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Spare batteries are a nightmare to handle. Far too easy to bend or have something short-circuit the pads, and you have to shut down and restart your phone. How

Spare batteries are a nightmare to handle. Far too easy to bend or have something short-circuit the pads, and you have to shut down and restart your phone. However, what is needed desperately is the ability to quickly change a degraded battery.

callc 9d ago
Spare batteries that are designed as internal batteries not to be easily swappable, yes. Look at DSLR cameras: take out in 1 second, put in in 1 second, physically robust. We absolutely can have the best of both worlds. We just need to align the smartphone manufacturers to user serviceability and right to repair… even if they go kicking and screaming since they decided their bottom line is most important.
herbst 9d ago
Ever had a GoPro? Or professional camera? Drone? It's really not so hard to imagine a market for replaceable batteries lol. My ThinkPad t420 had a small built in battery so I could switch batteries without shutdown. Imagine the magic. Imagine taking 20+ hours of laptop battery with you 15 years ago.
- mschuster91 8d ago
  > Ever had a GoPro? Or professional camera? Drone? It's really not so hard to imagine a market for replaceable batteries lol. All three, in fact. GoPro is about 15 seconds from "battery empty warning" over safe shutdown, battery replacement and it's booted back up into fully working. Professional camera (Sony A7S2) about 10-15 seconds, depending on what BS the lens tries to pull on startup. Drone about 1 minute including landing/takeoff (DJI Mini 3 Pro). My Android tablet from Samsung however? Two minutes for safe shutdown and boot to userland alone plus all the apps starting in the background that keep yapping to whatever mothership cloud. It's an annoying hassle. And on top of that, despite the thing actually having a removable battery and being marked watertight and suitable even for underwater operation - it clearly is not. I'd rather have an actually watertight device that has guaranteed availability of spare batteries, and actual screws instead of that glue shit that can't ever be fully removed from either the display or the housing.
nradov 9d ago
Nah, when the old Samsung phones allowed user battery replacement it was completely safe and easy to handle. Restarting the phone took only a few seconds.
- welwala 9d ago
  And the S5 was waterproof and almost the same thickness as the S26 Ultra.
pessimizer 9d ago
> Spare batteries are a nightmare to handle. New definition of nightmare just dropped: changing a battery. Or is it simply handling a battery? I can't figure out what's supposed to be the nightmare. Maybe it's the turning off of a telephone.

callc 9d ago

Spare batteries that are designed as internal batteries not to be easily swappable, yes. Look at DSLR cameras: take out in 1 second, put in in 1 second, physically robust. We absolutely can have the best of both worlds. We just need to align the smartphone manufacturers to user serviceability and right to repair… even if they go kicking and screaming since they decided their bottom line is most important.

herbst 9d ago

Ever had a GoPro? Or professional camera? Drone? It's really not so hard to imagine a market for replaceable batteries lol. My ThinkPad t420 had a small built in battery so I could switch batteries without shutdown. Imagine the magic. Imagine taking 20+ hours of laptop battery with you 15 years ago.

mschuster91 8d ago
> Ever had a GoPro? Or professional camera? Drone? It's really not so hard to imagine a market for replaceable batteries lol. All three, in fact. GoPro is about 15 seconds from "battery empty warning" over safe shutdown, battery replacement and it's booted back up into fully working. Professional camera (Sony A7S2) about 10-15 seconds, depending on what BS the lens tries to pull on startup. Drone about 1 minute including landing/takeoff (DJI Mini 3 Pro). My Android tablet from Samsung however? Two minutes for safe shutdown and boot to userland alone plus all the apps starting in the background that keep yapping to whatever mothership cloud. It's an annoying hassle. And on top of that, despite the thing actually having a removable battery and being marked watertight and suitable even for underwater operation - it clearly is not. I'd rather have an actually watertight device that has guaranteed availability of spare batteries, and actual screws instead of that glue shit that can't ever be fully removed from either the display or the housing.

nradov 9d ago

Nah, when the old Samsung phones allowed user battery replacement it was completely safe and easy to handle. Restarting the phone took only a few seconds.

welwala 9d ago
And the S5 was waterproof and almost the same thickness as the S26 Ultra.

pessimizer 9d ago

> Spare batteries are a nightmare to handle. New definition of nightmare just dropped: changing a battery. Or is it simply handling a battery? I can't figure out what's supposed to be the nightmare. Maybe it's the turning off of a telephone.