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Comment by smn1234 | Hacker News Reader

I'd much rather be able to swap a charged battery for the drained one in my phone especially in such circumstances as when I'm in a foreign country and dependent on my phone (for e.g. safety, to get around) and there's not a iPhone cable or charge point around. It seems like a no brainer, certainly from a consumer benefit perspective. Using batteries as a mechanism for hardware upgrades is ridiculous, instead of the features of the new hardware that should be the compelling, selling point and the way to a value statement that wins hearts and minds.

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If a battery lasts a couple of days, I would much rather my phone were waterproof than be able to swap the battery. Having a power bank solves the problem of discharged phone for me, and anyway I almost never have to use it. Being able to drop your phone in the water and pick it up still working is far more valuable to me.

Waterproof phones with replacable batteries might not be waterproof after the replacement - so why don't you just keep the original battery, and have a waterproof phone? Win-win for everyone.

From my understanding, sealant used to make phones waterproof is basically glue, which precludes "easy" replacement of batteries.

I don't think you properly understood my comment. I am specifically saying: even if replacing the battery makes the phone no longer waterproof, you can just not replace the battery. Nobody comes into your house at night and forces you to install a new battery because your old one isn't good anymore.

It's very nice to be able to replace a battery in the field. I used to carry a spare charged battery and swap it for an instant recharge. That use case is still valuable to me, but isn't possible anymore.

Yes, that is why I'm arguing that even if changing the battery must necessarily break the waterseal, the battery should still be changable. In this hypothetical scenario it would be worth it to leave it open to the individual.

I understood your comment. The article implies that the battery has to be _easily_ replaceable, i.e. that you could just take a battery and maybe a screwdriver out of your pocket and replace it.

I don't think it's easy to design a phone that would at the same time a) have easily replaceable battery, and b) be waterproof until the first battery replacement.

Why not?

Galaxy S5 did it 9 years ago

I completely agree, that overall water resistance and IP rating would be more valuable.

What's stopping figuring out how the hardware can achieve both battery replace-ability and water resistance?

Phones already have holes in them, e.g. speakers and charger port, and yet are able to survive a water immersion event.

Its way easier for the speaker ports, you just seal the drivers well enough and they'll be sealed unless there's just too much pressure. The seal never experiences any mechanical wear, you can practically just glue it around the edge.

Similar thing with the charger/data port. The outside of the port can be completely sealed up with just the electrical connections going through. The port isn't ever opened, there's no mechanical wear of actually going in and out of the sealed area. Glue it all up but leave the electrical connectors exposed and its sealed.

A battery door is a whole 'nother issue. Starting off, its probably going to have considerably more perimeter needing to seal, especially if its like the doors of yore where you popped off a significant part of the back. Then, you'll need this seal to handle a lot of open/close events and be able to handle the dirt and debris which it will be exposed to. Keeping the device's profile thin gets way more complicated with all of these requirements, and the seal will probably still be less reliable than the seals for the charging port and the speakers/mics.

> What's stopping figuring out how the hardware can achieve both battery replace-ability and water resistance?

Nothing, since it wasn't all that long ago that there were phones that did this.

Seems like it should be possible for the phone (not the battery compartment and battery door, just the rest of the phone) to be waterproof, and for the battery to be waterproof, and the two can contact each other regardless of that contact being in a wet location. After all, we have plenty of electrical wiring methods rated for wet locations, so why not this? Water isn't the very best insulator (especially saltwater and other mineral content, which the contacts would need corrosion resistance for as well) but it should be sufficient at 4VDC.

Wikipedia says that the resistance of water is 0.2 Ω·m for sea water, 2 to 200 Ω·m for drinking water. This is very low and can drain your battery almost immediately.

Wikipedia also says that water starts conducting at 1.23V, and the common Li-Ion nominal voltage is 3.7V.

3.7V - 1.23V == 2.47V. 2.47V / 0.2Ω ~= 30W (12.5A).

You will be able the find your phone on the seabed from the bubble emanating from it.

