This was originally a discussion on the Fairphone subreddit, where users almost unanimously responded with that they were fine with if a future Fairphone did not have a toolless removable battery as long as the battery was still easily replacable with minor disassembly. One of the main reasons being that modern devices generally have plenty of battery life on a single charge.
I remember carrying an extra battery to switch out when the first one died being a somewhat standard part of using feature phones, because their battery lives were terrible and chargers in public places weren’t really a thing yet. It was so common that some feature phones used to come with two batteries in the box and you could buy standalone battery chargers. Damn, I just realized: the golden age of feature phones is now over a decade ago.
What do you think? In terms of the niche of highly repairable devices, how important is a tool-less, instantly replaceable battery to you? Compared to if you had to unscrew the back panel or the screen assembly to access the battery. Would a laptop or a tablet with a toolless battery be more important to you than a phone, since those tend to have shorter battery life and be harder to find public charging spots for?
I guess another issue is barrier to replacement? Technologically inclined people will not find taking out a couple screws or removing a non-glued display assembly very difficult at all, but for the layman, even that could be a daunting task, possibly leading to more devices being thrown out because of dead batteries instead of being repaired? Though, this also seems more a problem with how society views repairing devices than a fault of the design itself.
I’m okay with it if it doesn’t require soldering. I tend to choose my device with a large battery capacity out of the box, so I rarely need to consider charging my phone during daytime use.
It’s always seemed a regression to me, that batteries are no longer easily accessible. I applaud the wok of Fairphone and Shiftphones in working to produce better - more open - design.
It’s a barrier for replacement. Period.
Most people are afraid of tools and scared to break things. So they gonna pay somebody to do it. Or just buy a new one…
Battery replacement is something that needs doing on the order of every 4+ years. When you’re working on that sort of timeline, there’s not a great case to be made for sacrificing other functionality for a fairly simple swap. Worst case you take it to a generic repair shop where someone that’s not afraid of a screwdriver does the job.
In principle, I like the idea of an easily replaceable battery, but having to restart my device to swap out the battery kind of makes that point moot.
On my laptop, I hate having to restart. It throws out a whole bunch of mental state.
On my phone, I tend to have less mental state, but the battery lasts longer and I can make do with an external battery pack, so I kind of wouldn’t use it either way.On laptop you could hibernate and not loose the workflow
Good point, although my experience has been rather hit-and-miss with hibernation. There seem to be plenty laptop models where it simply doesn’t work.
I guess, you could research that before buying the laptop, though.Good point, although my experience has been rather hit-and-miss with hibernation.
Same honestly. I would not trust any important running process to it. Also, it writes the contents of memory to the drive, which is an extra attack surface you have to worry about security wise, since when the computer wakes back up, the memory dump file is recoverable in software, or worse, can trivially be copied off the drive at any time if you don’t have full disk encryption. Though, this is also an issue to a lesser degree with the Swap file if you don’t set it up to be encrypted with a random key at boot.
On my laptop, I hate having to restart. It throws out a whole bunch of mental state.
Some heavy duty industrial laptops, like the Dell Rugged Extreme series, have two batteries where either one can be hot swapped without powering down. They’re insanely expensive for the level of compute performance though, assuming you don’t need their rugged or advanced enterprise features.
Tool-less is important for generic consumer hardware. Ideally, you would say it should be toolless for all consumer hardware, but a laptop computer explains us why that is not a good idea for a mobile, mission critical device. Smartphones are handled even more carelessly, since they are hand sized devices, and their connectivity utility is mission critical.
Laptops and mobiles probably should not be toolless, but rely either on the mechanical latches or screws or a simple glue like T-3000 or T-7000. The current system, as far as devices themselves go, is not too horrible. There are exceptions like Apple, newest Pixel 6 series and so on, but midrange phones are decently repairable. Same goes for ThinkPads, but there are a lot of problematic practices among other laptop makers, especially Apple. What is bad is the unconditional availability of either company genuine batteries or good third party batteries.
For myself, there is a little problem with tool-less ones and is that the case can get broken and fall easily exposing the battery to fall too or similar.
I would prefer one with little disassembly as far as I have only to use a screwdriver a bit.
there is a little problem with tool-less ones and is that the case can get broken and fall easily exposing the battery to fall too or similar
What about some form of interlock that requires more than a single action? Like two buttons on either side of the device that you have to press simultaneously to unlock the panel? Or a button to unlock and then a latch that you have to pull with some force to get the panel off? I guess the problem with that would be difficulty in design, whether it will seize up with wear, and whether it could be unfriendly to differently abled people.
I can even handle glue on the outer frame for water resistance, but it would be nice if they offered easy replacement adhesive or made it easy for third parties to make it. I fix a lot of iphones, we never bother with fresh adhesive and i’ve never encountered a phone fixed before us that did.
I’m considering a PinePhone Pro, but I wish they do a form factor compatible with some available OtterBox or something.
we do it with samsung because they give us real parts and they’re total dicks about everything, but it’s a huge pain in the ass
but I wish they do a form factor compatible with some available OtterBox or something
Isn’t the Pinephone’s design mostly open source? I’m sure someone with the requisite knowledge can design and 3D print a silicone case fairly easily by basing it off their CAD drawings.
