Removable batteries should never come back, despite what everyone says

First of all, what? Proofread dude cause, damn.

Secondly, I haven't had a flagship Sammy that wasn't able to get me through a full work day since my Note 4 which had..........a removable battery. Every Samsung I've had since that didn't have one (Note 7, S7E, Note 8, Note 10+, S22 Ultra & now my S24 Ultra) has lasted me damn near a full day (off the charger at 6AM-10PM).

🤦🏽The iPhone has never had a removable battery.

Sooooo, an S5 that was actually water resistant?

Super fast charging does NOT degrade batteries nowadays, When the tech was new and chargers blasted the battery until it was 100% sure that is fair, but nowadays most batteries are more smarter then the users that operate them, they can regulate current and voltage and they have way more regulation and even dedicated charging chips to make sure they dont get overloaded

First things first - this is not an article, it’s a discussion and I am sharing my opinion. You’re welcome to share your opinion on the topic, but please refrain from personal attacks. We aim for a friendly banter around here 😄

In my experience, current battery tech makes most phones retain about 80% of their battery capacity in 2.5-3 years, including my current iPhone 12 Pro Max. Of course, there are exceptions to this, based mostly on the way people use their phones and batteries.

However, the majority of the users aren’t power users. As for other brands and phones, I passed down my Huaweis, HTCs, and Samsungs (also iPhones, tbh) to family members and even when I’ve experienced a degradation in the battery life, my relatives were happy with the batteries and always got over one day of use. If they had any issues they were about slowly loading apps and cameras that were not so great anymore.

The three-year-old smartphones usually are not all that good. If you buy flagship phones and look for top-notch performance, a three-year-old flagship won’t be good enough for you. If you look for midrange phones, a three-year-old midrange phone won’t be good enough for you. However, if you look for midrange performance and buy a three-year-old flagship, you may be happy. As for the budget phones, their performance after two major software updates usually is so bad that the battery is the least of people’s concern.

Again, this is my opinion, based on my experience which, as some people pointed out, is limited.

I agree with this. But changing a battery with a screwdriver and pry tool is not a removable battery in the way that Galaxy S5’s battery was removable - open the back cover and pull it out with a finger. I am against the Galaxy S5 approach to removable batteries, not against the idea of easily opening and meddling with your devices.

Improved repairability and easier access to things like the battery of a phone is something different which I think is important and the regulatory pressure on the phone manufacturers is only positive.

Making the battery removable has a couple of other drawbacks not yet mentioned - phones with removable batteries are harder to waterproof/dustproof. This means generally lowered ability in the IPxx ratings and potential loss of MIL spec standards compliance for (more or less) rugged phones, in spite of increased costs to meet even just the lesser standards that are still possible with such designs. Furthermore, post-modern design has largely emphasized economies of scale for batteries to be both non-removable and non-user-replaceable for cost saving purposes, supply chain streamlining, and reduction of assembly costs on the production line (including automation - reducing labor costs, sometimes even in places that have lower labor costs already). I prefer to be able to get inexpensive phones, and not to have to worry so much about having to keep them running past the average two-year upgrade cycle. Rather than spending lots of money to replace a battery that may cost half as much as the whole phone anyway, removable or not, I may rather just replace the whole phone at a fairly regular upgrade interval, instead.

In 2024 I agree.

However, non removable batteries became the standard in about 2016 and back then it was a tougher sell because phones charged much more slowly, in addition to other reasons (absence of right to repair laws etc). Back then I bought a second battery for my Samsung s phones, charged them both and kept one in my back pocket. This, in combination with dual sim is one of the primary reasons why I've usually chosen (flagship) android phones over iphone.

OK, this whole "removable batteries are a bad idea" post by the OP is utter nonsense. When you have manufacturers like Samsung and Google offering many years of updates renders that point useless. The main reason I update phones has to do with batteries degrading over time. I couldn't care less about if my processor is the fastest and my camera is the current best available. As long as they are good enough, that's good enough for me. My cell phone from 2018 connects to the same internet, email accounts, and can use most of the same, if not all, of the apps my current one can. I held on to my Samsung Galaxy S5, which I loved, or a long time. I just kept buying new batteries. The reality is we don't have removable batteries in our phones to drive up sales and force people to upgrade. It's that simple. Anyone saying otherwise is full of crap.

My mom uses a four year old phone and the phone isn't lacking in any way. Believe it or not.

I doubt all phones need to be changed after three years.