Though the battery protect circuitry (which is inside the battery package) will most likely cut power before the battery is risks damages.

> protect circuitry (which is inside the battery package) will most likely cut power

I wonder if that's responsible for the experiences folks had way before waterproof phones were introduced: they would drop their phone into water, it would shut off and refuse to boot for a significant amount of time (enough to send them shopping for a replacement) and then they'd try it a week later only to find that it works fine. Accelerated by putting it in a bag with rice or other desiccant.

> If a battery lasts a couple of days, I would much rather my phone were waterproof than be able to swap the battery.

You can have both.

> Having a power bank solves the problem of discharged phone for me

There are cases where a power bank isn't a good solution. They big and heavy. Not being able to swap in a fully-charged battery on demand means that I can no longer use my phone for certain things that I used to be able to do.

Galaxy S5 had both and at 8.1mm/0.31in was thinner than phones are now. I don't see why I should have to choose 9 years later

You’re at least the third person to say this without the disclaimer - only if the rubber flap was securely covering the ports when it was dropped in water.

You repeat this everywhere. The port requiring a flap has no bearing on the waterproofing of the battery which used an entirely separately gasket on the back cover.

You can clearly see here[0] that the gasket on the flap protects only the USB port from water ingress. The battery and sim are protected by the grey gasket on the rear cover.

The opening for the rear speakers in the back cover reinforces the fact that the flap is there to protect the interface of the USB port and its housing. The rear cover does not contact the USB port at all.

[0] https://www.paulstravelpictures.com/Samsung-Galaxy-S5-USB-Ch...

And you had to make really sure that the battery was completely secured when you replaced it. There was even a warning on the screen.

https://www.gottabemobile.com/samsung-galaxy-s5-water-test-d...

> If you remove the battery, the Galaxy S5 will remind you to make sure the back cover is back in place securely. reply

Making sure a rear cover has snapped into place is much less prone to failure than acquiring tools and applying heat to a glued on rear cover, de-soldering/disconnecting a battery and evenly re-applying and heating new glue.

> I'd much rather be able to swap a charged battery for the drained one in my phone especially in circumstances when I'm in a foreign country and dependent on my phone

I don’t deny that this is a valid use case for you, but I’ve absolutely never been in this position.

I carry around a battery phone charger in situations where I’d depend on my phone. If you squint, yes that’s pretty similar, but the big difference is that a USB charger can power my iPhone and my partners android phone without requiring the phones to use standardized batteries internally.

I think batteries should be replacing in a repair sense, but I’m not sure the “pop open the back and swap it on the streets of Tokyo” is a common use case we should legislate against.

Like others said, I would much rather have it be more durable (eg waterproof). Also I’ll add that thinness is a desirable trait (to a point).

Carrying around bulky power banks or worse, chargers to then tie you to sit close to an outlet and wait for the battery to charge, is not entirely ideal when you're on the go, foreign or domestic. It's also less anxiety-inducing to not have to worry about where will I get my next charge and how long will it interrupt my plans for.

The portable battery pack is no more bulky than carrying around portable phone batteries?

And it has the benefit of being sharable.

And it has the benefit of being able to work hot - you don’t have to turn off your phone to charge it.

> The portable battery pack is no more bulky than carrying around portable phone batteries

They're a lot bulkier. Phone batteries are physically very small and light. Good power banks aren't.

Power banks come in different sizes. The bigger ones also allow to recharge your phone several times. There are also small and light ones that contains energy for one full charge or less.

When battery life is a concern, I carry around a small flashlight and a (very) short USB cable. The flashlight can both receive charge (from the wall) and send charge (to the phone) through its USB port.

Lots of high-end flashlights do this. Mine isn't much larger than the 21700 cell it contains. If you want to go smaller you can get a 1850-based flashlight and still almost double the capacity of your phone.

Plus, it's a flashlight.

But it doesn't really address the use case well. It won't fully charge the phone and it takes time to do the charging.

I don't understand. Why won't it fully charge the phone? And you can use the phone while it's plugged in. In all respects it gives you ~2X the number of useful hours at the cost of having to carry around a very small item.

