I love just how committed this website is to its mission. It extends beyond content and tools, into influencing policy. They are doing good and being successful at it. It’s a template I hope to reproduce at a much smaller scale in my industry.
It helps that they are economically tied to their policy successes, as they are in the business of manufacturing and selling toolkits for DIY tech repairers.
The press seems to treat iFixit very favorably. I'm not quite sure why, as what they do is little different than Ford lobbying for truck-friendly policy or Smith & Wesson lobbying for gun-friendly policy. That said, they are nice enough folks and I wish them all the success in the world, especially as they are HQ'd here in my home town.
I think there's a very concrete difference between this and your examples
I think that ifixit misrepresent the actual repairability of the iphone with a 7 out of 10.
It doesn't take into account the economy part.
For instance, Iphone 15 display price 350€, s23 108€.
They are mostly similar, s23 has 120hz OLED, iphone has 60hz OLED. The phone sell for similar price in Europe (800 vs 869€)
The difference is I can buy s23 display from third party manufacturer, apple you can't or you loose feature you paid for like true tone.
Lots of repairs are like that though. The sum of the replacement parts can vastly exceed the price of just buying a new one (which is often a newer model). We even have terminology for that in the auto world where you can “total” a car because it costs more to fix than replace.
There are other hidden costs to repairs too. One is you’ve “broken the seal” and now your device isn’t “stock” anymore. The water seal might not work as well. The display connector might be slightly loose and tweak out. The screws might not be factory torqued down.
For a car it’s similar too… maybe after that accident the frame is now just slightly off kilter. Maybe there was that proverbial “extra mystery bolt” left over.
Then there is opportunity costs. Is repairing it really the best use of your time and money? What other things could you have done instead of repair? I dunno…
All I’m saying is, repeatability isn’t the end all be all. It’s yet another set of trade offs factored into product design like security, user experience, quality, cost, time to market, size and weight, durability, etc.
I think the score is fine. But there is a second score not mentioned that is “is it worth repairing”?
> We even have terminology for that in the auto world where you can “total” a car because it costs more to fix than replace.
It blows my mind that I never made this connection before.
It's also very common now for even superficially fairly minor danger to total a car because there's so much custom electronics all over a car that replacing the parts and wiring costs thousands in parts and days of labour, even if you can get the parts. Repairing aggressively unibody pressed frames with their aluminium and composite construction that can't just be welded is almost impossible. And even if it is, the insurers won't touch it because the manufacturers can't, won't and don't want to know how to agree that it's safe.
Phones and other electronics are not a lot different in that manufacturers don't really want you to fix them and any sop towards repairable phones is under duress from legislation or . Hell, good luck even finding a genuine battery, I can't even get one for a ThinkPad and they're supposed to be good for that.
To be honest I'm fairly cool on repairability for phones as they're so tightly engineered, it's genuinely hard to engineer and they cycle so fast the parts go out of production in weeks.
> superficially fairly minor danger to total a car because there's so much custom electronics all over a car
Even worse. Electric cars have a huge battery, that may have a compromised integrity after small bump. It is quite difficult to resell EV, if log shows airbags popped at any point!
> The difference is I can buy s23 display from third party manufacturer, apple you can't or you loose feature you paid for like true tone.
This iFixIt article made it fairly clear that the new version of iOS allows you to pair and calibrate first or third party parts after making a repair at home.
> it worked impressively smoothly on our vanilla iPhone 16: one click to pair and calibrate all components at once, and no bugs to be found.
One nit: Apple makes no claims about third party (ie not Apple Original parts) having the ability to be calibrated. Nor should they, since who knows what these third party parts are doing. I’ve seen displays for iPhones that are LCD panels. I’ve seen aftermarket OLED panels, that are not of the same quality… but actually OLED.
It's genuinely impressive to me that you can tool up the Shenzhen axolotl tanks and make any kind of unofficial screen for any phone, let alone an iPhone, without vendor support, and have it work and fit, and get to market in time. That's some pressure on the guys who get a new phone on their bench and get told to crack out the logic analyser and get going.
Why wouldn’t they, honestly? The displays are presumably mostly standard display interfaces with some custom protocols around some control. Year over year I doubt there are truly major changes to the protocols and mechanics, it becomes a form factor and fitting statement. Also, given most of this stuff is manufactured in that region… the domain knowledge is there.
I mean rationally I kind of know, but it's hard enough to get something hardware-y designed, built, tested, debugged and out on schedule and in spec when you have every scrap of information in front of you, let alone when it's a black box and you hope that there's no special sauce in the protocols.
Looking at the linked article, used parts are callibrated, third party parts don't have functionality blocked.
> with iOS 18, they would stop disabling True Tone and battery health for third-party parts.
https://www.ifixit.com/News/100266/the-end-of-parts-pairing-...
Skeptically, "if the parts can handle it" would be key in my view. How do I know true tone and battery health would be in any way accurate, if they're using who knows what display, and who knows what battery/BMS?
There is never a guarantee that a third party part works identically to a first party part regardless of what device you are repairing.
You're saving money, but taking a chance.
I agree with you. Hence why I’m saying this supposed statement by Apple isn’t really saying anything. They’ll allow it to work, but probably none of them will actually support True Tone since they don’t know what proprietary secrets Apple has for their displays. Not really apples problem.
Why would repairability and cost of parts have any relation?
Also, checking eBay, it looks like an oem display (not from apple) for the iPhone 15 is only $150-170. From apple directly it’s $235. By comparison, I can’t find any way to actually buy an OEM display for Samsung phones. They just offer repair services.
> Why would repairability and cost of parts have any relation?
Because at some point it ampers the repairability. If something is technically repairable but it cost more than buy a new one, can you really say it's repairable ?
> Also, checking eBay, it looks like an oem display (not from apple) for the iPhone 15 is only $150-170. From apple directly it’s $235. By comparison, I can’t find any way to actually buy an OEM display for Samsung phones. They just offer repair services.
I don't believe that apple is going to let you 'calibrate' a third party manufacturer display, so you lose feature that technically work.
Meanwhile on Samsung, or whatever other Android manufacturer, you put the new display and everything works as before.
So you can't use the price of iphone third party manufacturer to compare it, or else you got to add the price of the feature you loose, like true tone, faceid, and so on.
The $150 dollar price I quoted you is a used, OEM screen, that has a grading that indicates it’s essentially like-new. Which Apple has stated and released you can calibrate and use with existing phones starting with iOS18 as long as it isn’t a stolen part. Not a 3rd party screen that looks like crap, the real deal.
Both impact accessibility.
If the device can only be repaired by having extremely specialist tools, skills, etc. then it's still repairable, you just need to invest in those things which costs $$$. But it's hardly worth doing, because by the time you've done so the next iphone rolls around and the skills/tools lose most of their value.
If the device can easily be repaired but the replacement components cost so much it's hardly worth doing the end result is the same: Devices won't be repaired because it's not financially attractive. Which is exactly what Apple wants, they're only doing this because the EU is practically forcing them to.
If the physical part itself just costs a lot of money, it will have a high cost. And if it doesn’t, then the third party markets will thrive and solve this issue if the OEM is charging “too much” for it. Neither impacts a repairability score unless you want repairability to just be corresponding to how cheap something is, which would be nonsense.
