Original Galaxy S battery was getting weak? Order a new battery from Amazon for 13€. Battery arrives, pop the back of the phone off, pull battery out (just like that, no soldering), push new battery in. Push the back of the phone back on, done.
New battery in and it had more mAh than the original one. Despite overclocking that phone it ran a day longer after the replacement.
Yeah but then you have to wade through a million crappy Chinese products and be thankful when they merely don’t hold a charge (as opposed to exploding).
I’ve been through this back when batteries were replaceable, decent 3rd-party were not easy to find. Best you could hope for was that the original manufacturer kept making them. Nokia went as far as making one battery model work with multiple phone models.
Honest question, are phone batteries recycleable? Because if there’s going to be a ton of them being made I have to wonder what’s worst for the environment, replacing phones or replacing batteries.
I’m not sure if you’re being serious but replacing a phone is the same as replacing a battery, but worse for both consumer and environment. Of course you’d want to do some research before purchasing the first thing that crosses your path, but both me and my wife have done this before many times with very good results.
I had that issue with an Otterbox case. Bought it, it was bulky but protected the phone well. After 3 years the rubber tore near the charging port. They offer “lifetime” warranty (5 years). Well, wrote them for a replacement and they simply said nah, they don’t have that case any more for a phone this “old”. So they didn’t honor the warranty and just told me I’m out of luck.
What the hell do I buy an expensive phone case for when they can’t even honor a 5 year warranty? That was the last Otterbox for me, Spigen was the choice I went with afterwards. Can’t go wrong with a 10 buck phone case, I don’t care if it breaks in a few years.
When it comes to phones every manufacturer just gives you the finger if it’s 3+ years old it seems.
“It’s easier to make the phone waterproof if the battery is not user-serviceable” is a common argument; if it’s really true, way more phones should be waterproof even if not IP-certified (which understandably costs money and raises the end price).
Lol no doubt. Remember when Apple (and other manufacturers I guess) stopped including chargers in the box and they told us it was to reduce waste and was better for the environment? I wonder how many millions of dollars it saved them?
I think the proposal went through. The Deadline is 2027 though. But hopefully, manufacturers will change in preparation of this rule so we maybe see the effects earlier like we saw with usb c? Officially, obligatory usb c usage starts in at the end of 2024, but I think everyone but Apple has already switched and Apple said they’re planning to comply within the time frame.
About waterproofing: I’ve had to replace a G6’s glass back twice and both times the new cover had the seal pre-installed and the phone could still be cleaned with soap and water, no issue.
Thanks for reminding me of how I used to never worry about battery life cause the moment one got low, I’d just pop a spare out of my backpack and continue on with my day. Batteries were so freaking cheap!
I have an Anker powerbank for that, if my phone ever gets low I just plug it in in my bag.
Though it never got this far to be honest, my Galaxy S22 lasts for 2+ days (so charging it in the evening for half an hour is usually enough to never worry about battery).
Bought the powerbank 6 years ago to play Pokemon Go (go figure), but then they removed the steps feature (showing you how far away you are from the Pokemon, leading to people actually hunting them down instead of sitting around in one spot) and I stopped playing (:
Plugging in is less trouble. You still have to pop open the cover, switch batteries and pop the cover back on. And Android takes like a full minute to boot back up. Just plugging a cable in and waiting for 20-30 minutes is more chill. Or you load it over night when you sleep.
The only reason why I’d want a swap-able battery would be cheap battery replacement when the old one is giving out :)
And Android takes like a full minute to boot back up.
Yeah, I miss my brick Nokia’s quick startup time… I think there’s a way to avoid the shutdown problem.
Hibernation mechanism, known from PCs, could be ported to Android. This way you can pick up where you left off before swapping the battery. Seriously, I hate losing all unread notifications after a reboot. Who the hell though that’s a good idea?
Hot swapping battery, which means that you can change one half of the battery, then the second half and the phone won’t shut down at all. Foldables make it easier since they already use 2 batteries, 1 for each half. Just wire them up in parallel and the voltage won’t drop when one is taken out for replacement by the user.
I just bought a shoulder bag that has a USB passthrough for this sort of thing. I haven’t put a powerbank inside yet but I plan to. Both mine and my wife’s iPhone 13 batteries are starting to suck bad.
great for you, doesn’t spund great for the environment, I like the push for replaceable batteries, but surely battery banks are a better solution since they are universal
Agreed for general use, but for people who just replace the entire phone instead of replacing the battery, it will reduce the waste of all the rest of the phone for some time.
Charging the internal battery from an external one loses a lot of energy, battery charging is very far from 100% efficient
A phone might not use enough energy for this to make much of a difference, but you need to build and carry beefier battery banks compared to internal batteries, and I’m not sure whether you’ll see a net benifit
Lol this post reads like grandma telling her kids about how phones were in her day!
