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

[james_s]

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?

I don't store anything on the cloud, especially things like photos, videos and other content that I've created, local-only. Wireless spectrum is a precious commodity that is always in short supply, we should not be wasting it storing stuff that can be stored locally, memory is cheap.

[David Hess]

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

SD card support is an extra expense and of less utility now that large amounts of storage can be included inside the phone.

[SilverSolder]

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!

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?

Cloud storage is another way to lock the customer in...  who's going to change away from a vendor's cloud system once their family photos and videos are all stored there, and shared with other family members that way?   Big Tech will become like banks - where consumers are more likely to get divorced than switch bank!

So of course, the vendors don't want to give us an easy and cheap way to manage our own information, when they can collect it and sell it back to us for all eternity.   They also don't want to give us a simple headphone jack, when they can instead keep selling us expensive wireless earbuds designed to last a few years...

You may think I am being overly critical of the current state of the smartphone market, but the reality is that my desires as a consumer are not being met by any vendor...    I want a durable, quality product with an analog audio jack, expandable storage (SD card), and an easily replaceable battery - but the Phone Cartel has decided that they want me locked in as a paying customer for all eternity and are designing their products predominantly with that goal in mind, rather than what I would enjoy owning and using.

[Miyuki]

You can buy a laptop with an accessible battery even dual hot-swappable.
The main reason for having a swappable battery was in the past when you have 2 hours' worth of it when you were lucky. Now when you can easily have 10 or more is it not an issue. Yet still can get it if you want. It adds mechanical problems and contacts can wear down fast.
Also, most laptops are now thinner than 18650. Yet even internal one is easy to replace and are widely available.
Same with the phones. Do you remember old worn squeaky ones? Modern glued ones just feel more rugged (even when the display is somewhat brittle). But how often do you change the battery? Like one in 3-4 years? A big chunk of people does not use phones that long. Yet battery can be changed reasonably.
And phone SD card? Do we really need one? Do you want to hoard hundreds of gigabytes of valuable data in the device that can be easily destroyed, lost, stolen ... And they have plenty of internal storage anyway. And I can agree with the argument SD cards can significantly degrade phone performance compared to internal storage. As even fast ones are rather slow for random access. And people will use slow ones and complain. 
And never had many issues with a "planned obsolescence".
The worst case I had was a Microsoft/Nokia phone, where they kill windows mobile and is barely usable even as a dumb phone now.
But otherways 4+ year iPhone 7 just need a new battery.
Lenovo laptops work fine even old T430. It is ancient yet daily use and just need a third keyboard 
Home appliances work. Last exchanged was Fridge and Dryer, both about 20 years.
20 Year old car also works. Even when not looking nice. I use it like once a week so no need to fancy one.

[Miyuki]

You may think I am being overly critical of the current state of the smartphone market, but the reality is that my desires as a consumer are not being met by any vendor...    I want a durable, quality product with an analog audio jack, expandable storage (SD card), and an easily replaceable battery - but the Phone Cartel has decided that they want me locked in as a paying customer for all eternity and are designing their products predominantly with that goal in mind, rather than what I would enjoy owning and using.

All that efforts ended bankrupt because people do not buy them.
You can choose from a gazillion Asian brands.
But you can still get even like Samsung Galaxy Xcover it has everything you want and is a "brand"
Where is the problem? 

[SilverSolder]

[...]
Home appliances work. Last exchanged was Fridge and Dryer, both about 20 years.
[...]

I am willing to bet that whatever appliances you buy to replace these units will not last 10 years without major repairs...   All of the experienced appliance technicians that I have had cause to talk with recently (due to problems with appliances <5y old), they all seem to say that modern appliances are not well made unless you buy commercial/industrial units at astronomical cost...

Is it environmentally sound to carry on the way we are doing, or would we be better off with somewhat higher quality products?

[SilverSolder]

[...] But you can still get even like Samsung Galaxy Xcover it has everything you want and is a "brand"
Where is the problem? 
[...]