This isn’t Apple being evil, it’s just basic cost of goods. It’s like complaining that a 10 yr old car is too expensive to repair cause the parts cost too much. Yeah… at some point they do, relative to the value of the car.
It's not about the OEM charging "too much". It's about the OEM sandbagging the market.
If that 10 year old car was designed with a non-standard shape battery, it would get a lower repairablity score. If additionally the OEM sued anyone who made batteries in that shape it would get an even lower repairability score. If on top of that the car was designed to turn on the check engine light if its battery was made by anyone other than the OEM then it would get an even lower score.
>> If that 10 year old car was designed with a non-standard shape battery, it would get a lower repairablity score.
Almost every battery in a phone is a 'non-standard' shape, even including when you could pull the back cover off and swap batteries. Companies have been making custom batteries since the dawn of the cell phone, pretty much.
>> If additionally the OEM sued anyone who made batteries in that shape it would get an even lower repairability score.
I'm not aware of this. Source? Making knockoff components using Apple's logo and such is not the same thing.
>> If on top of that the car was designed to turn on the check engine light if its battery was made by anyone other than the OEM then it would get an even lower score.
Where, exactly, is this message on an iPhone? You mean the single pop-up window, and the notice in the settings menu (that you can easily ignore)? Yeah, not the same thing. It's unobstrusive, yet visible enough so a person who buys one knows if they have 3rd party parts in their phone.
> Almost every battery in a phone is a 'non-standard' shape
The metaphor is not literal.
> Making knockoff components using Apple's logo and such is not the same thing
I think I was misremembering the lawsuit you are probably thinking of.
> Where, exactly, is this message on an iPhone
Again, the metaphor comparing iphones to cars is not literal.
Whoops! I guess you got me!
After all it really is actually super easy to buy new parts for Apple products either from Apple themselves or the thriving third-party market!
And on top of that, once your local repair shop has the parts, they are super easy to install.
Surely my damaged iphone mini 12 will be easily repaired at a reasonable price by the skilled technicians at the Genius Bar who have parts in stock and tools ready to go. It would be absolutely wild if their price for that service was based on the price of the latest iphone rather than the cost of parts and labor for the actual service. But certainly they wouldn't be able to get away with that due to, as we agreed earlier, the thriving market for third party parts and repair.
> Surely my damaged iphone mini 12 will be easily repaired at a reasonable price by the skilled technicians at the Genius Bar who have parts in stock and tool ready to go. It would be absolutely wild if their price for that service was based on the price of the latest iphone rather than the cost of parts and labor for the actual service. But certainly they wouldn;t be able to get away with that due to, as we agreed earlier, the thriving market for third party parts and repair.
Surely my damaged 4 year old car will be easily repaired at a reasonable price by a skilled mechanic at the car dealership who have parts in stock and tools ready to go. It would be absolutely wild if their price for that service was based on the price of the latest model year car. But certainly they wouldn’t be able to get away with that, thanks to the thriving third party mechanics.
Oh, except… yeah, these are the exact same thing pretty much. The only difference is cars have many more components and individually they cost less, whereas phones only have a handful of components and each cost a considerable portion of the phone cost.
Your specific complaint about the iPhone 12 mini seems extremely unfounded, as well. Their repair cost (which is totally turnkey) is $89. Seems extremely reasonable for a turnkey repair from a first party vendor. Surely, maybe you can buy a “new” 12 mini for $200… but this is just like cars. At some point it’s “mechanically totaled” and the repair cost doesn’t make sense. And that point changes for a car too, depending on if you use a dealership service department or a third party mechanic.
> Surely my damaged 4 year old car will be easily repaired at a reasonable price by a skilled mechanic at the car dealership who have parts in stock and tools ready to go. It would be absolutely wild if their price for that service was based on the price of the latest model year car. But certainly they wouldn’t be able to get away with that, thanks to the thriving third party mechanics.
Obviously the dealerships are typically more expensive but that is from marking up parts and labor not from trying to pressure you into buying a new car. If Ford had it the way Apple does brakes would be built in to the transmission, last for 60,000 miles, and be priced at $25,000 to repair.
My specific complaint about my 12 mini is that it needs a new frame, back glass, camera, and battery. $89 dollars is obviously unrealistic for those parts. And, like you say, phones have fewer parts that make up a larger portion of the total cost for the product. Unlike with a car, you can actually swap everything into a new frame pretty easily.
You need a new frame, a new back, a new camera, and a new battery, and you're confused why it would be outrageously priced to replace it? Basically the only things you aren't replacing are the mainboard, the speakers, and the display.
To continue stretching the car analogy, that's like saying you bring in a car to the dealership that only needs a new gas tank, new infotainment system, new bodywork and frame, and then you're outraged that they want to charge you $25k! Most of the car is damaged, you scrap it and some third party can salvage what's valuable and repair some other car.
You are wildly out of touch here.
The labor cost for replacing parts on a car isn't just another ballpark. It's another planet.
Obviously if you want to replace every part of the phone it is going to cost more altogether than a new phone. No reasonable person would argue that. And of course there are limits. The screen and mainboard are by far the most complex parts. The frame is trivial by comparison.
The problem is that there is effectively no real aftermarket for parts and repairs. Apple all but refuses to sell parts and makes using third party parts as onerous as possible.
They have been able to get away with it so far by riding the wave of quickly advancing mobile technology. But as next year's phone starts to look less and less different from last years phone, people are going to start to get serious about repairability and Apple is going to be forced to make some changes.
> The labor cost for replacing parts on a car isn't just another ballpark. It's another planet.
Then what’s your point? Labor costs on phones aren’t insignificant, and unless you want this done by people that make minimum wage (with minimum wage results, likely), it’s going to add substantially to the cost of a repair. Proportionally it will add a lot, too, since phones cost so little compared to cars.
> The problem is that there is effectively no real aftermarket for parts and repairs. Apple all but refuses to sell parts and makes using third party parts as onerous as possible.
Three points here:
1. Apple sells pretty much all of their own parts for phones up to 5 years old at this point. I don’t know how this is “refusing to sell parts”.
2. Many vendors (Samsung being notorious for this) don’t sell parts at all. Or if they do, it’s not many generations, and only specific models.
3. Third party parts for reasonable valuable (to the company making them) components do exist for most Apple devices. It might take a bit (a couple years) … but they definitely exist. Just check aliexpress some time. This is pretty much the same as cars; third party parts take awhile to come. Quality is variable, but that’s the case with any 3rd party part.
Do you really think that nearly half of the price of an iphone is the screen? How come competitors are able to offer screens at 1/3rd the price?
Keep in mind that apple is intentionally killing the third party market. You cannot make a third party screen for an iphone that behaves the same as a regular screen, the iphone firmware will detect this and prevent it.
Directly from Apple the screens are closer to 25-30%, depending on the phone. And what competitor? You can’t even buy a screen directly from Samsung. Closest I see is the pixel series via ifixit, which truly do seem to cost about the same as the apple parts. Maybe a bit cheaper, but also the pixel displays are not quite as nice as iPhone ones.
Most competitors are repaired with screens scavenged from other devices. Which is not possible with Apple devices, because of the hardware lock.
Except, it is? iOS 18 allows this natively now. And even before that, you could still use scavenged screens, it just would give you the “unable to validate” pop up.