“When I was young, we’d just pop the back off the phone and replace the battery ourselves.”
“Yea yea grandma. Let’s get you to bed.”
I mean they’re not wrong tho. This isn’t a I walked up hill both ways to school story. Its meant to convey how crappy companies have become with planned obsolescence.
There was an even bigger benefit that most people maybe didn’t realise at that time or even now, but when the phone fell that energy got distributed into the parts flying apart, which used to reduce the damage the phone took
That’s part of what makes the Noikia 3310 so infamously hard to damage from dropping it, even at extreme heights. It’s designed to come apart on impact instead of staying in one piece and taking the full brunt of the impact.
Oh god, yeah. My original Galaxy S was dropped a few times and the plastic back cover and the battery flew apart. But the screen never got a scratch, just the plastic had a few small scratches.
But in general the new glass on phone screen sucks ass. My Galaxy S22 has small scratches from normal use, just being in my pocket. The OnePlus 5 I had before that? Not a single scratch.
They are making the glass softer now so it doesn’t crack as easily, but at the same time it starts to scratch more. Instead of going with really hard glass that doesn’t scratch and just telling customers to put a case on :-/
Yeah, took like a month or so till I realized I already had a very visible scratch on the display. Never dropped, just on the table (display up!) or in my jean pockets. Total insanity :-/
When you complain about it everyone just tells you to use a screen protector, but they all suck.
Yeah I wish there was a good screen protector for the ultra but I’ve only heard horror stories about the pen, fingerprint sensor and even camera failing : (
I only stick to my Note 9 (peak Samsung) because of stylus support that no one else offers. When Fairphone stars offering as awesome stylus support as Samsung does, I’m moving immediately.
Looking at how my FP3 and the newer FP4 is assembled, I don’t think they can make a foldable and easily repairable device right now (didn’t stop them releasing those unrepairable Earbuds, but oh well)
I did the same with my HTC Thunderbolt. That phone had so many features that these newer “better” phones don’t. Removable battery, expandable storage, IR blaster. That generation was peak for smartphones. Now I just get pixel A’s because they are all the same trash, and at least it’s cheap.
My Galaxy SIII took soo much abuse before it finally died, when I got it, a friend of mine had already installed CyanogenMod onto it. Best rooted phone I ever owned.
It was bulletproof in more ways than one, by the time I finally laid it to rest the charging port was broken and I had to charge it by touching wires to the 2 pins meant for a wireless charger, and the phone wouldn’t charge unless it was turned off.
My pixel 4a battery isn’t soldered but I needed to spend 45 minutes taking it apart and it’s definitely not something the average phone user would be comfortable doing. We need to pass (in the US) some sort of legislation that makes it simple to replace phone batteries.
Oh it took me about 4 hours recently to replace the battery in my galaxy note 10. Most of that time was painstakingly cleaning up the old adhesives and gaskets with alcohol, tweezers and scrapers.
Oh, could be. Looking it up they mostly use adhesives, custom screws and other crap to stop you from replacing. I could have sworn I heard of a phone where they actually soldered the battery in. Maybe I just made that up though.
Or, better yet, you should be able to hot swap the battery, which means that you can change one half of the battery, then the second half and the phone won’t shut down at all. Foldables make it easier since they already use 2 batteries, 1 for each half. Just wire them up in parallel and the voltage won’t drop when one is taken out for replacement by the user.
Back in the day this was even better:
Original Galaxy S battery was getting weak? Order a new battery from Amazon for 13€. Battery arrives, pop the back of the phone off, pull battery out (just like that, no soldering), push new battery in. Push the back of the phone back on, done.
New battery in and it had more mAh than the original one. Despite overclocking that phone it ran a day longer after the replacement.
If the EU has its way we might all get this.
One can hope.
People can babble about water proofing, etc. There is no legitimate engineering problem.
The battery could power the device wirelessly at this point.
They could even claim they’re saving the environment by not including the battery after a couple release cycles.
Oof i didn’t think of them selling the battery separate possibly with an upcharge. monkeys paw curls
You probably also didn’t think about them no longer making the battery two years after releasing the phone.
Third party has always been the solution to this.
Yeah but then you have to wade through a million crappy Chinese products and be thankful when they merely don’t hold a charge (as opposed to exploding).
I’ve been through this back when batteries were replaceable, decent 3rd-party were not easy to find. Best you could hope for was that the original manufacturer kept making them. Nokia went as far as making one battery model work with multiple phone models.
Honest question, are phone batteries recycleable? Because if there’s going to be a ton of them being made I have to wonder what’s worst for the environment, replacing phones or replacing batteries.
I’m not sure if you’re being serious but replacing a phone is the same as replacing a battery, but worse for both consumer and environment. Of course you’d want to do some research before purchasing the first thing that crosses your path, but both me and my wife have done this before many times with very good results.
