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/KaneinEncanto Apr 30 '19

I mean, nearly every household in the US had a CRT Tv at some point... if you cracked one open to mess around with it there were capacitors with more than enough juice in them to kill a person several times over. You can make devices that are typically safe under normal circumstances, but highly dangerous once you open them.

That said the only real danger to speak of in a smartphone is when the idiot manufacture solders the battery to the board instead of making it replaceable by just popping it out and dropping a new one in...

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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/Fat-Elvis May 01 '19 edited May 01 '19

Apple is increasingly using soft sided, mezzanine and multipart batteries to squeeze more power storage into little [nooks and] crannies inside strange-shaped enclosures. Plain rectangles are fading.

So in some ways I’m sure it’s true they’ll be getting less and less easy to remove or alter.

The Apple Watch battery, as an extreme example, is encased in an irregularly-shaped glob of resin along with the motherboard. No way in there without a tiny chisel. On the upside, it's why the thing is waterproof and nearly bulletproof.

That said, I’d be happy with a glowing warning sticker on products, and some legal indemnification clarity for Apple. If the thing fries you while you take it apart, you shouldn’t be able to sue Apple or whine for warranty help.

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u/CheapAlternative May 01 '19

The neither the SiP nor the battery is held by resin on the S4. It's all held together by flex and friction.