Strong agree; 7/10 is a ludicrous score for a device that takes a heat gun and a proprietary screwdriver to open.
It is my opinion that iFixit is starting to turn from being actually hacker friendly into something of a mouthpiece for too-little-too-late corporate-sponsored initiatives designed to curb right-to-repair efforts. The money coming into their business from corporate programs is evident, and it's evident they are strongly perusing that market. I'm not convinced it's going to be a win for consumers though.
I found the recent release of their soldering station at $300 to be particularly distasteful. If you want to spend that kind of money on soldering tools, go for Metcal. Otherwise a Pinecil and a USB-C power bank give you exactly the same quality and control for 1/4 the price.
The electro-release adhesive is cool as hell though; no denying that.
Regardless of oem display cost, the new parts pairing feature in iOS 18 means no more loss of True Tone etc.
>price 350€, s23 108€.
S23 is way too cheap. I was expecting it to be 150. On the other hand Apple is way too expensive. Even accounting for their "tax" I was expecting 250.
Both have 120 hz, but iPhone has slightly higher pixel density, more nits, arguably better colors and stronger glass ("ceramic shield" vs guerilla glass).
The price of the phones is similar - good point there, but it's entirely possible that Apple has other components that are cheaper (especially electronics)
The iPhone 15 is 60hz.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/youre-wrong-60hz-on-the...
Where do you get those specs from? Everything I am seeing says that only the iPhone 15 Pro has the 120hz display.
Even the iPhone 16 isn’t 120 Hz, only the Pro and the Pro Max are.
gorilla* glass
I did buy a cheap 3rd party iPhone X screen. It’s bad beyond redemption. Imprecise touch, worse colors, asymmetric bottom lip. You can also get even cheaper LCD to replace the OLED, that sticks out 2 mm out of front case.
Not worth it at all.
Can we just be happy that Apple is slowly changing, and stop constantly moving on to the next thing to complain about? If you never look behind you you’ll lose sight of how much progress has been made.
I’d also disagree that they’re the same screen as another user pointed out, the iPhone has a better screen. Even if Apple decided to charge more for parts, that’s their choice. True Tone can now be used with 3rd party screens, so go buy the cheaper knockoff screen if you so choose.
Apple has done more to make this phone repairable in the last 3yrs than I think any OEM has done since waterproofing started and phones became sealed. The electrically released metal covered battery is going to be a huge thing for self repair. You or I might find it easy to just yank a battery out, but someone somewhere will follow the instructions and then puncture it and sue the OEM for the battery fire, and this hugely reduces that liability.
> Can we just be happy that Apple is slowly changing, and stop constantly moving on to the next thing to complain about?
No?
Why should we stop comparing Apple to its main competitors because they took a minor step in the right direction but still miss the mark by a wide margin? It's only fair to keep them on the hook for things where they do worse.
I don't want Apple to progress. Apple is not a kid to coddle. It's the most profitable company in the world. Being best in class in repearability is the bare minimum we should expect for them, not something we should hope for.
> The electrically released metal covered battery is going to be a huge thing for self repair.
They could just stop gluing battery entirely. It's not like it's an impossible engineering challenge. It's soon to be mandatory in the EU anyway.
> Why should we stop comparing Apple to its main competitors because they took a minor step in the right direction but still miss the mark by a wide margin? It's only fair to keep them on the hook for things where they do worse.
As someone who has repaired numerous cell phones over the last decade, I firmly believe the new iPhone is now far easier to repair than the new Samsung Galaxy, and I challenge you to prove me wrong. It might now be the most repairable mass market phone. You’re welcome to whine on the internet if you think that that is “holding them accountable”, but at the same time appreciate the change.
> They could just stop gluing battery entirely. It's not like it's an impossible engineering challenge. It's soon to be mandatory in the EU anyway
Disagreements over that not being the place of a government aside, while I suppose they could screw it down like a laptop, this is my point, they made it better and you’re still complaining. If it isn’t good enough for you then don’t buy the product and buy something else. If the entire market wanted repairable phones (instead of a maybe 1% that I myself am a part of) then they would make phones that fit together like legos. This grandstanding that there is a moral requirement of companies to design products in the way you want is silly.
> As someone who has repaired numerous cell phones over the last decade, I firmly believe the new iPhone is now far easier to repair than the new Samsung Galaxy, and I challenge you to prove me wrong. It might now be the most repairable mass market phone.
You are the one making grandiose claim.
Is it full of glue? Yes. Do they still tie spare parts origin to functionalities semi-arbitrarily? Yes. Are there spare parts far more expensive that they should be considering their actual costs? Also yes.
> Disagreements over that not being the place of a government aside, while I suppose they could screw it down like a laptop, this is my point, they made it better and you’re still complaining.
They could just do like the Fairphone or any other companies from the past decade and make it properly swapable.
Once again, I don't want them to make it better. I want them to make it properly repairable. I don't give a tosh that it's improving. They have unlimited budget if they want to.
> This grandstanding that there is a moral requirement of companies to design products in the way you want is silly.
It's not grandstanding. If you want to bury your head in the sand and pretend there is no issue with e-waste and obsolescence, that's your choice. Sadly we share the same planet so I will still do everything I can to force Apple to actually make good choices considering they don't seem to be able to do so unless they are forced to.
I don’t want spare parts from my stolen phone to work at all, let alone have degraded functionality. I will continue to support parts serialization
Given that Apple moved the goalposts in the first place (they literally invented an inferior screw head -- the Pentalobe -- to stymie repair), I'm steadfastly disinclined to give them much credit for slowly backtracking on anti-repair manufacturing techniques like battery adhesive that they themselves pioneered the use of first, in laptops no less.
Really, Apple invented it? Did they also invent a time machine to go back 5 years before it was first used on an Apple device to deliver a batch pentalobes to Sony in 2003?
Might want to not rely on Wikipedia for your nitpicking rebuttal to my point -- the Sony "Pentalobe" was NOT the same as Apple's, it is 5-flanged but has clearly cut-off tips: https://preview.redd.it/mdo85jqd6rcb1.jpg?width=3024&format=... -- and regardless, Apple's wide-scale use of these screw-heads was transparently anti-repair.
Did they also use that time machine to go back and invent replaceable batteries in mobile phones?
Ackshually, the pentalobe screwdrivers, commonly available now, are superior to Phillips as they are more resistant to cam-outs and tamper proof.
Who said I was comparing it to Phillips? Sure, Apple used to use Phillips for their case-back screws on their laptops, but Torx (superior to Pentalobe) already existed, and may have already been used by Apple elsewhere (I don't readily recall).
Tamper-proof? Hardly.
“mostly a good offering with a few omissions… a display assembly that’s too pricey to be an attractive repair option for most people.”
Not to mention Galaxy A55 which IMO offers superior value for money. I prefer it to even an S24 anyway.
but it's a samsung... all the preinstalled apps that you can't remove, all of the just straight-up dumb samsung apps that are bundled and can't be removed.
pass. everything samsung is doing lately makes them a company that I will no longer buy from.
apple isn't perfect, no one is, but any company that puts ads on top of my content that i paid for with money on my own tv that i paid for with money is getting kicked out of my house hastily and permanently.
