Weekly Discussion

Removable batteries should never come back, despite what everyone says
Ilia Temelkov
Ilia Temelkov
Phonearena team
original poster
Ever since all flagship smartphones ditched the removable batteries, a very loud part of the tech community has been railing against this decision. Their main argument is that sealed phones limit the longevity of smartphones by not allowing users to change their batteries on their own. However compelling this may sound, it is nonsense.According to Counterpoint Research data, most people say they change their phones due to battery issues, followed by broken displays. However, this data is from back in 2017 when phones and their batteries were quite different.Today’s top flagships have longer-lasting batteries that can provide about three years of use without losing a significant portion of their capacity. This aligns with the consumer habit of changing smartphones every three years.But even if someone doesn’t want to change their whole phone, they can easily visit a service provider and get their battery replaced. Of course, doing this at home would be easier and probably cheaper, but it is a viable solution. This option could solve the potential battery issues of older devices, but it won’t change the fact that 3-year-old smartphones are usually not great devices anyway.You could argue that the latest Galaxies and Pixels have seven years of software support, including OS updates. However, none of these updates will include all new features after three or four years, and the reason will be the hardware, not the battery. The hardware is also the main reason budget smartphones don’t perform well after a few software updates. By the time their phone’s battery becomes unusable, most people will be drawn to the newer features and better performance of a new smartphone.Adding removable batteries to most modern smartphones would require drastic design changes that won’t make users happy. I hope we never see the metal and glass combo being changed back to creaky plastic covers because the removable battery dream is simply pointless.
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tokuzumi
tokuzumi says:
I would rather use a Google glass type of product rather than the apple style VR headset. Hopefully companies keep pushing the AR tech
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Brewski says:
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chaos3621
chaos3621 says:
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meanestgenius says:
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Naksut
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