The European Union is working on legislation that would require smartphone design to have easily replaceable batteries, but we doubt Apple would agree willingly.
I don’t think anybody really cares about an extra half millimetre of thickness, especially if it means that you can save hundreds in replacement costs and extend its life by a few years. Nobody’s buying an iPhone and busting out the calipers to compare it to their previous phone.
I care. This thing’s already thick and heavy enough, and I don’t particularly care about popping the back off my phone to replace a battery. It’s like…once every two years that I have to replace it.
You also start running into usability issues. There’s only so thin a phone can be before it’s less of a phone, and more of a blade that’ll bend if you sneeze at it wrong.
Especially since waterproof phones with replaceable batteries already existed. They aren’t exactly working from nothing.
I remember dunking my flip phone into glasses of water as a party trick and it was totally fine. This would’ve been around 2010 or so.
They exist but not at this thinness. That’s an important difference.
I don’t think anybody really cares about an extra half millimetre of thickness, especially if it means that you can save hundreds in replacement costs and extend its life by a few years. Nobody’s buying an iPhone and busting out the calipers to compare it to their previous phone.
I care. This thing’s already thick and heavy enough, and I don’t particularly care about popping the back off my phone to replace a battery. It’s like…once every two years that I have to replace it.
You also start running into usability issues. There’s only so thin a phone can be before it’s less of a phone, and more of a blade that’ll bend if you sneeze at it wrong.
Happened with the iPhone 6
Apple’s sales fall and people don’t buy new phones because “it looks just like last year’s phone.”
There are so many things a company can change about a phone besides its thickness.