Why am I downvoted -4 (worst possible, usually reserved for torrid comments) just because Samsung? I was replying to a post about Samsung.
Votes are a fickle thing. I’ll upvote ya
Their quote from the linked research paper:
”In the second scenario, anodic delamination is caused by the oxidation of the surface of the aluminum substrate and migration of Al3+ into the adhesive. This will lead to fast debonding since the substrate layer bonded to the adhesive is no longer supported.”
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/admi.202101...
The research team’s video of it in action (also linked in the article) is pretty impressive!
On seeing "12V for 60 seconds" in the video, I assumed it was just a heat thing - if the adhesive strip is a low-ish resistance, you could heat it up by applying current, with a more standard adhesive. Which makes me wonder if that simpler approach has been considered?
Millions of dollars of research and materials science, successfully integrated into Apple’s billion dollar iPhone manufacturing line, solving a real repairability problem in a way that’s almost magical…
And you are honestly asking if they thought to maybe try heating it up?
> honestly asking if they thought to maybe try heating it up?
yeah it's amazing to me that laymen often do not understand that experts have more understanding than they do. i see this all the time and it's incredible.
"surely i, who am very smart at what i do, when i turn my attention to this other thing, will notice something in mere seconds that those who have spent years focusing on this have not considered. that is entirely plausible."
I know that no one has those exact thoughts and I am obviously exaggerating for effect, but the root of that exaggeration is the same as I see every day. laymen thinking they are smarter than experts in the expert's own field. i don't understand where this is coming from but it is very common since the pandemic.
> I don't understand where this is coming from but it is very common since the pandemic.
It seems to come from a misunderstanding of expertise. Experts are often deeply focused on a specific issue and provide highly specialized advice. The problem arises when people either dismiss this advice outright, believing they know better, or when experts themselves overstep and present their advice as the only viable solution, missing the broader picture.
In the case of Apple’s screen removal method, it’s not that experts didn’t think of simpler approaches like using heat, but rather that they likely considered and discarded it for technical reasons. Just because a solution seems obvious to us doesn’t mean it hasn’t already been carefully evaluated by those with far more experience in the field.
This gets to the heart of why decision-makers must take expert advice but balance it with other factors. Experts, by nature, can become so focused on specific details—like examining individual leaf cells—that they fail to see the trees, let alone the entire forest. That’s why we shouldn't let any single expert dictate the entire process. If you let a lawyer design your product, it might be lawsuit-proof but unusable. If a security expert designed it, it might be unhackable but frustrating to use. And if an abstract artist designed it, it might be beautiful but completely impractical.
The pandemic is an extreme example of this problem. We didn’t just listen to epidemiologists; we listened to a specific subclass—the doomsday epidemiologist. The more balanced experts, who understood their role as advisors and recognized how their guidance needed to fit into the bigger picture, were sidelined. This led to morally reprehensible policies, like forcing children to die alone in hospitals and isolating the elderly in nursing homes, all because visitors were banned. In Australia, they even killed 15 shelter dogs, including puppies, just to prevent volunteers from traveling to pick them up [0]—another example of blindly following extreme advice. These kinds of decisions, made in the name of public health, are why many people have lost trust in “experts.”
Good product design—or public policy—requires input from multiple experts and a balance of priorities. Letting one perspective take over is a recipe for disaster.
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/08/23/austral...
Lack of trust in institutions caused by repeated failures of said institutions in recent decades leads to lack of trust in anyone credentialed.
Their description of aluminum-ion migration makes it sound like the physical bond is destroyed by the change in structure of the material due to the application of current.
Everything is a smoke machine if you use it wrong enough.
That is a fantastic song
That approach is the current strategy for every other phone on the market.
The Idea was to embed heated filament in the adhesive and use that to release the battery, that's not used in every other phone on the market. Currently, you heat the whole phone/battery.
You're still having to heat the whole phone to release the front or rear panel adhesives. Battery adhesives are typically released with a pull-tab, not heat.
Correct, especially because heat + lithium battery = bad idea.
Except FairPhone.
> “enter through either the front or the back” design
Not having watched The Office in a while, this immediately made me imagine Michael Scott's response, and made my morning a bit brighter.
It makes me happy to live in a world where scores of intelligent people dedicate their lives to creating a magnum opus and end up with glue. Beautiful. Sure, we don’t really build cathedrals anymore but at least the world of adhesives (and packaging) is thriving.
I first realized that glue is the "glue" holding the world together when I read about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Dig_ceiling_collapse
It was caused by using the wrong glue to hold up a 26 ton slab of concrete - which immediately caused me to say "There is a right glue?"
Heck, you could reasonably call cement glue, in which case it’s really holding the world together.
"On August 8, 2007, a Suffolk County Grand Jury indicted epoxy company Powers Fasteners, Inc., on one charge of involuntary manslaughter, with the maximum penalty in Massachusetts being a fine of $1,000."
Dude..
> In January 2008, the state and the office of United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Michael Sullivan, reached a settlement with the contractors responsible for the failure, which included no criminal charges and no bar against receiving future contracts. The Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff joint venture paid $405 million, and smaller contractors paid a total of $51 million.
They ended up settling with the contractors for much more.
Given those charges were used to leverage $22M in settlements and a wide recall of the product, something outside the mere $1k seems to have been a useful bludgeon.
Actual fines and settlements added up to about $500 million.
> we don’t really build cathedrals anymore
I visited a recently constructed Hindu temple in Atlanta last year. Very impressive. All imported marble. Sounds like these guys have been building them all over:
> A number of shikharbaddha mandirs (large traditional stone mandirs) were inaugurated in major cities; London (1995), Nairobi (1999), New Delhi (2004), Houston (2004), Chicago (2004), Swaminarayan Akshardham (New Delhi) (2005), Toronto (2007), Atlanta (2007), Los Angeles (2012), and Robbinsville (New Jersey) (2014).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bochasanwasi_Akshar_Purushotta...
> Sure, we don't really build cathedrals anymore
Maybe not the Catholics, but the Latter Day Saints are still building plenty:
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/temples/photo-gallery/sa...
(For context, they refer to them as temples rather than cathedrals , but the general idea of it being a place of worship with lots of effort put into architecting it remains)
I think this comment ignores a lot of context.
Cathedrals were the result of centuries of research into materials science, physics, and geometry -- and that's just considering the buildings themselves, not even the often-intricate religious art within.
Some of the challenges and solutions in cathedral architecture took generations to solve; in many gothic and neogothic cathedrals with particularly tall, internally-unsupported naves, solutions like flying buttresses were thought up to support the walls externally -- sometimes with multiple layers of buttresses-upon-flying-buttresses. Developing the right cement and figuring out which type of stone you could use alone were often a project that took years, especially for landmark churches.
These churches sometimes took decades or centuries to build, depending on how you measure it (basically, if you include significant reconstructions).
They also weren't representative of the average construction project in essentially any region where there are cathedrals; those were more likely to be houses, shops, and other commercial buildings like port structures.
Things like flying buttresses or new, opulent-but-functional arch designs also weren't representative of the average innovation in those times. Depending on where you look, that might be stuff like, a new loom variant that lets you produce new patterns, or a new kind of cheese that ages quickly while having a similar enough flavour to a slower-aging, more expensive type of cheese.
