Would you buy a phone with no removable battery?

[Capt Caveman]

External battery packs if you need to recharge. And the non-removable battery on my Nexus 5 is easy to replace.

 

[smackababy]

With the carrier upgrade, subsidized phone being the way most people go these days, a removable battery without tools is simply not required. If the phone is designed to last more than an hour or two on charge (look at you, early Android phones!), one shouldn't need to hot swap batteries.

The battery will last long enough for the upgrade cycle and that is what most consumers care about.

 

[vi edit]

I'll end up buying whatever phone is available when I need one. That will be whatever trendy piece of crap kids have been convinced is cool at that moment.
At the end of the day, aside from making calls, a smart phones real utility is about the same as a pencil, and trending down.

Meh. My lumia 635 was $50. Has a removable battery and storage expansion via SD slot. It makes calls as good as any phone 10x it's price, answers emails, texts and takes basic pictures. You can browse the web and get most basic apps. Battery life is excellent too. Trendy not need apply.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I'll end up buying whatever phone is available when I need one. That will be whatever trendy piece of crap kids have been convinced is cool at that moment.

?

At the end of the day, aside from making calls, a smart phones real utility is about the same as a pencil, and trending down.

?

That doesn't make any sense. Why would you buy whatever is trendy (and expensive), when a dirt-cheap feature phone would be overkill for you?

 

[ControlD]

Meh. My lumia 635 was $50. Has a removable battery and storage expansion via SD slot. It makes calls as good as any phone 10x it's price, answers emails, texts and takes basic pictures. You can browse the web and get most basic apps. Battery life is excellent too. Trendy not need apply.

I don't know how you go out in public with that thing :awe:

 

[pontifex]

lol @ comments saying its to save space. some of these new phones might as well be tablets. Mys sister just got a S6 and it's huge! My Nexus 7 tablet isn't much bigger.

 

[Eug]

I stopped caring much about removable batteries many, many years ago when:

1) Apple said that replacing its iPhone batteries would cost only $75.
2) External USB battery packs became available for cheap.

This is in stark contrast to my old 1990s Nokia 6190, for which I had something 3 or 4 batteries for, because I needed them if I was going anywhere without a power outlet.

 

[edro]

At the end of the day, aside from making calls, a smart phones real utility is about the same as a pencil, and trending down.

lol, ok

I haven't seen a pencil operate as a phone, GPS, music player, still camera, video camera, internet browser, fitness tracker, messenger, game console and note taker...

Well ok, pencils are note takers, I'll give you that.

 

[cbrunny]

I don't care about a removable battery. My Note 4 has the function but I've never done it. I don't have any reason to, can't imagine not buying a phone for that one reason alone.

 

[CZroe]

I had to look that one up. Never heard of that service before.

Yeah. Google Fi was recently announced and only works with the Nexus 6 so far. You can't just update other phones because the IMEI has to be registered/allowed on Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, etc. If I understand it correctly, it's like a VoIP cellular service that is hopping between whichever carrier has the strongest signal and really only using them for data services, which is why the phone service works seamlessly over WiFi when it can't access any of those cellular networks.

I'd be on-board if the phone had a swappable battery and expandable storage.

 

[Thump553]

Meh. My lumia 635 was $50. Has a removable battery and storage expansion via SD slot. It makes calls as good as any phone 10x it's price, answers emails, texts and takes basic pictures. You can browse the web and get most basic apps. Battery life is excellent too. Trendy not need apply.

Ditto. I pretty much agree with OP, the trend towards non replaceable batteries is to promote planned obsolescence. The phone manufacturers are following the same business model as the Big Three automakers of the fifties and sixties-get the buyer to replace the product every year or two because of illusory, nonessential "improvements" like tailfins. No way I'm jumping on the bandwagon to replace my phone every two years. It may be easier to engineer a phone with a non removable battery but the decision is 99% marketing, not an engineering one.

