It is far more than "just a gasket and a few screws". The rating can't just be good on unboxing day. You want it to hold even after a few years, several drops on the floor, in cold weather, etc.
Watch maintenance has been done by skilled professionals using generic tools and (generally) generic components. Waterproofing is an excuse used to limit our ability to repair and maintain our devices and maybe because somebody didn't like the appearance of a screw face or screw cover on one side of the device.
Strictly from a product design and especially hardware design standpoint, I get the resistance to easy replacement of certain parts. Designing for a replaceable battery means designing your seal to withstand at least twice as many battery replacements as the law requires, or you make sure you have enough replacement seals stockpiled to cover the number that will be replaced, or you use a a commodity seal (think an O-ring).
Apple eventually made ~86 million iPhone 8 and 8 plus. Let's say that's representative of any given model of phone. How many millions (billions?) of seals is that? How much does that cost to store? To distribute? How much does that affect the cost of the phone?
I am fully behind right-to-repair. I won't work for companies that have lobbied against it (and as an embedded hardware and firmware guy, that's significant). But there is a measurable, monetary cost to designing things to be repaired. Either we accept that only the richest n% of e.g. phone manufacturers can afford to stay in business, we as the consumer accept lower performance at the same price point, or both.
All of that said, my point regarding connectors with finite cycle lifespans is relevant. These physical devices themselves have a lifespan. What is the point of replacing a battery when the charging port, headphone jack, physical buttons, touch screen, etc are spec'd to fail well before the average battery does? What about if you have the same iPhone 8 soldering problem, where the phone can't actually survive being put in the back pocket of a decently tight pair of pants? How does government regulation regarding batteries reverse the trend of people buying cheap things because they cost less?
> What is the point of replacing a battery when the charging port, headphone jack, physical buttons, touch screen, etc are spec'd to fail well before the average battery does
Parts often/usually last far in excess of what they're spec'd for as I'm sure you know. And many of the things you list aren't critical to operation like the battery is.
The vaunted Samsung s5, you still had to make sure that the battery was very secure and just right.
> 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.
The new law apparently doesn't require a user to be able to replace the battery by hand. Just that it is serviceable.
I think the new law would basically mean the end user doesn't have to deal with glue now at least.
Also, it is just ingenious to attribute everything to malice — is a modern combustion engine also irreparable because of some conteo, or is it irreparable simply because for efficiency reasons they had to use more precise technology with smaller error margins, where one’s fatty human hand just doesn’t cut anymore?
Are you prepared to have a similar ratio for your phone? Basically the phones we have now with a permanent, very durable waterproof case?
The fact is gluing is simpler and cheaper but most importantly it reduces the repairability of phones by third parties. Quite often trying to repair a phone will cause it to be destroyed, making replacing a battery more risky and difficult. Companies would love not to have to use glue, but <design excuse>! Nothing at all to do with built-in obsolescence.
Honestly, it probably only adds a few bucks to the BOM and the consumer who doesn't care about repairability still likely comes out better off in the long run because their phone lasts them longer and/or resells for more because it isn't junk after 3 years.
With android phones the resale value/demand wasn't there (also due in part to bad software support lifetimes which would also need to be addressed) so they'd just get tossed/shelved after 2 to 3 years even if they were perfectly functional.
If you scaled the forces and subjected the car to the equivalent of dropping a phone on the floor it would be totaled instantly... forget about maintaining waterproofing.
Thus I stand by my original statement: people making claims like "just a gasket and some screws" have never designed a product under similar constraints and are making bad assumptions or straight-up Dunning-Kruger errors left and right.
Plus the Samsung Active line never needed to go to these extremes to churn out perfectly fine waterproof phones at slightly higher than average prices. And they weren't the only ones with these sort of offerings.
I never claimed it was impossible. I'm only pointing out there are far more severe design constraints than a lot of people even understand, yet they confidently proclaim it is both a simple matter of trivial engineering and completely free of consequences.