My overarching point is -- at any given point in time, the average invention is small and boring. Specialists are a valuable resource, yes, but the more specialized they are, the smaller and more boring their contributions will seem to the average person outside of that specialization. Landmark innovations are built on thousands of smaller innovations made over years or decades, and those smaller innovations were usually invented by someone who's spent the past 25 years of their lives obsessing over that tiny thing, having published dozens of papers and argued for years about something you've likely never even heard of.
We build a million things each year which are a lot more impressive than cathedrals.
China built a entire high speed rail network that's about the size of all the other ones in the world, combined, and they did it in 20 years.
China built a high speed Maglev train between Beijing and Shanghai, I think Japan is going to build one soon, too.
The US has been building hyper tall pencil looking skyscrapers in Manhattan for about 20 years.
There are tons of amazing tunnels being built around the world, as we speak.
India, China, Indonesia, etc. are building amazing subway networks in tens of cities.
The scale, complexity and sheer audacity of what we're building has never been seen in the history of the world.
Sagrada Familia is still under construction and likely will be for a while yet. :)
Also at least one DiY cathedral build: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justo_Gallego_Mart%C3%ADnez
We build cathedrals almost daily, and they dwarf any cathedrals ever created. We just call them factories. Instead of exemplifying the unknown face of some made up entity, we create them to exemplify the industry and fecundity of humanity.
Glue in an iPhone impacts (for sure indirectly) more people than a cathedral ever would.
That you can have some glue unstuck by applying power, and even control which side ends up with the residue by changing the polarity just blows my mind. Really cool!
Why are batteries usually glued to the body?
Wouldn't just some thin rubber layer prevent whatever movement they are trying to prevent?
Rubber alone would require pressure pushing the battery against the housing to maintain the battery position during a drop. This pressure against the underside of the display module would mess with the display.
Adhesive is needed because there can’t be any pressure against the underside of the display module, and the battery can’t be allowed to move even a slight amount during drop impacts.
Also batteries under pressure is a dangerous and bad idea
If this was true, phones with replaceable batteries would be impossible.
You can still put the battery in a box, and make it true inside the box.
The box takes up internal volume that could be used for more battery
In reality, replaceable batteries aren't glued inside some sort of box. Glue simply isn't necessary. It's probably just slightly easier to use a solution with glue instead of one without glue.
Not impossible, just less durable. See also: sockets instead of soldered chips, connectors instead of soldered wires.
Phones with replaceable batteries typically were more durable, not less. (Though that may have to do with using plastic cases that are more durable than glass.)
> If this was true, phones with replaceable batteries would be impossible.
They're thicker to account for a solid plastics barrier between the battery compartment and the display backside to protect the display from the user during battery replacement. Glueing the battery to the phone backplate allows the manufacturer to skip the .5mm of plastic.
Would anyone care if their phone was .5mm thicker?
I realize if this logic was applied to everything the phone could double in thickness, but for a consumable part like a battery, it seems worth the sacrifice to make the repair trivial for the average user armed with nothing but a small screw driver.
Most people already put their expensive thin phones in thick cases, so, no, besides dumb teenagers, I doubt anyone would care.
But simultaneously, I don't know if that many people would consider it to be selling point either nowadays. Battery capacities don't seem to shrink as quickly anymore, such that the phone probably gets damaged/stops receiving updates/is replaced anyway by the time the battery would need swapping.
Although perhaps that'll change now that the changes between even 2-3 year models are getting pretty small and software support periods are increasing.
It would be a lot more than .5mm and yes, I would care.
I will rather pay the extra 50€ in case I need to change the battery in a few years.
Except with a replaceable battery you can also have two batteries for emergency and get 100% charge in a minute when needed. This is what I do.
Because the volume it takes up could always just be used for more battery instead
> Would anyone care if their phone was .5mm thicker?
People not, but marketing people do.
I don’t understand the mindset that marketing people somehow trick millions of users. Most of marketing is figuring out what people want and convincing them your product meets those needs.
There isn’t really a marketing strategy of “nobody values this but we will fight to the death to get the product designed that way so we can spend a ton of money convincing consumers to want something they don’t”.
Or, let me rephrase that, there is no sustainable marketing strategy like that. People do try (see: New Coke, Humane AI pin).
Phones with replaceable batteries use plastic, and people really hate plastic (they use "cheap plastic" as a synonym for "plastic"). So they rather buy a phone that is a little bit slimmer and has a glass back.
(Manufacturers probably also like phones that have to be replaced in a few years due to battery age.)
Marketing people love some metric they can use to differentiate from competition. A phone gets thinner, lighter and survives more fall height or water depth. A PC gets a faster CPU (anyone thinking back to the megahertz wars [1] or the gigahertz wars [2]?), a bigger SSD or more RAM.
[1] https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/articles/1538
[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/03/intel-revives-the-mh...
I think they want to leave some space so that the battery can expand. Easiest way to do that is to glue it on one side and leave a bit of space on the other side.
I love how they learned from their mistakes of the old macbook pro. Batteries need ability to expand ever so slightly. Same reason why cranes are able to move freely with the wind when not in use.
Huh. I had no idea cranes are allowed to freely rotate with the wind. Makes sense, just one of those things I'd never thought about.
Neat!
Why not add a valve? Every cylindrical cell has one, but manufacturers seem to be allergic to adding one on lipo packs. Apparently having them swell to 5x the size and break the device casing is preferable.
Lipo battery gas contains flammable and poisonous chemicals - including Hydrogen fluoride. Swelling slightly in normal use and occasionally rupturing is safer over-all than off gassing all the time.
From wiki:
> Hydrogen fluoride is an extremely dangerous gas, forming corrosive and penetrating hydrofluoric acid upon contact with moisture. The gas can also cause blindness by rapid destruction of the corneas.
Okay I’m really going to prioritize throwing away my old android devices now.
No! Take those devices to electronics recycling. They DO NOT go into your municipal trash. Lithium-ion batteries can start fires inside your garbage truck, forcing the truck to dump its flaming contents onto the street. Electronics contain hazardous materials. And electronics contain valuable materials worth recycling. Where I live, it is illegal to put electronics in your municipal trash.
Throwing away is a real hassle. You often buy a new phone because the old one is broken. So data is on there but you cant turn it on. Get a drill out? Not sure I want to breath in that dust.
Buy an iPhone and don’t worry about recycling it because storage encryption means it doesn’t matter. You can never plan for when you might lose a device.
Just put a soldering iron over the epoxy on the ssd chips, get it really hot to ensure the sillicon gets heated to at least 100C and your data will be gone forever in a completely non-functional chip.
Microwave? Might be easier to avoid the fumes than the dust from drilling. Probably easier to drill outside and wear an N95 mask and goggles though.
Most laptops use cylindrical cells for their battery pack, each one with a valve. I really doubt this is any kind of actual problem, more like an excuse given to reduce costs at the expense of the consumer.
Standard lead acid batteries in every car and UPS also release H2S in vast quantities when old and charged, and nobody seems to care.
> accasionally rupturing
You know this is most likely results in a fire right? There is no case where even a slight chance of it happening is safer.
Can you name any current laptop model that uses cylindrical cells? I haven't encountered any cylindrical cells when opening a laptop in well over a decade.
