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Comment by jklinger410 | Hacker News Reader

> Not even a little consideration for this has made manufacturers ditch removable batteries.

What makes you qualified to say this? Do you work for one of the large phone manufacturers?

While I haven't worked on phones, I have worked on tablets and e-readers. I can say that the discussions have always been around cost, ID, waterproofing, tablet thickness in the design stage. I don't think it's a stretch to say the same design considerations are at work in cell phones.

I've worked with the ID and battery teams (who also worked on phones). There was never even a hint of being pushed to non-replaceable batteries from "higher up" for "reasons". Instead, it was product specs / design parameters that drove the choice.

> There was never even a hint of being pushed to non-replaceable batteries from "higher up" for "reasons". Instead, it was product specs / design parameters that drove the choice.

Cynically, we should be so lucky to have such crudely overt messaging. I would expect the reasons to take the form of specs and design parameters and not be so blunt. The NSA has done just that in the past.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/the-n...

I have first hand accounts from decision makers about the challenges these decisions were faced with and have worked with many engineers in adjacent areas over the years.

I think some observation and a little engineering thinking makes this clear.

In the early 2010s one of the biggest issues with smartphones was battery life. The packaging of the battery is limited if a requirement is to make it removable (i.e. it must be a certain shape, have connectors in a certain location, etc). If that requirement is removed, battery can be made to fill whatever space is available in the device.

People drop their phones in water all the time. Then call the company and complain it's broken. People get mad when the company tells them it's their fault. If you have fewer holes in a device, it's less likely to be damaged by water. A removable battery means exposed connectors sealed by imperfect covers, making them more likely to be damaged by any water ingress. So they removed that failure point.

Another issue in tech generally is end-users messing with the device internals, accidentally breaking the device, and blaming the company. Remove that failure-case by making the internals inaccessible and complaints go down.

Making the device impossible to access because of a deep-state conspiracy is just a convenient mental shortcut to believe in. I'm as annoyed as the next person about less-repairable devices but I don't think it's a conspiracy, just practical engineering.

My s5 had great battery life with removable battery that could be upgraded and was perfectly waterproof almost 10 yrs ago. I think the bigger driver is encouraging people to get a new phone when battery life inevitably declined. I used the S5 for about 6 years with no issues other than a couple battery replacements. My pixel didn't even make it 2 years before serious performance declines and poor battery life.

It must have been one of the few well-made smartphones back then. It's still hard to make a perfectly waterproof seal that last for years and is inexpensive enough to use on a smartphone. Some team has to sit around designing it, so without the removable battery and seal they could in theory be freed up to do something else

Just because something is possible to do, doesn't mean every manufacturer wants to do it

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