Congratulations, you found the only phone that meets those criteria!

I guess you don't live in the US?  Here, the carriers get special versions of every phone made for them, so if you want a hassle free life (and support from the carrier, e.g. for wifi calling etc. as well as customer service/tech support) you had better use one of their "approved" phones...     My carrier does not have the Xcover as one of "their" phones, but they do have the best plans and coverage in the areas I tend to travel in.  Now what?

[Miyuki]

I guess you don't live in the US?  Here, the carriers get special versions of every phone made for them, so if you want a hassle free life (and support from the carrier, e.g. for wifi calling etc. as well as customer service/tech support) you had better use one of their "approved" phones...     My carrier does not have the Xcover as one of "their" phones, but they do have the best plans and coverage in the areas I tend to travel in.  Now what?

You can't just take any phone put SIM in and happily use it? As the EU has plenty of problems, customer protection is huge here. And phone market/use is heavily regulated.

I am willing to bet that whatever appliances you buy to replace these units will not last 10 years without major repairs...   All of the experienced appliance technicians that I have had cause to talk with recently (due to problems with appliances <5y old), they all seem to say that modern appliances are not well made unless you buy commercial/industrial units at astronomical cost...

Is it environmentally sound to carry on the way we are doing, or would we be better off with somewhat higher quality products?

I have some doubts about the Hisense fridge longevity
But AEG dryer proudly stated 10-year warranty so I hope it will last

[james_s]

Well the iPhone battery is almost trivially easy to replace despite needing a small screwdriver, but the lack of a headphone jack is a lot harder to solve and that annoys me. I mostly use wireless headphones but I use wired ear buds often enough to not want to give those up. The notch in the display is a major deal breaker for me, I won't buy one with a hole punch or any other stupidity either. I've never once deliberately turned on the front facing camera and would prefer to not even have one but for some reason that seems to be a mandatory feature to the whole rest of the world.

[Miyuki]

Well the iPhone battery is almost trivially easy to replace despite needing a small screwdriver, but the lack of a headphone jack is a lot harder to solve and that annoys me. I mostly use wireless headphones but I use wired ear buds often enough to not want to give those up. The notch in the display is a major deal breaker for me, I won't buy one with a hole punch or any other stupidity either. I've never once deliberately turned on the front facing camera and would prefer to not even have one but for some reason that seems to be a mandatory feature to the whole rest of the world.

Have cable reduction all the time on earbuds? Or have lightning / USB c earbuds. They are available.

Plenty of banks and similar requires to use front face camera to their face verification 

[m k]

I guess you don't live in the US?  Here, the carriers get special versions of every phone made for them

We are pro-choice, pro-mask.

[SiliconWizard]

[...]
Home appliances work. Last exchanged was Fridge and Dryer, both about 20 years.
[...]

I am willing to bet that whatever appliances you buy to replace these units will not last 10 years without major repairs...   All of the experienced appliance technicians that I have had cause to talk with recently (due to problems with appliances <5y old), they all seem to say that modern appliances are not well made unless you buy commercial/industrial units at astronomical cost...

That's mostly true.

Is it environmentally sound to carry on the way we are doing,

I think the answer to that is obvious. But will that stop us? Answer is most likely still no.
We'll do whatever it takes to keep using the same approach, for instance by pretending to mitigate the issues (hint: create a lot of new taxes and talk about recycling every change we get, even if that effectively leads to a very low recycle fraction.) I think we'll keep doing the same until things collapse, and will use greenwashing to justify it. This is what we currently do, I don't see any sign of it changing. It's only getting worse. We'll even show with fake studies that producing shorter-lasting items and making them easier to recycle (even if again the effective recycle fraction is negligible) is better environmentally-wise than producing longer-lasting products.

[David Hess]

Cloud storage is another way to lock the customer in...  who's going to change away from a vendor's cloud system once their family photos and videos are all stored there, and shared with other family members that way?   Big Tech will become like banks - where consumers are more likely to get divorced than switch bank!