My old G771 definitely has them, though that one is like 8 years old or so now? The Gigabyte A5 looks like it might have one, but it's hard to tell without tearing the battery apart. I'm sure lots of gamer laptops still run on 18650s.
But yeah they mostly do lipos these days for thinness and weight reduction despite the obvious drawbacks. I wouldn't really ever buy a laptop with a lipo myself, shit's just gonna inflate and split it in half.
It's not just laptops anyway, EVs, power tools, flashlights, power banks, li-ion drop in replacement car/ups batteries. Anything that has a lipo has at some point had a cylindrical model too.
I'm not questioning whether cylindrical cells used to be popular for laptops; they were an iconic part of old ThinkPads. But I've opened up plenty of chunky gaming laptops in recent years from Asus, Dell/Alienware, MSI, Razer and have seen nothing but LiPo batteries. I think cylindrical cells may have genuinely disappeared from the laptop market at this point, unless they're still around in some niche that's significantly more obscure than big heavy gaming laptops. Most laptops these days that opt for a thick enclosure are doing it for the sake of the cooling system, not for the sake of fitting in a thick battery.
Edit: I looked at the Gigabyte A5 and agree that it's probably using cylindrical cells. It appears to be a Clevo system, so there were probably other brands reselling as well. But it's not quite a current model (3 year old processor), and the reviews seem to agree that the battery is one of the worst things about the machine, because the capacity is way too small for that class of machine.
A valve is a one time only device to prevent an explosion in the event of thermal runaway. It’s not going to accommodate the slight expansion and contraction which are a normal part of the charge cycle for lithium batteries. If the battery is kept under mechanical pressure in order to avoid movement (without the use of an adhesive) then there is no place for the battery to expand to. That sounds like a recipe for disaster.
Pretty sure the airtight casing is here on purpose to trap flammables gas a dying cell create. Without it it would be very unsafe to use this type of batteries.
I guess using cylindrical cells in power tools, laptops, electric bikes and cars, power banks, flashlights, etc. must be super unsafe then, since they all have valves that release gas instead of inflating.
A container that traps flammable gasses is called a bomb
This is not usually a design goal
No, a container that contains flammable gasses and then destructively allows them to escape is a bomb, one that just inflates is arguably the equivalent of a self inflating pillow.
Gasses create pressure A phone casing is not a pressure vessel This isn’t going to work
The rubber mat is only going to work if the battery is pressed against it with a lot of force. An adhesive will hold with no pressure at all.
Size, adhesive is thinner than any kind of physical layer surrounding it. I would presume as well it's better for thermals for allowing heat away from the battery.
My guess is that even the tiniest movement would wear out the battery's casing.
Drop protection is one of the main reasons, especially when you use batteries with soft shells.
I find the glue thing nice but my sceptic mind let me think that it could be another great trick to fight competition with generic battery manufacturers.
The glue goes with the battery, and there is probably a few patents on this magic glue, so generic battery manufacturers will be prevented to be able to add this glue to the new batteries they will want to sell.
In my experience, 3rd parties aren't worried about being identical to the original design. They'd just give you a square of double sided sticky tape to hold the battery down with, and accept that if you ever wanted to replace the battery again you'd have to destroy it to get it out.
The battery measurement software will never work again with any third party battery replacement. You will never know your actual battery value and the phone may shut off when there is plenty of juice available. Also Apple has software to detect if any part of the phone is replaced and will refuse repairs if any part is replaced. I was told this by the Best Buy authorized repairman as he spent 20 minutes checking my phone and I was told not to leave because they would refuse the repair if my phone had been touched!
This is no longer true with iOS 18 parts pairing, fortunately. Dunno about Best Buy policies though.
It changed last week with iOS 18 release: https://www.macrumors.com/2024/09/11/ios-18-repair-assistant...
The article refers to original Apple parts, which can be activated as genuine now tru the app and parts from stolen phones get rejected.
I would guess that not original parts which could work get refused by the app?
I think vanishingly few parts you buy for iphones are clones these days - everything is stripped from dismantled phones.
Batteries being perhaps the only exception, and even then, the battery identification chip and flex cable is original apple, just the cell is switched out.
iFixit speculated that the tape is from Tesa. Tesa says it has filed "50+ patents for 'Debonding on Demand' adhesive tapes' … 'using various mechanisms such as temperature, electricity, laser and electromagnetic induction': https://www.tesa.com/en/about-tesa/press-insights/stories/de...
So generic battery manufacturers could presumably buy the tape from Tesa, license production themselves, risk producing their own variants, or supply replacements without electrical debonding (the consumer probably doesn't care that the replacement battery doesn't use the same debonding tech their original battery used).
Would this be really necessary for a replacement battery? Are many people replacing the battery twice over the life of the phone?
Random question related to the photos of the phone's motherboard: Why does the PCB have so many holes in it? It looks very unusual. There's quite a large area with nothing but holes.
If you’re referring to the edges then those are vias. Apple has been stacking PCBs like this since the iPhone X. See step 14 in https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+X+Teardown/98975
They're not holes (though there are probably many vias there to connect to the ground planes and signal traces, but on this board the vias will be tiny and will either be under the solder resist or under the solder blobs). They're soldering lands for where the two halves of the mainboard are soldered together into a sandwich via some kind of thicker PCB interposer, which can carry the signals between the boards. This is probably an order of magnitude or more cheaper and far, far less volume-consuming and way more robust than standard mezzanine connectors. But rather tricky to repair!
Look at the video in the article around 7:29.
The article calls out the soldered-on heatsink plate, but it's not very clear from the pictures how it actually works in the stack-up without reference to the video. I don't know why they didn't do a better close up of both sides of that, maybe it's in a different article.
I'm not quite up to date on modern electronics, but I assume they are ground-stitching vias - connections to the ground plane optimized in size and number to reduce electromagnetic interference.
Here's a decent explanation: https://circuitcellar.com/research-design-hub/basics-of-desi...
Thanks for that link.
“Circuit Cellar” reminded me of something, and led me to find this is the descendant of Steve Ciarcia’s 1980s BYTE magazine column. After several iterations, it looks like Steve sold it to an employee.
Not exactly sure what you're looking at, but aren't they just stitching vias placed there for shielding purpose: https://resources.altium.com/p/everything-you-need-know-abou...?
Are you sure these are holes? Looks like soldering pads to me.
Weight reduction, presumably?
Damn you just gave someone at the apple marketing team an end of year bonus:
"Inspired by the starter key of the legendary Porsche 917..."
The article says that 9V batteries have fallen out of favor and links to this explanation that makes no sense to me:
A 9 volt battery uses six smaller 1.5 volt cells connected in series to achieve its 9 volts. But cramming that many cells into a compact enclosure leads to less space, resulting in lower energy density and shorter lifespan.
Why would a 9V battery have less energy density than 6 ordinary AA cells of 1.5V each? If you shrink down AA cells to the size and shape to pack into the rectangular 9V form factor, isn’t it exactly the same energy density as full size AA’s?
The encapsulation of the six small cells takes up a significant fraction of the volume of a 9V battery.
Because what is in a 9 volt is 6 AAAA batteries. They are smaller than even an AAA battery. Only thing I know that uses them is some of the surface drawing pens and the like.
That said if you need 9 volts ask a church. I know we would gladly hand you a box of half full ones as you have to pull them out of the wireless mics before they die. And older Shure mics are 9 volt.
