iPhone with user-replaceable battery very very difficult
Isn’t Apple allegedly good at engineering? I’m sure they could find a way. There are old Nokia phones that are as thick as current iPhones (or less) and have use-replaceable batteries. This has nothing to do with waterproof, its all about their continued interest in using planned obsolesce and other means to sell new devices.
Being “good at engineering” doesn’t change the laws of physics.
Those Nokia phones were not waterproof. Also, I’m pretty sure they were thicker.
An o-ring only works if the battery cover is rigid enough that it will not flex at all even if, for example, you drop the phone in cold water rapidly cooling the battery cover while the internals stay warm for a minute or two.
The battery cover will change size slightly with the temperature change and no screw can be strong enough to stop that. Covering the entire battery cover in glue and attaching it to the battery though… that will eliminate the movement.
Perhaps Apple can find a water proof battery. But there’s no way they can keep water out of the battery compartment while being user serviceable.
It’s always amusing when people who aren’t engineers assume something must be simple to make. Please show me a Nokia phone that was as thin as a current iPhone, with auto focusing video cameras (aka moving parts), and had a user-replaceable battery. I’ll wait. Samsung’s galaxy phones caught fire because they tried to make it just as thin with a user-replaceable battery (leading to short circuits), so that’s yet another thing you have to prevent in your hypothetical “it’s easy!” phone. Oh and it has to be rugged enough to withstand multiple drops like current phones AND not lose any of that thinness.
Edit: okay the galaxy battery wasn’t replaceable but you still need to make higher tolerances in a user-replaceable item to prevent that, meaning it cannot be too thin for safety reasons.
The Samsung note 7 that had the exploding battery issues wasn’t a removable /swappable battery, so you’re wrong. That whole phone was as glued together as iPhones of the time.
Such a weird take.
Good point, but that still supports my overall point; you’ll need higher tolerances to prevent shorts and fires which means you need thicker casings. A user-replaceable battery has thicker battery cases and connectors compared to devices where the battery isn’t accessible.
Look at laptops for a similar story; making batteries user-inaccessible allowed them to shed thicker casings and instead fill more space when they weren’t constrained by a user compartment and casing and need for easy-detachable connector. Going back to a user-removable design in the exact same size case means slightly lower capacity batteries, which customers don’t want as a trade off.
Hey, I never said it was easy, I just said that if Apple applied 35% of the engineering effort they apply into creating vendor lock-in, part serialization and other twisted anti-consumer “solutions” they would be able to accomplish it.
No, it can’t be done. The iPhone is as thin as it is because the battery cover is glued to the battery. Take away the glue and it just can’t be that thin (or at least, if it was that thin it would be too weak - you’d probably snap the logic board by just putting it in a pocket - sometimes phones get pressed against your leg and legs are round).