I've got a little 2_000mAh 3.7V (7.4Wh) USB battery pack here that was vendor swag from a conference, a probably 3.7v? 10_000mAh () that I'll then assume is ~37Wh. and a Canon NB-13L 3.6V 1250mAh (4.5Wh battery pack) for my camera.

For mm^3/Wh, the results are:

Small vendor swag power bank: 96 x 21 x 26

52_416 / 7.4

7,083 <-- worst one

Canon battery: 42 x 30 x 9

11_340 / 4.5

2,520 <-- wow that's way less

10,000mAh dual USB power bank: 139 x 22 x 60

183_480 / 37_000

~5 <-- wow

By volume / energy, the big power bank wins by a mile. And tbh its not that huge, similar footprint to my phone and about twice as thick. Plus, it can power two devices at once, which can be pretty handy. It has a bit over twice as much power as my phone's battery. This logically makes some sense, as phones these days are pretty much a battery and a screen with a small logic board tagging along for the ride.

If I'm on the go, I'd much rather have a large battery bank that provides a good bit of flexibility rather than a battery that only works with a single device. This one battery pack can charge my phone, my camera, my wireless mouse, my keyboard, my headphones, my e-reader, and then all the same list of stuff for my spouse. If I got a fancier one, it could even provide extra juice to my laptop. If I only had a battery specifically made for my phone, I'd only be able to swap out my phone battery and all of the rest of my devices would need their own batteries or just be left dead.

On top of that, if I wanted to then charge that battery outside of the phone I'd have to lug some specific charger for that model of battery. Meanwhile if I bothered getting a newer USB-C power pack the same power cable that charges my laptop and my phone and my headphones can also recharge my spare battery along with all the rest of the devices I mentioned. I'm much happier having a 10,000mAh battery pack in my backpack to recharge when needed than needing to think about having a few different batteries around and their related chargers to keep track of. Once this one dies I'll probably

I'm dumb. Should have been 37, not 37,000. So actually 4,953 mm3/Wh, meaning the battery pack is definitely the winner.

I agree with your point completely but that use case is an edge case, would it be worth it regulating all phone design in order to address such a specific scenario?

Such use cases are normally handled by creating specialty products.

I feel like those rarer circumstances can be handled pretty easily with a portable battery bank, and also pull double duty for any other USB devices you might have.

With my 14 Pro Max I charge my phone every 2-3 days, and I'm not letting it get down to <20% when doing this, either. I'm obviously not making heavy use of it over this time, but even on days when I am out and about and using it more, I'm never in danger of it running out of battery.

Personally, at least, I'll take the sleeker design vs. an easily swap-able battery. Thankfully, it sounds like the EU law doesn't actually require it be replaceable in a tool-less manner, so it sounds like the type of design the iPhone 14 (non-max) uses will qualify.

If you held a 2014 Galaxy Note 4 in one hand, and a modern iPhone in the other, I think you'd notice that the sleekness factor is not that different.

From GSM Arena

Galaxy Note 4

Dimensions 153.5 x 78.6 x 8.5 mm (6.04 x 3.09 x 0.33 in) Weight 176 g (6.21 oz)

iPhone 14 Pro

Dimensions 146.7 x 71.5 x 7.8 mm (5.78 x 2.81 x 0.31 in) Weight 172 g (6.07 oz)

iPhone 14 Pro Max

Dimensions 160.7 x 77.6 x 7.9 mm (6.33 x 3.06 x 0.31 in) Weight 240 g (8.47 oz)

240 g? What did they put into that phone?

For your use case, powerbanks work very well. Because then you dont have to turn the phone of.

My main motivation for only using battery removable phones is privacy, because I know they are really off, when I remove the battery.

But the choice is currently very limited.

What's the difference between carrying an extra replaceable battery with you, vs carrying an external battery you can use to charge the phone?

Weight, bulk, and the time it takes to actually do the charge.

External power banks charge via USB. Most people don't want to walk around with their phone tethered via 4ft USB cable to a power bank in their backpack.

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