> Because what is in a 9 volt is 6 AAAA
But then the question would shift to: Why wouldn’t a AAAA cell have the same energy density of a AA cell? Remember that the argument is about energy density, not total energy.
By the way, I think that fsh’s reply is a convincing answer: it’s the extra packaging that kills the density.
The current collector also takes up relatively more volume, on top of the packaging (the wall thickness would be the same, and it's not a trivial part of the volume of small cell batteries).
Perhaps interestingly, some 9V batteries (Varta comes to mind) have a stack of cells with rectangular cross section instead that of a cylinder (like AAAA), which suggests an improvement in energy density.
Tech apart, all this is still planned obsolescence, with malicious compliance, just to avoid using removable battery or fixing a battery in place with screws, that would make it easy to repair a device.
The tradeoff is that you would lose impact resistance. Consider the moment of impact when a phone hits a hard floor: the relatively heavy battery has its force distributed over the large area of the adhesive and absorbed by it, vs very high localized forces at the screw mounts and lowest corner that will more likely result in deformity or breakage.
I have a 12 Pro Max that I bought after years as an android user. This thing is almost 4 years old, I never used a case or any kind of protection. It has fallen from tables or slipped from my hand into hard tile floor too many times for me to count. Other than some slight chipping and scratches on the metal enclosure, nothing ever broke.
I just assumed by now that waterproofing was caput because of all the falls and acted accordingly keeping it far even from splashes.
Last weekend we had a party here at home, the whole family and friend at pool, barbecue and beer. I am in the pool, and "hey, someone dropped the phone in the pool, folks!".
I retrieve, and it was my phone. Other than the annoying message that it couldn't charge because the charging port was wet until it got dry, no problems, so I think waterproofing is still working.
Maybe I am lucky, but I had flagship Android phones that I paid as much for as I would pay for a flagship IPhone at the time, and none of them have been so durable, either I got a cracked screen, or didn't have updates anymore, or it got progressively slower around the 2 years mark. I think the only smartphone I had in my whole life as durable as this one was my Sony P910 that I got in 2004 only to replace it with a Motorola Cliq some 5 years later.
> Consider the moment of impact when a phone hits a hard floor
In my personal experience with cell phones with removable batteries, whenever one of them hit a hard floor, all that happened was that the battery cover and the battery were ejected. You just had to put the battery and battery cover back into the phone, turn it on, and everything worked fine (perhaps with a few extra cosmetic scratches on the phone's plastic casing).
That seems pretty unlikely to be the failure mechanism for a phone that's waterproof.
The Samsung Galaxy S5 was waterproof, and featured a user-replaceable battery (which sometimes included a self-ejection function).
Building IP-rated submersible widgets that have removable parts isn't common in the world of consumer pocket computers these days, but it's not impossible either.
There are plenty of systems held together by screws and other removable devices which are waterproof.
Screws will weigh a lot more than the glue and take up more volume. You'd probably need 3-4 screws to keep the largest mass item in the phone secure. Also the screws would time it take to assemble, and increase points of manufacturing failure (incorrectly installed screws). Nobody wants a replaceable battery with the compromises. For smartphones, better weatherproofing probably decreased total phone waste vs fully repairable phones simply due to water damage.
Two of my housemates have just bought new iPhone 16 Pro and ProMax. Between them, and associated accessories, it's cost them over AUD$5k. My phone is a cheap android, and cost AUD$290.
I can't see where they get 10 times the value. Yes, it's got a better camera.
Where is the value with iPhone?
The below is not a scientific opinion. But it is an opinion.
Apple is 100% milking the buyer in a way the lower end Android chain just isn't in the business of.
People don't not buy top flight iPhones because something else is worse, it's because they 1) can't afford it (priced out) or don't "know" better (don't have an appreciation for just how great the experience is).
Maybe, a top flight Apple experience really is 10x a lower end Android experience.
First, it's the fact that everything has a decent (if by now overbearing) design language and everything (more or less) just works and fits in the Apple ecosystem, and the momentum to date has meant the feature set and 3rd party app offering is pretty darn good (Anrdoid may have great hardware and an equivalent feature-set in software, but is it as consistent and polished or truly well-designed overall?).
Second, it's the fact that there are no good alternatives. Sorry, but the Android ecosystem is not good enough. Not close, not second best, just a non starter, for Apple acolytes.
Third, there is no serious competition. Ok, there are oddball more independent offerings, but let's be real. They are nowhere near as polished.
Therefore, nothing much is really pushing top flight Apple prices down other than people's ability to pay. Because enough "experiences" have been pushed to mobile by now, it's sort of a necessity to have something to answer that need.
Maybe, someone, somewhere, could make a serious competitor to iPhone. It is 100% possible. But it does not seem to be done now.
And so, the price is what Apple has figured out people are able to pay in order to maximize overall corporate profit.
Is it worth it? Well, if it enables serious business, then, yes, best Apple phone and best apple laptop are worth it, easily.
The problem is this (best iPhone) became the stack for mobile when things (capabilities all around, specs, and prices) were more middling, and it's hard for such people to go to Android. And it's hard to juggernaut into serious competition in the particularly highly complex technical space because of the hardware and software investments made in the past couple of decades that have really built up. (When iPhone started it didn't have copy/paste, but look at the over-complexity now.)
> we hustled over to their battery guide, which sure enough described passing 9V through this fancy new adhesive.
Oh, come on guys, you don't pass a voltage through something, you apply a voltage to it and then (if it's conductive) a current will pass through it.
I come to HN for exactly this. /srs
Is it true that after a battery replace or other service the waterproof seal is compromised? Maybe they'd be able to restore this after a battery replace in some way.
Generally yes but there are ways to repair said seal. The difficult part is testing that the seal is up-to-standard without risking the hardware and data inside.
seems like a thinly veiled advert for a ridiculosly priced soldering iron + base.
Have you actually looked at it, sure it’s expensive but there’s nothing else like it.
At that price point, perhaps. Metcal and JBC run circles around this thing every day of the week, though.
Between the Pinecil and the TS100 (et al) there are plenty of products out there which are similar enough in the segment of reasonably compact, fast, feature rich soldering irons.
Would it be possible to clip the ground and red wire in reverse to glue the same battery back again?
Unfortunately, no. When you reverse the polarity, the adhesive is left on the housing instead of the battery. iFixit has shown it in a video [0].
Does apple still hardware lock all of the components? If so, how is any of this useful?
Clickbait. They don't show the actual process.
"Revolutionary battery"
Funny, 20 years ago we had hard cased batteries in our cell phones and we could just pull them out.
I fully expect Apple to release a phone in the future with a removable battery and claim it is some incredible invention of theirs when it was Apple that pushed everyone to the non removable battery in the first place.
> Apple that pushed everyone to the non removable in the first place.
How so? If removable batteries were favored by consumers it would seem the Android devices that offered them far longer would’ve continued to have them.
The "Free Market" showed that it is way more profitable to sell a shinny skinny phone that many replace instead of fixing after a year.
Apple successfully brainwashed consumers via their brilliant ad compains that thinner and shiny is better than usability, longevity and the environment.
Samsung and others copied what made more money.
Maybe you’re right. Or maybe people aren’t brainwashed and instead are buying what they want.
