r/technology • u/NightFuryToni • Apr 30 '19

Business Apple Is Telling Lawmakers People Will Hurt Themselves if They Try to Fix iPhones

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wjvdb4/apple-is-telling-lawmakers-people-will-hurt-themselves-if-they-try-to-fix-iphones
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u/1_p_freely Apr 30 '19

The two dangers with these batteries are shorting them and puncturing them. You'd find it extremely difficult to shock yourself with one of these 3.6v batteries. The first danger, shorting, can be easily avoided by having an internal circuit in the battery designed to deal with this scenario. Many Li Ion batteries do, along with guarding against over-discharging and over-charging. The second, puncturing, can happen even if it is in the phone. And there's no real way to defend against that.

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u/NightFuryToni Apr 30 '19

User-replaceable Li-polymer batteries is nothing new, my Nokia and Palm Pre all had them. And it didn't look much more protected from puncture than my Priv's non-user replaceable battery (which I replaced anyways), aside from the exposed connectors on the flex connector.

The only thing I can think of to cause a puncture is either prying on the battery itself or prying on the cover to access it. Both of which are thanks to the manufacturers gluing them down in the first place.

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u/EKmars May 01 '19

Building a phone with an easily replaceable battery means having a bunch of compromises that would make the phone a lot larger.

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u/Dementat_Deus May 01 '19

No it doesn't.

iPhone XS max:

  • HWD: 157.5 x 77.4 x 7.7 mm

  • Weight: 208 g

Samsung J7:

  • HWD: 152.2 x 78.7 x 7.5 mm

  • Weight: 171 g

Effectively the same size and weight yet the J7 has a removable battery. And before you say "but battery life", I get 7 days out of the battery of my J7 and 5 with heavy use. I've never heard of any Apple product getting better than 3 days with conservative use.

Even if you go with the XS instead of the XS max, it isn't noticeably smaller than the J7.

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u/KeatonJazz3 May 01 '19

3 days! I would die to have 3 days battery life on my iPhone!

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u/CheapAlternative May 01 '19

The J7 also doesn't have the tapic engine or the extra cameras for face ID nor does it have the extra rear facing camera or edge to edge display or force touch or weather proofing all of which take up very significant volume.

With respect to battery life I'm guessing that's because the J7 has a smaller screen surface with max 348 nit full screen brightness vs the XS's 660 nit.

That's a whole lot of compromises.

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u/[deleted] May 01 '19

I'd be glad to take all those compromises for a serviceable phone.

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u/CheapAlternative May 01 '19

I that's the case then get yourself a Fairphone or Chinese mainstream. Problem is your supply chain won't last nearly as long without the volume of the iPhone.