Of all the things I had to change on my switch (1), I had to do a joy con battery once. It was annoying because the only third party battery I could find was like one millimeter wider and was a pain to insert.
Mostly my repairs were loads of sticks and joy con rails. Once i had to change the switch fan that started to fail too. Also the shitty plastic on the backplate started to crack and I replaced it too.
I even replaced the sd card slot, but I think I didn’t need to do that in the end. I had read errors that were due to software and I “just” needed to transfer my games to the system memory and back to the SD again. Weird stuff.
Haven’t needed to repair anything on the 2 yet. I hope it’s a bit more reliable.
If they’re going for the same form factor, which I assume they will since the dock is only one size, I wonder how much battery capacity will drop.
That’s always what these corporations point to as the reason for non-removable batteries. Removable means smaller.
Also water-tightness, but my Galaxy S5 was water resistant and had removable everything, so that doesn’t hold any weight.
it’s mentioned in the post. the battery size for switch 2 is going from 5220 mAh to 5172 mAh (~1% smaller)
so not dramatic, but it’s smaller. curiously, the gamecube nso controller is getting a battery life increase lol (only that one tho, everything else is either getting a decrease or no meaningful change)
Looks to be listed on the linked webpage. Most are seeing no change or as little as 1-5% however the Switch 2 Pro Controller is going to be a 16% reduction.
Having not seen teardowns of anything past the Switch 1, I’m curious why the Pro Controller has such a massive drop compared to everything else.
I design battery-operated things with custom batteries specified and partly-designed by me, and it takes like 10x the design effort, 20% more parts cost, and compromises on capacity, size, weight, and/or watertightness, as you mentioned. The design effort in particular is just killer - so many more interfaces to deal with, when a non-removable pack can just be shrink-wrapped and dropped into a pocket.
It’s worth it, I’m not saying it isn’t. But I do sympathize a bit.
Of course, I’m working at a company with i employees, not tens of thousands. Probably easier for Nintendo to throw manpower at it.