 

[CZroe]

That's good to know.

Agreed, ease of swap would be nice.

And thickness of the phone matters very little to me.

FUNCTION over form.

For a portable device, thickness matter a lot.

But I'm wondering what type of person doesn't know how to use a screwdriver once every three years to replace a battery pack.

That doesn't replace the FUNCTION of being able to go from 0% to 100% any time/place you want. I have replaced hundreds of internal batteries but I am not deluding myself: replaceable != swappable

 

[Eug]

Ditto. I pretty much agree with OP, the trend towards non replaceable batteries is to promote planned obsolescence. The phone manufacturers are following the same business model as the Big Three automakers of the fifties and sixties-get the buyer to replace the product every year or two because of illusory, nonessential "improvements" like tailfins. No way I'm jumping on the bandwagon to replace my phone every two years. It may be easier to engineer a phone with a non removable battery but the decision is 99% marketing, not an engineering one.

Not really. It's just as cheap now to get a store to replace a battery as compared to over a decade ago when replaceable OEM batteries cost this much.

That doesn't replace the FUNCTION of being able to go from 0% to 100% any time/place you want. I have replaced hundreds of internal batteries but I am not deluding myself: replaceable != swappable

For a lot of people, external battery packs have solved this problem.

For smartphones, the only time I really want another battery is if I'm travelling, but the fact that many planes and airports now have USB ports and that you can simply carry with you a 4000 mAh USB battery pack that costs the same as a battery has solved that problem.

 

[zinfamous]

At the end of the day, aside from making calls, a smart phones real utility is about the same as a pencil, and trending down.

You must be the RadioShack CEO, with this kind of tech acumen.

 

[jlee]

It's one of the main reasons why I will not be switching to the Nexus 6 from my iPhone 6 Plus. The other is that it has no expandable storage. If it had both then I would switch. I'd go for the LG G4 except that if doesn't work with Google Fi. I want all three if I'm going to ditch iOS again, dammit! My last phone was a Galaxy Note 3.

And it's not about being able to replace it. I replace internal batteries all the time. It's about being able to swap it. No fast charge in the world beats an instant charge. Gang charging means always having a full battery ready to go.

The N6 battery life is absurd...I've never had it run out. I do generally leave it on a Qi charger during the day at work, but even on the weekends it holds up fine. No expandable storage is a bummer, but I don't store movies on my phone so 32GB is plenty.

 

[cbrunny]

I don't understand how anyone can use a full charge on a modern phone in a day. Do you do anything other than stare at your phone?

I stream radio two hours every day in my car through bluetooth over data, plus general usage through the day and evening and I rarely have less than 50% of battery life left when I go to plug it in at night. I really don't get it. Do people just not charge their battery and then complain about bad battery life when it dies? Why is swapping even necessary when I work next to a computer all day? Power banks too. My car has a usb cable that I don't use, but I can to charge if I'm in a pinch. What could you possibly be doing all day that you MUST have a swappable battery?

 

[Eug]

BTW, pretty much all cars now have charging USB ports, in addition to the 12V cigarette lighter port.

 

[tortillasoup]

Even if I don't buy a spare battery for a phone, having a non replaceable battery is built in planned obsolescence. If it's an Android phone, that phone will be worthless if it is to be resold due to the questionable battery life. Having to take a phone apart just to access the battery is stupid. Batteries don't last forever and I've replaced several batteries on phones due to the batteries failing or having severely reduced capacity.

 

[ControlD]

I don't understand how anyone can use a full charge on a modern phone in a day. Do you do anything other than stare at your phone?

I stream radio two hours every day in my car through bluetooth over data, plus general usage through the day and evening and I rarely have less than 50% of battery life left when I go to plug it in at night. I really don't get it. Do people just not charge their battery and then complain about bad battery life when it dies? Why is swapping even necessary when I work next to a computer all day? Power banks too. My car has a usb cable that I don't use, but I can to charge if I'm in a pinch. What could you possibly be doing all day that you MUST have a swappable battery?

