Question regarding the phone thing. Am I one of the only people that doesn’t care about changing my battery or is this more a popular opinion on Lemmy/Reddit?
Edit: not asking why they’re doing it. I get that.
The EU is consistently voting in regulations for consumer protection and Right to Repair is one of them. Apple frequently gatekeeps their tech, forcing you to buy another phone which is already among the most expensive devices on the market. This allows anyone to crack open an iPhone to change their battery when it becomes problematic which is likely to be cheaper than getting a new phone. There very few people I came across who had no battery issues with the iPhone 6. At that time, if you wanted to use an iPhone you either went back to the 5 or you just suffer through the issues. Most people stuck it out because Apple charge out the ass for making minimal changes to their phones.
If you change phones every 2 years or less you should have no reason to replace the battery. A lot of people keep phones for much longer (students, retired, low income etc…) and suffer with bad battery life as their phones age. While Apple does replace batteries in store or by mail for a price a lot of people don’t want to deal with that. Also Apple stores are only in larger cities so for some it could mean driving a few hours each way.
Also even if someone swaps phones every 2 years without ever replacing the battery it matters. Unless that phone ends up wasting away in a drawer, it’ll go into the secondary market. An easily replaceable battery in that case should not only benefit the new owner (who get a longer lifespan out of the device), but also the seller, since the used device gains value through this feature.
A replaceable battery is like the audio jack my current phone fortunately still has. I don’t use it often, but if I ever need it, it’s there. I don’t think I ever replaced a battery of my daily-driver phone, but more than once I’ve replaced my old phone’s battery to repurpose it after getting a new one.
I always heard one of the main reasons for it was moisture protection. Unsealed batteries means they go bad more often from drops in water, taking them in bathrooms for showers, dropping them into dog bowls or rivers…
How much the IPA or F protection really matters… I dunno. But it makes sense on paper. I see some people discussed it below without good sauce though.
