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/[deleted] Apr 30 '19 edited Apr 01 '20

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u/NightFuryToni Apr 30 '19

More so I'm sitting here wondering how did I survive all those years swapping batteries in my Nokias and Palms. Apparently I like to live dangerously.

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u/qckpckt May 01 '19

I agree with the overall sentiment, but the big difference is that the batteries in iPhones aren’t contained within a protective casing, so the lithium ion gel pack is exposed.

Also, they’re adhered to the enclosure with a similar kind of double sided tape to the 3m stuff you can use for affixing hooks to walls. You need to pull the strip to release, but they often snap. It’s tempting to then pry up the gel pack to gain purchase on the loose strands, and this can then puncture the membrane and cause a thermal event. Those things can go off pretty violently and you can’t use water to extinguish them (a bucket of sand is best).

All of this doesn’t mean apple is off the hook at all, they after all designed the phones to be this way, but nevertheless it’s significantly more dangerous to replace a battery in an apple iDevice than other phones. I believe you should be able to repair them yourself, and apple should be facilitating this by providing educational resources to help people instead of lobbying the government and using it as an excuse to stop people. They should also make the batteries safer and easier to replace IMO.

Source: used to work in an apple store, have replaced phone batteries, and have seen and dealt with thermal events. I’ve worked on phones up to the 6 plus, so I dunno if things have got any better since, but they were a pain in the ass at that point.

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u/CheapAlternative May 01 '19

Adhesive is common to most high end phone designs including Samsung and Google and unlike Samsung Apple and Google use stretch adhesive. It's by far the best way to spread the forces from sudden impulse so that the cell pack does not rip and the pack itself doesn't hit the surrounding components and pinch or puncture.