Back in the day this was even better:
Original Galaxy S battery was getting weak? Order a new battery from Amazon for 13€. Battery arrives, pop the back of the phone off, pull battery out (just like that, no soldering), push new battery in. Push the back of the phone back on, done.
New battery in and it had more mAh than the original one. Despite overclocking that phone it ran a day longer after the replacement.
If the EU has its way we might all get this.
One can hope.
People can babble about water proofing, etc. There is no legitimate engineering problem.
The battery could power the device wirelessly at this point.
They could even claim they’re saving the environment by not including the battery after a couple release cycles.
Oof i didn’t think of them selling the battery separate possibly with an upcharge. monkeys paw curls
You probably also didn’t think about them no longer making the battery two years after releasing the phone.
The battery could power the device wirelessly at this point.
That’s not a thing. Wireless charging is horribly inefficient and produces lots of heat, reducing performance and battery life.
People can babble about water proofing, etc. There is no legitimate engineering problem.
Even if it was a legitimate problem, it’s sad that only about half of the phones are certified waterproof even if almost all are sealed.
Why is that sad? I can understand why companies don’t want to pay just to get a certification when the phone itself is up to standards regardless
I think the proposal went through. The Deadline is 2027 though. But hopefully, manufacturers will change in preparation of this rule so we maybe see the effects earlier like we saw with usb c? Officially, obligatory usb c usage starts in at the end of 2024, but I think everyone but Apple has already switched and Apple said they’re planning to comply within the time frame.
So my consumer preference for a sealed phone with a specific form factor simply doesn’t matter I guess?
Do you mean your consumer preference as it is currently dictated by companies?
Thanks for reminding me of how I used to never worry about battery life cause the moment one got low, I’d just pop a spare out of my backpack and continue on with my day. Batteries were so freaking cheap!
I have an Anker powerbank for that, if my phone ever gets low I just plug it in in my bag.
Though it never got this far to be honest, my Galaxy S22 lasts for 2+ days (so charging it in the evening for half an hour is usually enough to never worry about battery).
Bought the powerbank 6 years ago to play Pokemon Go (go figure), but then they removed the steps feature (showing you how far away you are from the Pokemon, leading to people actually hunting them down instead of sitting around in one spot) and I stopped playing (:
Still, plugging in for an hour or more vs just popping a new battery in n having a full charge instantly is not comparable.
great for you, doesn’t spund great for the environment, I like the push for replaceable batteries, but surely battery banks are a better solution since they are universal
Charging the internal battery from an external one loses a lot of energy, battery charging is very far from 100% efficient A phone might not use enough energy for this to make much of a difference, but you need to build and carry beefier battery banks compared to internal batteries, and I’m not sure whether you’ll see a net benifit
Lol this post reads like grandma telling her kids about how phones were in her day!
“When I was young, we’d just pop the back off the phone and replace the battery ourselves.”
“Yea yea grandma. Let’s get you to bed.”
I mean they’re not wrong tho. This isn’t a I walked up hill both ways to school story. Its meant to convey how crappy companies have become with planned obsolescence.
New Fairphones still have that feature.
But those were also made with repair in mind.
You can literally replace your usb-c port for 15€ with original parts by yourself, by spending 15 minutes with a screwdriver.
And the parts of a Fairphone 2 are still available, nearly 8 years after it launched.
There was an even bigger benefit that most people maybe didn’t realise at that time or even now, but when the phone fell that energy got distributed into the parts flying apart, which used to reduce the damage the phone took
Oh god, yeah. My original Galaxy S was dropped a few times and the plastic back cover and the battery flew apart. But the screen never got a scratch, just the plastic had a few small scratches.
But in general the new glass on phone screen sucks ass. My Galaxy S22 has small scratches from normal use, just being in my pocket. The OnePlus 5 I had before that? Not a single scratch.
They are making the glass softer now so it doesn’t crack as easily, but at the same time it starts to scratch more. Instead of going with really hard glass that doesn’t scratch and just telling customers to put a case on :-/
Fairphone sounds great but currently has a poor price to performance ratio
You pay extra because the materials were sourced through moral means and not sweatshops.
I for one like that feature.
