Author Topic: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?  (Read 22515 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline IanB

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 12537
  • Country: us
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #50 on: December 04, 2021, 08:49:21 pm »
After that happened a few times I stopped updating anything at all.

I'd prefer to do that, but some app vendors prevent it. I have one or two apps that refuse to open until you update them to the latest version.
 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #51 on: December 04, 2021, 08:58:27 pm »
[...] Planned obsolescence is engineering that has no other function than to deliberately limit lifespan [...]

Doing planned obsolescence by making the battery uneconomical to replace has an element of 'plausible deniability' about it...  the consumer cannot easily identify who is to blame for his/her predicament, and will generally just pony up for a new device.
But the company most commonly cited in such situations, Apple, actually offers perfectly economical battery replacements. Go online, schedule a service appointment, bring in the phone or computer, and 15 minutes later you walk out with your device with a fresh battery installed (and a cleaning inside and out), for the same price of a battery for the models years ago whose batteries were user replaceable. (So considering inflation, the laptop batteries are actually cheaper now than years ago.)

Yes, Apple has very enlightened policies in this area.  For example, my wife insisted on a battery replacement for her ailing iPad.  They simply gave her a brand new iPad (same model) for the battery replacement cost (less than $100).   Apple appears to be not so interested in opening the sealed devices and replacing their batteries, with all the time, risks, and problems that entails...  and managed to impress even an Apple skeptic like me!  :D

 
« Last Edit: December 04, 2021, 09:05:53 pm by SilverSolder »
 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #52 on: December 04, 2021, 09:01:54 pm »

We have had the "What is Planned Obsolescence" discussion many times...

Wikipedia has a pretty reasonable definition that appears to be backed by good sources:

In economics and industrial design, planned obsolescence (also called built-in obsolescence or premature obsolescence) is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so that it becomes obsolete after a certain pre-determined period of time upon which it decrementally functions or suddenly ceases to function, or might be perceived as unfashionable. The rationale behind this strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases (referred to as "shortening the replacement cycle"). It is the deliberate shortening of a lifespan of a product to force people to purchase functional replacements.

Planned obsolescence tends to work best when a producer has at least an oligopoly. Before introducing a planned obsolescence, the producer has to know that the customer is at least somewhat likely to buy a replacement from them (see brand loyalty). In these cases of planned obsolescence, there is an information asymmetry between the producer, who knows how long the product was designed to last, and the customer, who does not. When a market becomes more competitive, product lifespans tend to increase. For example, when Japanese vehicles with longer lifespans entered the American market in the 1960s and 1970s, American carmakers were forced to respond by building more durable products.
 
The following users thanked this post: tooki

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 13157
  • Country: ch
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #53 on: December 04, 2021, 09:03:42 pm »
1. Same goes for phone batteries. I see no technical reason why they can't make batteries easily removable anymore. They say it's because it helps to make these modern slim computers even slimmer, but I don't see how that actually relates to it at all.

2.0 One thing it seems criminals learned was that a computer or phone that you powered down from a menu option in the Windows start menu (or equivalent action for a cellphone) isn't actually shut down. It's simply put into a very low power mode in which even the OS isn't running, but it's not completely shut down. This means RAM memory is maintained in a powered on state so the physical RAM chips still store data from what you did while actually using the device

3. 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.

2.1 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.

2.2 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.

1. Nonsense. Extra layers of housing add physical bulk. And see my separate reply above about waterproofing.

2. Nonsense. RAM consumes power, enough so that phone makers weigh the RAM capacity vs the power use, since extra RAM would unnecessarily reduce battery life. A CMOS battery would quickly die if it had to maintain system RAM.

Keeping RAM alive is power-hungry enough that many laptops have a “hibernate” mode where the contents of RAM are written to disk, so that the hardware can fully shut down, but resume afterwards as if it had been put to sleep.

