I want to know what all these people are doing with their phones... I've needed a phone to be waterproof exactly one time. 20 years ago when I got chucked into a pool with my flip phone in my pocket. I've had about a dozen batteries stop charging properly and needed replacement since then.

Nuclear submarines don't glue their batteries

Did they have a stipulation that if the consumer opened the phone the IP rating would be nullified?

Genuinely asking, sounds like something a corpo would do.

When it was new. The more you opened the back plate, the more that hair thin gasket eroded and eventually just broke.

I’m not even sure thinness was something consumers ever would have demanded

I am entirely convinced that most "features" on modern devices are not "something consumers would have demanded". Sure, different lenses is nice if you're a hobbyist photographer, but do most people really need more than a single back-facing camera? Do most people want to have wireless earbuds at the cost of not having a headphone jack? Do most people want glass backs and other such gimmicks that make their device more fragile? I've been told for decades that the modern economic system is great because competition forces manufacturers to prioritize what is best for the consumers. But in the context of smartphones, it feels like the roles are completely reversed. Manufacturers come up with some bullshit and then mount psy-ops (ad campaigns, online astroturfing) to convince the population that it's worth their money

About thinness: I also like my phones bendy and snappy (iPhone 6), as well as exploding batteries (Galaxy Note 7 or 10, I don't remember the exact model tbh).

Or you have to 'hold it right' (OG iPhone).

These were all huge issues that could be fixed without sacrificing the thinness.

Thinness shouldn't be used as an excuse for otherwise shitty phones, since it's clearly a non-sequitur.

lol I first thought that "mfrs" meant "motherf***ers"

Well, there's another change that made it more viable - back then people had spare batteries cause they needed them. Now most devices will last a full day of normal use, so the 'average user' doesn't care much about swapping batteries.

My gripe was physical keyboards. Until they basically disappeared entirely, I tried to buy exclusively devices with physical keyboards. I liked my T-Mobile Sidekick except it could stand to be thinner.

I'm not even sure thinness was something consumers ever would have demanded

Something popular back in the removable battery days was to replace them with thicker extended capacity batteries. So no, battery life was more important to a lot of comsumers.

Your Casio watch also has a manual with a warning inside saying it won't be waterproof anymore after a battery replacement unless you send it in to Casio to replace the battery.

Screws are an incredible wonder. Itty bits of metal with fine threading to attach two things? And we just produce like billions of the things? Truly amazing.

You can, but every hardware feature you add takes physical space in the phone. Making a phone waterproof requires adding stuff to the phone, which takes away space for other things. Usually battery size ends up being one of the things that takes a hit. You want a phone that's waterproof and has a removable battery? Then the battery size gets reduced by X%, or some other features people care about get dropped.