Did they make a Fairphone Fold yet? If not then I’m not leaving my Z Fold 3 anytime soon. I regret not waiting for the Pixel Fold…
I don’t think they will, any time yet anyway.
Looking at how my FP3 and the newer FP4 is assembled, I don’t think they can make a foldable and easily repairable device right now (didn’t stop them releasing those unrepairable Earbuds, but oh well)
There’s also the software aspect too
I did the same with my HTC Thunderbolt. That phone had so many features that these newer “better” phones don’t. Removable battery, expandable storage, IR blaster. That generation was peak for smartphones. Now I just get pixel A’s because they are all the same trash, and at least it’s cheap.
My Galaxy SIII took soo much abuse before it finally died, when I got it, a friend of mine had already installed CyanogenMod onto it. Best rooted phone I ever owned.
It was bulletproof in more ways than one, by the time I finally laid it to rest the charging port was broken and I had to charge it by touching wires to the 2 pins meant for a wireless charger, and the phone wouldn’t charge unless it was turned off.
just like that, no soldering
There’s never any soldering involved when replacing batteries tho?
The batteries are not soldered even in the newest Samsung phones. Everything you’d want to replace is modular. Not sure about Apple.
My pixel 4a battery isn’t soldered but I needed to spend 45 minutes taking it apart and it’s definitely not something the average phone user would be comfortable doing. We need to pass (in the US) some sort of legislation that makes it simple to replace phone batteries.
Or, better yet, you should be able to hot swap the battery, which means that you can change one half of the battery, then the second half and the phone won’t shut down at all. Foldables make it easier since they already use 2 batteries, 1 for each half. Just wire them up in parallel and the voltage won’t drop when one is taken out for replacement by the user.
This makes no sense. How does a working phone “miss a few vitals parts” necessary to replace battery?
there’s a channel on YouTube, by louis rossman. you’ll find plenty of examples of bs answers from apple tech support in order to make you spend a great deal of money.
furthermore, nowhere it talks about “vital parts”. So yeah, it makes no sense, but for other reasons.
Read your comment twice, now I got what you mean. took me a bit, but you’re definitely right.
Does Louis rossman do anything else?
Because I can see making bank off gathering bad experiences. Statistically there must be dozens each day.
The anti-Apple crowd would binge the shit out of that.
Idiocracy is here and now.
You say “anti Apple crowd” like we shouldn’t all be exactly that. Corporations have nobody’s interest at heart but their own. Stop being a fanboy, stop feeling any kind of loyalty for a bunch of rich fucks that’ll screw you over first chance they get. Pro consumer is the only reasonable position to have.
I imagine this is how Apple would justify it - if there are internal screws or shields missing then it’s a sign that it has been repaired previously by a 3rd party. It might work fine, but it’s not to the original Apple specification.
The Apple store don’t want to take responsibility for those repairs so refuse to do further work in case it leaves them with liability.
“your phone is missing some parts”
I’m sorry what? Did they fall out when I turned it to the side?
I used to do 3rd party repairs, and it’s impossible to describe how fucked up some devices were that came to me from other repair places. Missing screws, shields, screws put back int he wrong places and occasionally they had worked with a bad tech that damaged the mainboard.
It’s almost like Apple is incredibly anti-consumer, and go out of their way to make buying a new phone more appealing than trying to repair the one you have
You think Apple is bad, let me tell you about a company named John Deere.
I went to the John Deere museum in Moline, and they were playing fucking devotional music about their tractors,
For God so loved the world that he gave us his sole-begotten tractor…
🤮🤑
…that we make with proprietary hardware & software that renders your tractor a brick when the electronics break…
Raaaammmmmennnn!!!
Oh mate, I’m aware of John Deere and their “but we can’t let the farmers repair their own equipment because the environment”
Yes, because independent repair shops are definitely going to sabotage your tractors to make them worse for the environment if you don’t step in and stop them!
It’s totally not about establishing a monopoloy to force farmers to pay exorbitant repair charges, or face paying for a whole new tractor entirely when you refuse to do repairs. Not at all!
/s in case it wasn’t obvious
How are they only just now coming to that conclusion.
A screen replacement for an iPhone is like 80% of the price of the new phone. They’ve been doing this for years now. This isn’t a great revelation.