3. Wake-on-LAN and “lights off” system management do rely on special hardware, but those features are a) generally off by default; b) rarely used outside of large enterprise; and c) even more rarely used on laptops, because enabling them while on battery will severely reduce battery life. (Often, they’re configured to do it only when on AC power.) But regardless, this is special hardware in the Ethernet controller, which then essentially gets to push the power button to turn on the system. There’s nothing nefarious or mysterious about this.
 

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 13157
  • Country: ch
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #54 on: December 04, 2021, 09:09:00 pm »
[...] Planned obsolescence is engineering that has no other function than to deliberately limit lifespan [...]

Doing planned obsolescence by making the battery uneconomical to replace has an element of 'plausible deniability' about it...  the consumer cannot easily identify who is to blame for his/her predicament, and will generally just pony up for a new device.
But the company most commonly cited in such situations, Apple, actually offers perfectly economical battery replacements. Go online, schedule a service appointment, bring in the phone or computer, and 15 minutes later you walk out with your device with a fresh battery installed (and a cleaning inside and out), for the same price of a battery for the models years ago whose batteries were user replaceable. (So considering inflation, the laptop batteries are actually cheaper now than years ago.)

Yes, Apple has very enlightened policies in this area.  For example, my wife insisted on a battery replacement for her ailing iPad.  They simply gave her a brand new iPad (same model) for the battery replacement cost (less than $100).   Apple appears to be not so interested in opening the sealed devices and replacing their batteries, with all the time, risks, and problems that entails...  and managed to impress even an Apple sceptic like me!  :D
There are various circumstances where they do a device swap instead (like if the battery is not in stock, or a battery is swollen). In that case they give you a refurb unit, and your old one goes back to the depot for refurbishment, to become a refurb for someone else. The refurb process always includes a new display, housing, and battery, so they do appear brand new, though they are not. (Only when a model is absolutely brand new, so new that no refurb units exist yet, do they actually swap out using brand new ones.)

But I assure you that when possible, the stores do a battery swap in your own device. I’ve done it a few times over the past few years with phones and my MacBook.
 
The following users thanked this post: SilverSolder

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #55 on: December 04, 2021, 09:18:56 pm »
[...]
 it’s exceedingly difficult, to the extent of being practically impossible, to make a user-replaceable battery compartment that maintains waterproofing properly.
[...]

Samsung Galaxy S5 has an IP rating of 67, meaning it can withstand a depth of 1 meter for 30 minutes.

The S5 also came with a proper headphone port, SD card slot, and replaceable battery.

I guess the ancient Eastern wisdom at Samsung must be something we simply don't understand in the West!  :D
 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #56 on: December 04, 2021, 09:24:56 pm »
Another issue is the "coincidence" where all the oligopoly manufacturers drop headphone ports, SD cards, and replaceable batteries at the same time, so consumers have nowhere to go...

Sooner or later, this is all going to be seen for what it is:  a cartel, where all the participants benefit from the planned obsolescence as one happy family, as long as nobody steps out of line and makes longer lasting products... 

« Last Edit: December 04, 2021, 09:26:36 pm by SilverSolder »
 

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 13157
  • Country: ch
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #57 on: December 05, 2021, 12:29:44 am »
[...]
 it’s exceedingly difficult, to the extent of being practically impossible, to make a user-replaceable battery compartment that maintains waterproofing properly.
[...]

Samsung Galaxy S5 has an IP rating of 67, meaning it can withstand a depth of 1 meter for 30 minutes.

The S5 also came with a proper headphone port, SD card slot, and replaceable battery.
While that is impressive, the unanswered question is how reliable the waterproofing is. I see two scenarios, and since I haven’t invested the time to see which path Samsung used in that model, I don’t know which it is:
1. The battery connectors are sealed, and the battery compartment is outside the waterproof area, so when wet, some current can flow between battery contacts. Perhaps mitigated with additional gasketing around the battery connectors.
2. The battery compartment is “dry”, so electrically optimal, but requires the entire battery compartment to be gasketed. Great when new, but even tiny amounts of dust on the gasket will severely compromise the water ingress resistance. Opening the battery compartment even once could be enough to make it leaky.