We in tech, myself certainly included, often have an idea of what people should want or prioritize rather than what they do.
20 years ago we didn't have today's battery technology or capacities.
AIUI Apple didn't push anyone, Apple would be happy to be the vendor with the longest battery lifetime: If you use a thin foil instead of a hard shekll and glue it into place for stability, of course you have a bit of extra space inside the battery.
> Apple didn't push anyone
They indirectly did. The "Free Market" showed that it is way more profitable to sell a shinny skinny phone that many replace instead of fixing after a year. No one cares about what is actually better for the user when more money can be made. Prime example of that is when apple removed the ESC key in favor of a touchbar. That doesn't even address the other issues such as the environment which has an even smaller interest.
> instead of fixing after a year
Back in those days phones would effectively become obsolete after a year or two anyway (from the perspective of a significant number of consumers) so I'm not sure that mattered too much.
Also there were plenty of Android phones with replaceable batteries available for years, the market just didn't value that compared to the visual and technical design improvements that weren't compatible with user-replaceable batteries.
Also modern batteries are generally a lot better.
> Prime example of that is when apple removed the ESC key in favor of a touchbar
How? Apple tried that, it failed, they recognized their mistake and reverted to normal keyboards i.e. it's an actual case of the free market working as expected and the opposite of what you're claiming. Also how do you think Apple could have made more money by adding the touchbar? Surely it's significantly more expensive than an extra row of keys...
Of course it didn't stop Dell going down the same path a few years latter due to who knows what reasons...
If it was for the "free market" you wouldn't have usb-c at Apple.
Sure, of course it doesn't always work. Did I imply otherwise?
Especially for minor annoyances, design optimizations/flaws like USB-C, glued batteries, no side-loading etc. that don't outweigh the other advantages that specific product has over it's competitors for the overwhelming major of consumer.
I personally found Apple sticking to lighting to be a minor inconvenience at most but it might have been different for other people.
I have a cable that'll charge all of my battery-operated devices, except my work phone. My work phone needs a special cable. Is that a middling annoyance, unreasonably annoying or… both?
Mild inconvenience? Compared to having a Macbook with a touch bar at least.
The EU demand gave them a deadline more than anything. It was pretty clear they were moving to USB-C at some point.
The shop that replaces my batteries also makes a nice income from reselling one-year-old iphones.
I know some people consider replacing an almost new phone unethical, no matter how it's done. That seems a bit calvinist… the iphone can be sold for about half price and the buyer will get support and upgrades for 5+ years. From my environmentalist point of view, I don't see anything to complain about. Some people pay Apple a pretty penny to get the New Shiny, other people get a well-built device at a good price with comparatively long support, Apple profits, all three are happy.
I imagine making a phone IP68 rated with a swappable battery is not trivial.
All iPhones pre the iPhone 7 were not water-resistant (IP67). The first water-resistant (IP67) Samsung was the Galaxy S5 and it had a removable battery. The Samsung Galaxy S5 was released in 2014!
If removing the battery requires an electrical current, it wouldn't be surprising if, in the future, Apple adds another layer of control, like requiring a digital signature to authorize battery removal
It would be surprising to me, considering this is one of several actions done to make iPhones easier, not more difficult, to repair.
I was thinking they could add a little button to redirect the current from the battery, so it can release itself.
It can also be a good thing: given the EU's 2027 requirement for user-replaceable batteries, this could ensure the battery can only be changed if the phone isn’t stolen.
Or maybe just ensure the phone can only be used if it isn't stolen?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding this. Do we have data on changing the battery of a stolen phone having any meaningful impact on people/society?
I wonder if in the near future we all just share phones like you would a phone booth. Have devices everywhere or the capability on any device or anything electronic since it will be all wireless and connected anyway. You'd sign in via bio-metrics or some way to securely and uniquely identify yourself quickly.
How much data is on your phone? How much sensitive data is on there? Do you really want to wait to download all that crap, and run the risk of picking up a public phone that’s been set up to clone it all somewhere?
Given the activation lock on phones most stolen iphones are now used for parts.
> Maybe I'm misunderstanding this. Do we have data on changing the battery of a stolen phone having any meaningful impact on people/society?
At least we know one boundary - in London, about 91k phones were stolen in 2022, of which a lot are expected to end up shipped to China [1] to be either parted out or its identifiers reflashed so that they can be re-sold. The true number is likely to be significantly higher, as not everyone is willing to go to the police and deal with the paperwork when someone snatched their older-issue phone on the subway when the police doesn't do shit anyway.
And the latter part is the problem. The UK could impose inspections on outgoing parcels, say to listen for Find My BTLE beacons, and China could impose the same kind of inspections on incoming parcels or shut down the companies buying up clearly stolen property. But UK politics are too busy embroiling themselves in bullshit scandals and China most likely actively wants to contribute to the growing sense of destabilisation in Western societies, so here we are.
Assume an average value of 300 € per stolen phone, and alone London's citizens and visitors experience 30 million € in damage from stolen phones alone. It's utter madness.
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13757041/Chinese-ci...
Parent was about "EU's 2027 requirement for user-replaceable batteries" and changing batteries on stolen phones. To be it still doesn't make sense.
Sure, stuff are stolen and resold, sometimes as part. I'm not denying it. Not sure how user-replaceable batteries will impact that in any meaningful way, especially if the world already has "Chinese criminal city for stolen phones". Do we really see an important amount of stolen batteries in lawfully owned and maintained phones to the point a DRM on batteries would benefit legit users?
Let's not assume DRM will reduce theft and criminal activities.
> Do we really see an important amount of stolen batteries in lawfully owned and maintained phones to the point a DRM on batteries would benefit legit users?
The stolen batteries have to end up somewhere and official spare part supplies are really expensive (unless you are a certified partner shop of a specific manufacturer of course), so it's most likely they end up distributed into the grey market.
If I were to decide upon a global regulation, I'd say that spare parts have to be made available under FRAND terms (so, no more preferential pricing) and all valuable components have to be reasonably e-marked, that there be a public global registry between device identifiers and associated component identifiers, and that when someone presents a proof-of-purchase plus a police report, all components get denylisted... and when a device recognizes a change in its parts, the component's identifier is checked against the global denylist. If there is a match, the device's user gets a warning, and the owner of the original device who made the theft entry gets a notification, let police do their job then.
Most people I know who have had a phone stolen only bothered reporting it if they had an insurance.
Otherwise making a report seems to take about half a day anyway and achieves precisely fuck all.
Since iOS 18 they added a software lock to parts previously linked to another iCloud Account. Currently you have to authenticate to the previous iCloud or you can "skip" this and the part will show as "third party" but I bet they'll lock usage soon.
Locking only if the part was reported as stolen would be a smart move. Any other reason sounds like a D move to improve business KPIs while hurting legit owners.
Next step: This electrical current is fed from the motherboard when you go into a service menu and hit "replace battery".
In fact, the screen and various other parts are held on with the same adhesive, and its strong enough that unless you go into this service menu you wont get it apart without damage.
And then the service menu is locked and will only work if you're apple authorized or meet some very stringent criteria like uploading 3 copies of your passport and driving license and a receipt showing purchase of the phone in the same name.
This seems very unlikely since the phones have been getting easier to repair rather than harder.
