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Comment by goblins | Hacker News Reader

>How Apple could have prevented the iPhone-slowdown controversy

Easy, user replaceable battery. (For clarity by "user replaceable" I don't mean by the user paying $79 for Apple to do it; which is a rip off)

IMO if you design a phone (costing the better part of a grand) with a battery unsuitable for a years worth of use it's a design flaw, if the battery is not easily replaceable by the user then the phone is not fit for purpose.

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Not to mention the junk this generates and resources this wastes by forcing users to buy a new phone, when a replacement battery would make it perfectly usable again. I hope some regulatory body would step in here, like the EU did for unified phone charger ports.

I (and many other buyers) don't want a user-replaceable battery. I think they look like crap, they make the phone look like crap, and in my history of owning iPhones since day one, I've never had to replace my iPhones battery. I did have one replaced through a warranty extension thing but that was because I was reselling the phone and wanted to give the buyer a perfectly new battery. Otherwise I would have kept the one inside.

Many phone owners these days put their device in a case.

How then can it then "look like crap" if aesthetically it's hidden under a layer of coloured rubber?

Not to mention you'd be hard pressed telling if a phone has a user replaceable battery just by looking at it. I should know because that's the first thing I ask because I won't buy a phone without a user replaceable battery.

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