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What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?

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IanB:

--- Quote from: james_s on December 03, 2021, 12:28:08 am ---Have you taken apart one of the computers that uses one of these slender built in pouch batteries? The battery fits like a glove and making it removable would add at least a few mm to the thickness of the machine. Now personally I would happily take a thicker laptop to make room for a nice beefy removable battery but slim and sexy is the fad these days. It makes no sense to me but it isn't a conspiracy. Likewise just look at the stupid obsession with making display bezels razor thin, it has got to the point where they're making displays with stupid notches and holes cut out of them for sensors and cameras just to make the bezel a few mm thinner. Computers and smartphones have reached mature commodity status and now it is form over function.

--- End quote ---

I have one of the latest model Dell slimline laptops and it is easy to open the case and access the internals. The battery is replaceable and comes in two sizes, the larger size taking the whole width of the case, and a smaller size that leaves room for an optional second disk drive. To remove the battery you just undo a couple of screws and unplug the connector.

I do agree that the obsession with making things too thin is a bit silly, and has one obvious downside of leaving less space for ports on the outside.

Stray Electron:
  To answer the OP's question and not speculate as most here are doing; part of the reason for not making batteries accessible is planned obsolescence pure and simple. yeah, many of the people on this forum can open a cell phone or a laptop and replace the battery, but for 99% of the population once the battery dies, the owner's pitch them and replace them with a new one.  The manufacturers can also point to other issues such as warranties and that the user might injury themselves trying to replace a battery but like the old saying says, "Follow the money".

3roomlab:

--- Quote from: IanB on December 03, 2021, 12:26:15 am ---
Actually, iPhone batteries are very easy to remove if you have the right tools to open the case. There is a special tab to pull that unzips the glue and then the battery just falls out. The problem with battery replacement in iPhones is not so much physical, it is in the electronics. The batteries are coded to the phone with an embedded serial number, and if the phone does not recognize the battery it will not provide full functionality.

--- End quote ---

I remember reading this thread, the BMS reset problem
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/experiences-with-ti-bq-management-ics-when-revelling-laptop-batteries/25/
The security of the batteries are possibly better than a crypto?

cortex_m0:

--- Quote from: Ben321 on December 02, 2021, 11:11:51 pm ---While computers do shut down completely as far as running in a user-accessible way, some components remain powered. If your laptop has an Ethernet port, it remains powered so as to be able to accept a power-on signal sent over the network. I'm pretty sure that the RAM in a laptop also remains powered when you shut it off. It gets written over with the next time you boot the computer, but it doesn't get cleared just because you went to the start menu and selected shutdown to turn off the computer. The only way to clear a laptop's memory is to completely remove its battery. And I've heard some claims on other websites that a computer's coin-cell battery (sometimes called a clock battery or CMOS battery) can keep the RAM powered as well, in order to maintain all of the data stored in RAM.

--- End quote ---

Don't tell me what you've seen claimed on "other web sites". This is the EEVblog forum. Get your test kit out and prove it with data.

ledtester:

--- Quote from: Stray Electron on December 03, 2021, 12:41:01 am ---  To answer the OP's question and not speculate as most here are doing; part of the reason for not making batteries accessible is planned obsolescence pure and simple.

--- End quote ---

Also manufacturers can get away with non-replaceable batteries because tech is changing so fast. A lot of people don't mind changing their phone or laptop every three years because the new models have a lot more to offer.

I also read that Apple sells a lot of its refurbished phones in the developing world. Making parts harder to replace keeps them that much more ahead of the competition in those markets.

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