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It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027
(www.androidauthority.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2023
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Tbh, I don't miss this.
Phone batteries generally last 3-4 years (sometimes longer depending on the size), and by that point it's usually time to upgrade to a new phone anyway for the latest security updates and such.
Here's a thought, what if phones weren't made to be disposable?
Exactly, every phone doesn't need to be replaced 3-4 years. Fairphone is doing a great thing with Fairphone 3 getting 7 years of updates.
It’s not an original thought, but one that no-one has been able to realize. Turns out tech moves forward, and people want the latest and greatest.
There's nothing I do on my current phone that I couldn't do on a phone ten years ago, technologically speaking. When I upgraded my phone recently, it was solely because of battery deterioration and because the previous model was out of service for security updates. I don't think I'm alone here.
On device ML.
The good news for you is that most 10 year old phones have user serviceable batteries, so you’re free to keep using those if you want.
Not much you can do about software updates, unless you want to pay significantly more for a new phone to cover the cost of OEMs having to pay their engineers to build those updates for the dozens of phones that get released over a 10 year window.
They don’t?
I’m pretty sure you can install iOS 16 on an iPhone 8, which came out in 2017, almost 6 years ago. And that’s a major system update. If you just need security updates, the latest one was in January and supported phones as far back as the iPhone 5s, released almost 10 years ago today.
But in reality, people want better phones and better cameras every few years, so they buy them. And they tend not to throw out their old ones, but sell/trade them or pass them along to someone else.
Ah, but then they’d have to use an iPhone if they want to keep their device for 10 years, and everyone knows Apple is evil doesn’t let you use old phones. /s
Hilarious that that only phone OEM that meaningfully supports hardware past 5 years is the one that the goofy goobers here love to shit on for checks notes not letting them use older hardware.
I have a ten year old iPad that i pretty much only use to watch TV in the shower. It just became incompatible with Hulu last week due to the iOS and I’m super frustrated by that. I can still use it for Netflix and paramount + but i was in the middle of several Hulu only series!
π🐀.
Hell, I have a laptop that's over 10 years old. It isn't officially supported on Windows 11, but I'm sure I could get it on there in some unsupported way, using Rufus or another tool that removes the TPM requirements and have it be usable and secure. It runs Windows 10 without complaints. I can run an up to date Linux distro on it and be completely up to date and secure. So, like you said, why can't phones do the same?
Security/OS updates: 4 years on typical android at this point (fair phone claiming 7) 5 on an iPhone.
I did a battery replacement on my iPhone 7 at about the 3 year mark and got another 2 years out of it. Full updates from apple and 100% App Store app compatibility that whole time.
iPhones get OS updates for ~6 years, security patches for longer. In 2021, apple updated a 9 year old phone with a security patch.
Apple is objectively the only way to go if you want a device that you’ll be able to use for >5 years.
There's abolutely no reason a smartphone couldn't be designed to last +6 years. My laptop is 7 years old and it still works perfectly fine - even has the original battery in it. My PC on the other hand is almost 15 years old and still in use.
I kinda agree. Going back to back panels that fall off and batteries popping out isn’t a win in my book. However, making it so that batteries are replaceable by the consumer with some use of tools is a reasonable compromise.
On a side note I see that the Reddit etiquette of downvoting comments you disagree with is in full effect already.
That's been true, but I wouldn't expect the year over year differences of phones to continue indefinitely.
Advances were very rapid when it was a nascent industry, but it's already slowed down significantly. It will slow more by 2027.
Not it's not. You should read about throttling down