The fact that Samsung didn’t continue with this approach makes me suspect that it was #2, and that there were enough water ingress cases to make it unviable. I’d be interested to know what the actual result was.
 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #58 on: December 06, 2021, 06:10:17 pm »
[...]
 it’s exceedingly difficult, to the extent of being practically impossible, to make a user-replaceable battery compartment that maintains waterproofing properly.
[...]

Samsung Galaxy S5 has an IP rating of 67, meaning it can withstand a depth of 1 meter for 30 minutes.

The S5 also came with a proper headphone port, SD card slot, and replaceable battery.
While that is impressive, the unanswered question is how reliable the waterproofing is. I see two scenarios, and since I haven’t invested the time to see which path Samsung used in that model, I don’t know which it is:
1. The battery connectors are sealed, and the battery compartment is outside the waterproof area, so when wet, some current can flow between battery contacts. Perhaps mitigated with additional gasketing around the battery connectors.
2. The battery compartment is “dry”, so electrically optimal, but requires the entire battery compartment to be gasketed. Great when new, but even tiny amounts of dust on the gasket will severely compromise the water ingress resistance. Opening the battery compartment even once could be enough to make it leaky.

The fact that Samsung didn’t continue with this approach makes me suspect that it was #2, and that there were enough water ingress cases to make it unviable. I’d be interested to know what the actual result was.


It is method 2, as you suspected.  I still use an S5 and I wouldn't trust it under water...  but I do trust it in the rain, or on wet bar countertops, etc.!

I would gladly give up an IP rating in exchange for a replaceable battery.  I think I'm on my 5th or 6th battery in my S5...  if it was glued in, the phone might well be damaged by now from being "unglued" so many times?  -  also, I am enjoying the 0.5TB storage on the SD card, and I also enjoy hooking the audio output into the "Aux In" on my car stereo.   Sadly, there is nothing to attract me into buying a new phone, there are so many suckers lined up to buy the content-reduced new ones that the market for people like me is too small to care about!

So, when the S5 finally becomes untenable, I will simply buy the cheapest Chinese phone (I like Xiaomi, but Honor will work too) since these cheap phones may be sealed and unrepairable, with no ports and no SD slots, but at least they are cheap to make up for it!



 

Offline james_s

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 21611
  • Country: us
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #59 on: December 06, 2021, 06:16:20 pm »
I would gladly give up an IP rating in exchange for a replaceable battery.  I think I'm on my 5th or 6th battery in my S5...  if it was glued in, the phone might well be damaged by now from being "unglued" so many times?  -  also, I am enjoying the 0.5TB storage on the SD card, and I also enjoy hooking the audio output into the "Aux In" on my car stereo.   Sadly, there is nothing to attract me into buying a new phone, there are so many suckers lined up to buy the content-reduced new ones that the market for people like me is too small to care about!

I wonder why the batteries are failing so quickly? I replaced the battery once in my iPhone 4 before the phone got so slow due to software bloat that it was no longer viable to use. My current iPhone SE is still on the original battery although it's starting to get to the point where I'll be considering putting a new one in there sometime in the next year or so. That's one failed battery and one retired due to phone replacement in a ~10 year period.
 

Offline Ice-Tea

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3229
  • Country: be
    • Freelance Hardware Engineer
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #60 on: December 06, 2021, 06:26:27 pm »
And regarding batteries not being accessible, can't you just make the case as tight as possible around the battery, allowing the battery to still be removable but with a very tight fit?

Inside a laptop or cell phone, the battery case is the chassis. If you allow a pouch battery to be taken out of the chassis easiliy, you'll have to protect the fragile battery with an additional layer of plastic/case. In addition: no you can't make it fit tightly as batteries swell as they discharge.

Quote
Sounds to me like computer manufacturers teaming up with law enforcement to make it harder for criminals to fully power off their device, and thus making it harder to hide any evidence that may have been present on that device which would be wiped out in the event of a full power off.

