The batteries are now designed to be replaced. See iFixit’s teardown of recent devices.
And while that replacement was a success, it was a ridiculous amount of effort for a battery change, involving special tools, heat, an unreasonable amount of disassembly, scraping adhesive off, the 'stretch to release' battery adhesive being utterly useless, so having to risk applying force to a potentially fiery battery, and so on.
Yes, iFixit are doing great work, and it's certainly possibly for a hobbyist-level 'tinkerer' to successfully change the battery. But it shouldn't be close to that difficult. I remember it being a fairly trivial job in the iPhone 5 era.
Still requires heat, but I’m not sure I’d call a little heat and some pry tools particularly “special” tools.
It’s a compromise being made to achieve better rigidity and waterproofing. Seems like a reasonable trade off, honestly, for something that needs to be changed maybe every few years.
If you are willing to trade heat and pry tools for thinness, that's a legitimate opinion, but please don't blame the trade-off on waterproofing.
The S7 (S6 for some reason didn’t get an IP rating?) got an IP68, 1.5m for 30 mins.
Samsung seems to have stalled at 1.5m/30mins.
iPhones on the other hand have steadily crept up their listed ratings for water resistance: 8: IP67 1m/30m 11: IP68 2m/30m 12: 68 6m/30m
Seems that you’re actually getting some advantage. 1 meter isn’t really good enough for dropping in, say, a pool or a lake. 6 meters on the other hand… should cover most scenarios.
Seems like a vanishingly small fraction of users are getting some advantage. Everyone else just pays.
A vanishingly small fraction of users take advantage of replacing their battery and instead just pass it along either in trade in, or in passing down to a family member/friend. This wasn’t any different when batteries were easily user replaceable.
You’re optimizing for an event that happens every few years instead of optimizing for something that is felt every single day (form factor, ergonomics, etc).
I've swam with my phone exactly zero times. Haven't dropped it in any deep water. But I have a bunch of devices with batteries barely holding any charge. And I suspect it's the most common situation.
With which effort?
> See iFixit’s teardown of recent devices
Care to provide a link?
Repair guides, disassembly, and troubleshooting information for the iPhone 16 Pro, released September 20th, 2024.