I had that issue with an Otterbox case. Bought it, it was bulky but protected the phone well. After 3 years the rubber tore near the charging port. They offer “lifetime” warranty (5 years). Well, wrote them for a replacement and they simply said nah, they don’t have that case any more for a phone this “old”. So they didn’t honor the warranty and just told me I’m out of luck.
What the hell do I buy an expensive phone case for when they can’t even honor a 5 year warranty? That was the last Otterbox for me, Spigen was the choice I went with afterwards. Can’t go wrong with a 10 buck phone case, I don’t care if it breaks in a few years.
When it comes to phones every manufacturer just gives you the finger if it’s 3+ years old it seems.
That should’ve been an FTC complaint.
Easy enough to do the same thing they do for cars and force them to make parts for 10 years.
Oooh devious! “We listened to our customers so now all new iPhones will have replaceable batteries.*”
That’s not a thing. Wireless charging is horribly inefficient and produces lots of heat, reducing performance and battery life.
Sure, but it is possible.
Might happen if it has some sort of benefit that we don’t know about for waterproofing separate batteries, even if it is indeed less efficient.
Even if it was a legitimate problem, it’s sad that only about half of the phones are certified waterproof even if almost all are sealed.
Not that the phones are warrantied against water damage even if they are rated as water resistant.
Why is that sad? I can understand why companies don’t want to pay just to get a certification when the phone itself is up to standards regardless
“It’s easier to make the phone waterproof if the battery is not user-serviceable” is a common argument; if it’s really true, way more phones should be waterproof even if not IP-certified (which understandably costs money and raises the end price).
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Samsung Galaxy S5 would like to have a word. IP67 while having user-detachable battery cover.
One of the very few phones like this.
Lol no doubt. Remember when Apple (and other manufacturers I guess) stopped including chargers in the box and they told us it was to reduce waste and was better for the environment? I wonder how many millions of dollars it saved them?
I think the proposal went through. The Deadline is 2027 though. But hopefully, manufacturers will change in preparation of this rule so we maybe see the effects earlier like we saw with usb c? Officially, obligatory usb c usage starts in at the end of 2024, but I think everyone but Apple has already switched and Apple said they’re planning to comply within the time frame.
About waterproofing: I’ve had to replace a G6’s glass back twice and both times the new cover had the seal pre-installed and the phone could still be cleaned with soap and water, no issue.
So my consumer preference for a sealed phone with a specific form factor simply doesn’t matter I guess?
Do you mean your consumer preference as it is currently dictated by companies?
Not I mean my preferences which are dictated by my individual agency.
Yeah sorry, you and that one other guy isn’t accounted for.
Tim.
Very well, either way more choice is more better.
Thanks for reminding me of how I used to never worry about battery life cause the moment one got low, I’d just pop a spare out of my backpack and continue on with my day. Batteries were so freaking cheap!
You even had official charging stands that had slots for the extra battery so you could charge everything at once overnight
I have an Anker powerbank for that, if my phone ever gets low I just plug it in in my bag.
Though it never got this far to be honest, my Galaxy S22 lasts for 2+ days (so charging it in the evening for half an hour is usually enough to never worry about battery).
Bought the powerbank 6 years ago to play Pokemon Go (go figure), but then they removed the steps feature (showing you how far away you are from the Pokemon, leading to people actually hunting them down instead of sitting around in one spot) and I stopped playing (:
Still, plugging in for an hour or more vs just popping a new battery in n having a full charge instantly is not comparable.
Plugging in is less trouble. You still have to pop open the cover, switch batteries and pop the cover back on. And Android takes like a full minute to boot back up. Just plugging a cable in and waiting for 20-30 minutes is more chill. Or you load it over night when you sleep.
The only reason why I’d want a swap-able battery would be cheap battery replacement when the old one is giving out :)
Yeah, I miss my brick Nokia’s quick startup time… I think there’s a way to avoid the shutdown problem.
I just bought a shoulder bag that has a USB passthrough for this sort of thing. I haven’t put a powerbank inside yet but I plan to. Both mine and my wife’s iPhone 13 batteries are starting to suck bad.
great for you, doesn’t spund great for the environment, I like the push for replaceable batteries, but surely battery banks are a better solution since they are universal
Agreed for general use, but for people who just replace the entire phone instead of replacing the battery, it will reduce the waste of all the rest of the phone for some time.
Charging the internal battery from an external one loses a lot of energy, battery charging is very far from 100% efficient A phone might not use enough energy for this to make much of a difference, but you need to build and carry beefier battery banks compared to internal batteries, and I’m not sure whether you’ll see a net benifit
Lol this post reads like grandma telling her kids about how phones were in her day!
“When I was young, we’d just pop the back off the phone and replace the battery ourselves.”
“Yea yea grandma. Let’s get you to bed.”
