store, etc.
 
I dunno, MS themselves sells parts for a lot of older models still going back to their Laptop 3 from 2019. 5 Years isn't too bad.

Moreover, better iFixit to source quality parts than people having to source them from alphabet soup brands on aliexpress or amazon. You can read more about their ethics here.

Their tools are good, I have no reason to believe that their aftermarket parts would not also be of quality.

Not in my country they don't. Which is the point about supply chain.

As for iFixit, I'd like to point out that I have done many many repairs on Apple devices, Sony, Google Pixel, Lenovo and HPE devices over the years down to board level repair. The quality of the stuff that comes from iFixit, particularly the batteries is usually terrible unless it's shipped from the actual vendor. They sometimes don't work and even worse, sometimes don't work for very long.

Their tools are are just about "ok". Some of the screwdrivers are very very dubious quality. I've been slowly replacing it with Wera tools over the last couple of years.
 
I’d say the vast majority of phone users use a case - consequently they have minimal concern about the backplate materials, or any joining lines; even water resistance beyond can you still safely use it in some light rain.

The user benefit of an easily replaceable battery is significant; it’s mostly the commercial value of planned obsolescence that keeps the situation the way it is.
 
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