I don't need to swap batteries nor do I stare at my phone all day. However, I work in an area with very spotty cell coverage. My phone can easily burn through 60-70% throughout the day simply sitting on my desk and trying to find/hold a signal. On the weekends at home, I rarely get below 70% during the day. I would rather have a phone with wireless charging than having to swap batteries personally.

 

[dullard]

I don't understand how anyone can use a full charge on a modern phone in a day. Do you do anything other than stare at your phone?

I stream radio two hours every day in my car through bluetooth over data, plus general usage through the day and evening and I rarely have less than 50% of battery life left when I go to plug it in at night. I really don't get it. Do people just not charge their battery and then complain about bad battery life when it dies? Why is swapping even necessary when I work next to a computer all day? Power banks too. My car has a usb cable that I don't use, but I can to charge if I'm in a pinch. What could you possibly be doing all day that you MUST have a swappable battery?

Try sitting in an office with limited reception. It'll drain almost any battery within a work day (often by lunch).

 

[cbrunny]

Try sitting in an office with limited reception. It'll drain almost any battery within a work day (often by lunch).

so plug it in? doesn't your computer have a usb port?

 

[Linflas]

I've had my HTC One for almost 2 years now and initially was very hesitant go with it due to the non-removable battery and no SD card slot. In the end I just asked myself how often I made use of either of those features on my previous phone and the answer was never. I have not missed either of those features so yes I will buy a phone with no removable battery.

 

[dullard]

so plug it in? doesn't your computer have a usb port?

Not any more. After overdrawing the USB power for years (phone + many pieces of equipment), my work computer no longer has functional USB ports. If I didn't work at a cheap company, I could probably have this 6 year old computer replaced. I do have a fun trick now: I can plug in a USB drive to cause the floppy disk drive to make that crunching sound until the USB drive is removed (you may remember that from years ago when you may have used floppy drives).

But the same problem exists with people who work in the field without a computer to plug into. If you are someone like a HVAC repairman, cable installer, home inspector, etc. then you will frequently be in areas where you might not get good reception (and that is completely out of your control) and that is a battery killer. You have no computer handy for charging. And if you keep trying to plug it into your car repeatedly, that is a battery killer. Then you have a non-functional battery which is even worse than low battery life.

Heck, the last time I needed a part to repair my furnace (I bought a capacitor off of his truck), I met my HVAC guy at a Verizon store. He had 10 non-functional iPhones (batteries were all dead from his employees) and he was trying to convince Verizon to let him upgrade his fleet of phones early.

 

[jlee]

Not any more. After overdrawing the USB power for years (phone + many pieces of equipment), my work computer no longer has functional USB ports. If I didn't work at a cheap company, I could probably have this 6 year old computer replaced. I do have a fun trick now: I can plug in a USB drive to cause the floppy disk drive to make that crunching sound until the USB drive is removed (you may remember that from years ago when you may have used floppy drives).

But the same problem exists with people who work in the field without a computer to plug into. If you are someone like a HVAC repairman, cable installer, home inspector, etc. then you will frequently be in areas where you might not get good reception (and that is completely out of your control) and that is a battery killer. You have no computer handy for charging. And if you keep trying to plug it into your car repeatedly, that is a battery killer. Then you have a non-functional battery which is even worse than low battery life.

Heck, the last time I needed a part to repair my furnace, I met my HVAC guy at a Verizon store. He had 10 non-functional iPhones (batteries were all dead from his employees) and he was trying to convince Verizon to let him upgrade his fleet of phones early.

You have no AC outlets? I have a Qi charger on my desk. I leave work with my battery at 100%.

 

[dullard]

You have no AC outlets? I have a Qi charger on my desk. I leave work with my battery at 100%.

If you read my post above, I have a Droid Turbo and no need for AC outlets, Qi, or any other charging at work.