So of course, the vendors don't want to give us an easy and cheap way to manage our own information, when they can collect it and sell it back to us for all eternity.   They also don't want to give us a simple headphone jack, when they can instead keep selling us expensive wireless earbuds designed to last a few years...

Even Microsoft is playing that game.  They are slowly removing features from File Explorer to make their cloud storage solution more desirable in place of local storage.

And it goes farther than that.  A Microsoft representative actually said that they removed the free space status from File Explorer to reduce "free space anxiety".  But of course that also discourages users from moderating their data storage, so they unwittingly pay more.  ISPs play the same game with caps, overage fines, and refusing to monitor remaining data in real time.

[ogden]

We'll do whatever it takes to keep using the same approach, for instance by pretending to mitigate the issues (hint: create a lot of new taxes and talk about recycling every change we get, even if that effectively leads to a very low recycle fraction.) I think we'll keep doing the same until things collapse, and will use greenwashing to justify it. This is what we currently do, I don't see any sign of it changing. It's only getting worse.

Companies obviously are not made for charity. If they can maximize profit - they will do it. Consumers can change that by not buying certain stuff, but as we all know - they care (about environment) even less. Unfortunately most are buying cheapest s***t they can get, manufacturers meet demand.

We'll even show with fake studies that producing shorter-lasting items and making them easier to recycle (even if again the effective recycle fraction is negligible) is better environmentally-wise than producing longer-lasting products.

Wow. Please provide pointer to such study. Thanx.

[james_s]

Have cable reduction all the time on earbuds? Or have lightning / USB c earbuds. They are available.

Plenty of banks and similar requires to use front face camera to their face verification 

I don't want to have to use a dongle or buy new earbuds, I want the stuff I already have to just plug into it like I do with my current phone. I also sometimes connect a cable to a stereo system to amplify music playing on my phone.

I have never seen anything that required the front facing camera or even heard of something like a bank using it for verification. Maybe they do that in your part of the world but as far as I know it isn't a thing here yet. I've had a smartphone since 2011 and so far I have never once intentionally enabled the front facing camera.

[ogden]

I don't want to have to use a dongle or buy new earbuds, I want the stuff I already have to just plug into it like I do with my current phone. I also sometimes connect a cable to a stereo system to amplify music playing on my phone.

When people want to play vinyl LP's, they get vinyl record player. Most phone users today do not need 3.5mm audio jacks, so you shall not demand modern phones to be capable of playing vinyl records supporting 3.5mm audio jacks.

[SilverSolder]

I don't want to have to use a dongle or buy new earbuds, I want the stuff I already have to just plug into it like I do with my current phone. I also sometimes connect a cable to a stereo system to amplify music playing on my phone.

When people want to play vinyl LP's, they get vinyl record player.

[...]

When people want to make love with a real woman, they find one of those.  Or, they are stuck with the wireless model! 

Joking aside, I have noticed that the headphone jack is making a bit of a comeback, just like vinyl records! 

[IanB]

When people want to play vinyl LP's, they get vinyl record player. Most phone users today do not need 3.5mm audio jacks, so you shall not demand modern phones to be capable of playing vinyl records supporting 3.5mm audio jacks.

I disagree. I have nice headphones that have an audio plug, so I need a way to plug them in. There is no way that headphones are obsolete, even today.

[ogden]

When people want to play vinyl LP's, they get vinyl record player. Most phone users today do not need 3.5mm audio jacks, so you shall not demand modern phones to be capable of playing vinyl records supporting 3.5mm audio jacks.

I disagree. I have nice headphones that have an audio plug, so I need a way to plug them in. There is no way that headphones are obsolete, even today.

You do not seem to comprehend what I am saying. Even vinyl records are not obsolete, they are just rare, not for mass consumption.

https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-headphone-jack-phones/

[james_s]

I know lots of people that use the headphone jack on their phone, when the device is meant to double as a portable music player there's a good reason for it. Bluetooth audio has its place, but sometimes it's just a hassle to deal with more devices that need to be charged up.