That's a pretty poor argument as there *are* plenty of machines with removable batteries. If this was indeed a thing, "criminals" could simply bypass all these clever law enforcement types and pick out a laptop with a removable battery.

Simplest design is to make sure that the farthest back component in the laptop's case (closest to the removable panel back panel of the case, so as to have direct access to it after the panel is removed) is the battery. How hard is that? Just make sure there are no PCBs between the battery and the removable panel. Not exactly a major engineering achievement. If it's NOT the closest thing to the removable panel, then you can be sure the companies are trying to deter the end user from trying to remove it.

You seem to assume the only design achievement the engineers need to worry about is making the battery easily accesible. I'm guessing they may have one or two other goals on their checklist.

 
The following users thanked this post: tooki

Offline Ice-Tea

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3229
  • Country: be
    • Freelance Hardware Engineer
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #61 on: December 06, 2021, 06:27:52 pm »
I would gladly give up an IP rating in exchange for a replaceable battery.  I think I'm on my 5th or 6th battery in my S5...  if it was glued in, the phone might well be damaged by now from being "unglued" so many times?  -  also, I am enjoying the 0.5TB storage on the SD card, and I also enjoy hooking the audio output into the "Aux In" on my car stereo.   Sadly, there is nothing to attract me into buying a new phone, there are so many suckers lined up to buy the content-reduced new ones that the market for people like me is too small to care about!

I wonder why the batteries are failing so quickly? I replaced the battery once in my iPhone 4 before the phone got so slow due to software bloat that it was no longer viable to use. My current iPhone SE is still on the original battery although it's starting to get to the point where I'll be considering putting a new one in there sometime in the next year or so. That's one failed battery and one retired due to phone replacement in a ~10 year period.

Ever increasing charging speed?
 

Offline David Hess

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 17427
  • Country: us
  • DavidH
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #62 on: December 06, 2021, 08:25:08 pm »
1. User replaceable batteries increase liability in the event of a destructive fault.  If the user has to disassemble the device to change the battery, then more fault can be applied to them.

2. Integrated batteries are less expensive.

3. Integrated batteries encourage planned obsolescence.

I wonder why the batteries are failing so quickly? I replaced the battery once in my iPhone 4 before the phone got so slow due to software bloat that it was no longer viable to use. My current iPhone SE is still on the original battery although it's starting to get to the point where I'll be considering putting a new one in there sometime in the next year or so. That's one failed battery and one retired due to phone replacement in a ~10 year period.

Pouch batteries have a shorter life than cylindrical batteries because of their physical construction.
 

Offline james_s

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 21611
  • Country: us
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #63 on: December 06, 2021, 08:27:15 pm »
Pouch batteries have a shorter life than cylindrical batteries because of their physical construction.

What does that have to do with this? Both of my iPhones use pouch batteries, just like the Samsung device mentioned.
 

Offline IanB

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 12537
  • Country: us
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #64 on: December 06, 2021, 09:05:17 pm »
Pouch batteries have a shorter life than cylindrical batteries because of their physical construction.

What does that have to do with this? Both of my iPhones use pouch batteries, just like the Samsung device mentioned.

And as I mentioned earlier in the thread, I have an iPhone 6 from 2014 and it's original battery is still showing 92% capacity.

I imagine to wear out a battery enough to need replacing you would have to charge/discharge it several times per day?
 

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 13157
  • Country: ch
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #65 on: December 06, 2021, 09:26:19 pm »


It is method 2, as you suspected.  I still use an S5 and I wouldn't trust it under water...  but I do trust it in the rain, or on wet bar countertops, etc.!

I would gladly give up an IP rating in exchange for a replaceable battery.  I think I'm on my 5th or 6th battery in my S5...  if it was glued in, the phone might well be damaged by now from being "unglued" so many times?  -  also, I am enjoying the 0.5TB storage on the SD card, and I also enjoy hooking the audio output into the "Aux In" on my car stereo.   Sadly, there is nothing to attract me into buying a new phone, there are so many suckers lined up to buy the content-reduced new ones that the market for people like me is too small to care about!
I’m absolutely certain that IP ratings are a huge boon to both manufacturers and users, since without it, even small amounts of liquid ingress can ruin a device. As I said, this was a huge problem in the past.