I mean they’re not wrong tho. This isn’t a I walked up hill both ways to school story. Its meant to convey how crappy companies have become with planned obsolescence.
And it wasn’t even that long ago either. I feel like I’m talking to teenagers.
Kid today don’t know how bad they have it.
New Fairphones still have that feature.
But those were also made with repair in mind.
You can literally replace your usb-c port for 15€ with original parts by yourself, by spending 15 minutes with a screwdriver.
And the parts of a Fairphone 2 are still available, nearly 8 years after it launched.
There was an even bigger benefit that most people maybe didn’t realise at that time or even now, but when the phone fell that energy got distributed into the parts flying apart, which used to reduce the damage the phone took
That’s part of what makes the Noikia 3310 so infamously hard to damage from dropping it, even at extreme heights. It’s designed to come apart on impact instead of staying in one piece and taking the full brunt of the impact.
Oh god, yeah. My original Galaxy S was dropped a few times and the plastic back cover and the battery flew apart. But the screen never got a scratch, just the plastic had a few small scratches.
But in general the new glass on phone screen sucks ass. My Galaxy S22 has small scratches from normal use, just being in my pocket. The OnePlus 5 I had before that? Not a single scratch.
They are making the glass softer now so it doesn’t crack as easily, but at the same time it starts to scratch more. Instead of going with really hard glass that doesn’t scratch and just telling customers to put a case on :-/
It feels like my S22 ultra’s screen is made of LDPE it’s so soft…
Yeah, took like a month or so till I realized I already had a very visible scratch on the display. Never dropped, just on the table (display up!) or in my jean pockets. Total insanity :-/
When you complain about it everyone just tells you to use a screen protector, but they all suck.
Yeah I wish there was a good screen protector for the ultra but I’ve only heard horror stories about the pen, fingerprint sensor and even camera failing : (
Just buy a Fairphone end enjoy the exact same thing
Fairphone sounds great but currently has a poor price to performance ratio
You pay extra because the materials were sourced through moral means and not sweatshops.
I for one like that feature.
I do too, but it’s a hard sell for the masses right now. I want Fairphone to succeed but it’s tough.
Their subscription program is even less competitive.
I only stick to my Note 9 (peak Samsung) because of stylus support that no one else offers. When Fairphone stars offering as awesome stylus support as Samsung does, I’m moving immediately.
Did they make a Fairphone Fold yet? If not then I’m not leaving my Z Fold 3 anytime soon. I regret not waiting for the Pixel Fold…
I don’t think they will, any time yet anyway.
Looking at how my FP3 and the newer FP4 is assembled, I don’t think they can make a foldable and easily repairable device right now (didn’t stop them releasing those unrepairable Earbuds, but oh well)
There’s also the software aspect too
I did the same with my HTC Thunderbolt. That phone had so many features that these newer “better” phones don’t. Removable battery, expandable storage, IR blaster. That generation was peak for smartphones. Now I just get pixel A’s because they are all the same trash, and at least it’s cheap.
My Galaxy SIII took soo much abuse before it finally died, when I got it, a friend of mine had already installed CyanogenMod onto it. Best rooted phone I ever owned.
It was bulletproof in more ways than one, by the time I finally laid it to rest the charging port was broken and I had to charge it by touching wires to the 2 pins meant for a wireless charger, and the phone wouldn’t charge unless it was turned off.
The batteries are not soldered even in the newest Samsung phones. Everything you’d want to replace is modular. Not sure about Apple.
Also not soldered on any iPhone but for sure stuck behind several layers of adhesive.
My pixel 4a battery isn’t soldered but I needed to spend 45 minutes taking it apart and it’s definitely not something the average phone user would be comfortable doing. We need to pass (in the US) some sort of legislation that makes it simple to replace phone batteries.
Fat chance. Our only hope is that the EU does it
Didn’t they already do that?
The law needs to be signed still but it is estimated that realisticly easily replaceable batteries in smartphones should hit around 2027…
They did. They are required to be on all phones sold in EU 2027.
Oh it took me about 4 hours recently to replace the battery in my galaxy note 10. Most of that time was painstakingly cleaning up the old adhesives and gaskets with alcohol, tweezers and scrapers.
There’s never any soldering involved when replacing batteries tho?
Oh, could be. Looking it up they mostly use adhesives, custom screws and other crap to stop you from replacing. I could have sworn I heard of a phone where they actually soldered the battery in. Maybe I just made that up though.
Or, better yet, you should be able to hot swap the battery, which means that you can change one half of the battery, then the second half and the phone won’t shut down at all. Foldables make it easier since they already use 2 batteries, 1 for each half. Just wire them up in parallel and the voltage won’t drop when one is taken out for replacement by the user.
But customers want water-proof devices! Therefore we cannot make batteries replacable, it’s not what the market wants you know /s