I read somewhere that vinyl record sales were way up over the past few years. I'm old enough to still have a handful of them that I had back when that was how you listened to music at home, then a few years ago I started buying them at thrift stores. I'm not going to argue that they sound better than digital, but a record in good condition played on a decent turntable does sound good, and it's a different experience. There's something fascinating about entirely analog audio, the earliest of which did not even require electricity. It's interesting to think that a person ~3,000 years ago could build a functional record player had the idea occurred to them.

[ogden]

Audio jack was one of requirements for all my phones including current one. On the other hand I am not expecting that phones manufactured for the masses will have such. You shall be neither.

[ejeffrey]

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

SD card support is an extra expense and of less utility now that large amounts of storage can be included inside the phone.

Cheap SD cards are slow, their presence significantly complicates the UI and device management needs to pick what goes on internal vs. external storage, and it is hard to reconcile with "just works" device encryption.

Network based off-device backups are in my mind a necessity.  I carry my phone around all day.  I'm not reckless but there is always a chance it gets lost or broken.  There are good reasons to not want commercial device backup/storage but then you can roll your own.  Once you have network backup working and can already store a total reasonable amount of local data on the built-in storage, I just don't see the need for an SD card for most people.  I know some people *want* it, and I know that some people have use cases that would really benefit from it, but I certainly wouldn't give up much of anything for an SD card.

Same with the battery for that matter.  I would prefer a user replaceable battery, and I wouldn't mind if the phone were a bit thicker to accommodate it, but I wouldn't give up battery, cost, IP rating, or much of anything else to make room for it.  Most non user replacable batteries can be replaced either by the manufacturer or any number of third party services.  It costs a few dollars more and is more inconvenient than doing it yourself, but paying $100 to replace a battery in a $500 phone or $1500 laptop that gives it another 3-5 years of useful life?  It's totally worth it.  I wouldn't want to compromise the daily utility of the phone for something I replace every few years.  And if your battery is needing to be replaced every 2 years, the problem isn't with the non-replaceable battery it is with the crappy design.

[IanB]

I know lots of people that use the headphone jack on their phone, when the device is meant to double as a portable music player there's a good reason for it. Bluetooth audio has its place, but sometimes it's just a hassle to deal with more devices that need to be charged up.

This is a stumbling block for me. I was just checking out the latest offerings in Bluetooth headphones, and they have some very nice features. But they all have a rechargeable lithium battery that can wear out. Bose, for instance, has a policy of no battery replacement. I don't want to pay $300 for a device with a built-in end-of-life clock.

I far prefer to have devices that use AA or AAA rechargeable batteries, so I can simply swap or replace the battery when needed.

[SilverSolder]

[...]  if your battery is needing to be replaced every 2 years, the problem isn't with the non-replaceable battery it is with the crappy design.

The battery is likely too small for the max workload the phone can do, so it gets cycled to death with multiple recharges even intra-day.

...And/or the device gets hot in use and bakes the battery to death.

My worst case phone workload is running both Waze and an OBDII scanner app with a dozen gauges simultaneously, with Messenger and the rest of it in the background.  The phone uses so much power that the charger can't keep the battery from slowly draining during the hour or two that the journey lasts....  the phone gets glowing hot, too.  In summertime, I sometimes get an error message due to high battery temperature....

[NiHaoMike]

I don't want to have to use a dongle or buy new earbuds, I want the stuff I already have to just plug into it like I do with my current phone. I also sometimes connect a cable to a stereo system to amplify music playing on my phone.

Are you also the kind to complain that the latest RTX 3090 doesn't have a VGA port so you can't plug your Trinitron into it? Really, single ended signals that can go below ground aren't the easiest to design particularly for portable devices and is also not ideal for signal quality.

I suppose a differential analog audio standard for consumer use could be developed, but it would be facing a losing battle compared to digital audio.