Ungluing doesn’t hurt anything. The adhesives are basically high tech tapes, die cut to form gaskets. You use gentle heat to make them pliable. For years now, Apple has secured batteries using adhesive strips similar to 3M Command tape: it has a pull tab on the side. Pull on it and the tape stretches out (many times its original length) and releases without damage. (You absolutely don’t want people digging at glue under a lipo pouch using a sharp tool, after all!)

I dunno about micro SD slots, but fully waterproof headphone jacks exist. With that said, any car made within the last 10-15 years will play music digitally off the phone’s USB, ranging from basic iPod and USB Mass Storage support all the way up to modern CarPlay and Android Auto, both of which also exist wirelessly now. So the need to use an actual analog aux jack has completely passed.
 

Offline David Hess

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 17427
  • Country: us
  • DavidH
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #66 on: December 06, 2021, 09:28:24 pm »
Pouch batteries have a shorter life than cylindrical batteries because of their physical construction.

What does that have to do with this? Both of my iPhones use pouch batteries, just like the Samsung device mentioned.

You mentioned (modern) batteries are failing so quickly.

Besides the construction, mass produced batteries are made to be as cheap as possible while meeting the minimum requirements.  Common mass produced batteries only have a rated life of up to 500 cycles maximum, and many are less, which is way less than originally advertised for the technology.  I found this out a couple weeks ago when looking for high cycle life 18650 cells.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2021, 09:34:05 pm by David Hess »
 

Offline tooki

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 13157
  • Country: ch
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #67 on: December 06, 2021, 09:29:31 pm »
P.S. I actually wonder if people’s anger is based on misunderstanding what “glued in” actually means. Maybe they are thinking “epoxy” and “superglue”, when in fact almost all of it is advanced adhesive tapes. (If you’ve ever used 3M VHB tape, this is the class of product used.)
 

Offline David Hess

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 17427
  • Country: us
  • DavidH
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #68 on: December 06, 2021, 09:35:38 pm »
The battery in my cell phone is completely user replaceable.  The back cover pops off with no tools, and the battery pops out.  I changed it a couple months ago.  It lasts maybe two years.
 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #69 on: December 06, 2021, 11:40:28 pm »
I would gladly give up an IP rating in exchange for a replaceable battery.  I think I'm on my 5th or 6th battery in my S5...  if it was glued in, the phone might well be damaged by now from being "unglued" so many times?  -  also, I am enjoying the 0.5TB storage on the SD card, and I also enjoy hooking the audio output into the "Aux In" on my car stereo.   Sadly, there is nothing to attract me into buying a new phone, there are so many suckers lined up to buy the content-reduced new ones that the market for people like me is too small to care about!

I wonder why the batteries are failing so quickly? I replaced the battery once in my iPhone 4 before the phone got so slow due to software bloat that it was no longer viable to use. My current iPhone SE is still on the original battery although it's starting to get to the point where I'll be considering putting a new one in there sometime in the next year or so. That's one failed battery and one retired due to phone replacement in a ~10 year period.

I suspect what kills them for me is heat...  the S5 gets glowing hot when using Waze in the car, and I use Waze many hours per week...

Doing the math, the S5 is from around 2014.  So changing the battery every 2 years would require at least 3 batteries to get to 2021...
« Last Edit: December 06, 2021, 11:49:44 pm by SilverSolder »
 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #70 on: December 06, 2021, 11:44:54 pm »
Pouch batteries have a shorter life than cylindrical batteries because of their physical construction.

What does that have to do with this? Both of my iPhones use pouch batteries, just like the Samsung device mentioned.

And as I mentioned earlier in the thread, I have an iPhone 6 from 2014 and it's original battery is still showing 92% capacity.

