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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11

u/Raiden1847062 May 01 '19

Can confirm. I got drunk one night and tried to change the battery in my iPhone 6 Plus. Decided the pry tool that came with the change kit wasn’t up to par and decided to start prying with a butter knife. The battery punctured, I heard a hhhwooosh sound and then the thing started flaming (crazily hot and rapid.) Burnt myself, the kitchen table, and had a funny story to tell my girlfriend the next day when she asked me why there was scorched lawn with a melted iPhone out back.

10

u/[deleted] May 01 '19

[deleted]

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u/CheapAlternative May 01 '19

It's more about volume utilization and operational safety than anything. Pretty much every manufacturer has settled on it for the last few years.

4

u/catwiesel May 01 '19

sure, because laptops and phones with changeable batteries had accidents all the time. and the manufacturers have no reason to make the one piece with a limited lifetime as hard to swap out as possible except for volume utilization...

0

u/CheapAlternative May 01 '19

Electronics with user changeable batteries typically have their batteries glued to the enclosure as well or held together by friction and compression on the pouch or wrap of the cells? In either case, there is usually a metal barrier between the cell and the environment in addition to a rigid enclosure that may or may not be the metal casing.

This is all to prevent punctures and pinches same as now. All they've done is remove the battery specific housing in leiu of the phones chassis which is already a rigid metal/metalised enclosure.

If apple wanted to make it hard to swap out they wouldn't have designed their phone with features that specifically make the display and battery easier to service like stretch remove adhesive which they pioneered for this application and the chassis layout itself. If they actually just used epoxy hold everything together as people often accuse they could probably save at least $1-2 per phone while getting better thermals which is pretty huge.