1720
It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027
(www.androidauthority.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I have mixed feelings on this. I think there were a few good reasons to move to sealed batteries. In an ideal world you could give consumers choices between the various trade-offs and offer multiple models or variants.
But of course that will never happen because non-replaceable batteries present a far better business case. If they were forced to offer options, the manufacturers would deliberately make the user-replaceable models far shittier and then complain to the regulators that they were unpopular.
There are plenty of smartphones with user replaceable batteries, consumers just don’t want to buy them. Gaskets that are robust enough to keep out every bit of humidity are always going to be a little thicker than adhesive, which means phones that use gaskets are always in the “rugged” market segment, or the less-premium segment where people don’t care about a few mm dimensionally.
https://www.androidcentral.com/best-android-phone-removable-battery