I imagine to wear out a battery enough to need replacing you would have to charge/discharge it several times per day?

I use Waze a lot in the car, and it is a total pig on power, and makes the phone baking hot to boot.  The most recent battery I fitted is a massive external "piggyback" item with 6000mAh capacity, which is enough to run the  S5 for a week - if you don't use Waze!  :)

I normally get 1-2 years out of a battery.  I've recently adopted a new habit of only charging to 85% capacity, in an attempt to make the battery last longer, let's see how that works out...

My wife also uses an S5 with a piggyback battery, and it also burns out its battery in 1-2 years.

(What I call a piggyback battery, is one of those extended batteries with extra capacity that are so big they come with a new back cover for the phone to be able to contain all the lithium ions!)

I carry an even older phone, a Blackberry Curve, which is so ancient that kids giggle when they see it and start asking questions about what it is...  "It's soo tiny!!  Cute!".    It has also always required a new battery every 2 years or so, for more than a decade -  the batteries eventually lose performance and start to swell.  Swap the battery for $5, and it works like new again.


« Last Edit: December 06, 2021, 11:54:21 pm by SilverSolder »
 

Offline SilverSolder

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 6126
  • Country: 00
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #71 on: December 06, 2021, 11:56:39 pm »
P.S. I actually wonder if people’s anger is based on misunderstanding what “glued in” actually means. Maybe they are thinking “epoxy” and “superglue”, when in fact almost all of it is advanced adhesive tapes. (If you’ve ever used 3M VHB tape, this is the class of product used.)

I have swapped screens on a couple of "sealed" phones, I am not completely unfamiliar with the types of adhesives used.  - I dislike the combination of a sealed battery, wireless-only headphones, and no SD card.  The modern flagship phones have much better computing performance, but no (or crappy) peripherals! :D
 

Offline SiliconWizard

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 15797
  • Country: fr
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #72 on: December 07, 2021, 01:13:40 am »
Yeah. Batteries are held in place with this double sided stuff. Heck, most of the time, there's even a strip underneath that's supposed to make it easy to remove the double-sided tape and thus the battery. In practice, after a few months of use, with regular heating from the battery, the double-sided tape becomes almost impossible to remove this easily. So the strip is great for servicing batteries after just a short time of use - probably for phones still under warranty - but after 2 years or so, that becomes a lost cause and removing the battery almost always imply fighting with the adhesive and eventually butchering the battery, hoping you don't damage it enough for it to leak or something. Yes, done this a few times... :-DD
 

Offline IanB

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 12537
  • Country: us
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #73 on: December 07, 2021, 01:27:57 am »
I have swapped screens on a couple of "sealed" phones, I am not completely unfamiliar with the types of adhesives used.  - I dislike the combination of a sealed battery, wireless-only headphones, and no SD card.  The modern flagship phones have much better computing performance, but no (or crappy) peripherals! :D

I think the disappearance of SD cards is surely due to pervasive availability of wireless networking and cloud storage?

My current phone has a 5G data speed about the same as my wired ISP. It seems like you only need to keep things in local storage that you have an immediate need for. Other things can stay in the cloud. How many movies or podcasts can you watch during one plane ride?
 

Offline eti

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 1801
  • Country: gb
  • MOD: a.k.a Unlokia, glossywhite, iamwhoiam etc
Re: What's the real reason that laptop batteries are made not-accessible?
« Reply #74 on: December 07, 2021, 02:30:32 am »
Customers are told "You need new things", and they dutifully oblige. That, and "retail therapy" being something they falsely believe will fill the void in their (sometimes) unhappy and unfulfilled lives.

I'd rather proudly stamp my name on a product that will last 20 years, and offer maintenance of it as a service, than undermine my morals and keep selling them shite that I KNOW I've produced to purposely break down. Never ever would I do that. Even if I saturated the market and no one came back for another one, I'd be less well off but my conscience is more valuable to me than endless millions I don't need or will never use.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf