alt Hacker NewsMy average time on a smartphone is now at 4 years, feels like it's going to 5 pretty soon. [Last upgrade was for USB-C. Next upgrade will be for on-device LLM. It's wild how approximately 0% of what Apple has done outside of the USB-C connector has mattered to me in the last 10+ years - low-light photography is probably the only other thing that comes to mind. ]
I've had two battery replacements since 2015. One of them was required, the other was mostly optional (battery had dropped to 90% on my iPhone - which was probably sufficient).
USB-C - that was an awesome requirement that it was unclear whether Apple was ever going to do.
User Replaceable Battery? Zero desire, particularly if it reduces water resistance on the device. Dozens of things I've wanted from a phone - being able to replace the battery has never even entered my mind as something I wanted.
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Note that your 2 best features were usb-c and replacement batteries. Both were government mandated against unethical behavior of Apple.
That's what governments are for.
I very much miss the ability to never use my phone on a charging cable. Just swap the battery on an external charger and go. 5 seconds to charge to full. It was freeing and simple
Your cycle is 4 years, and you’ve had two phone batteries replaced in 11 years? That’s 2/2.75 phones.
Ok, one was optional, and let’s round up to 3. So 1/3 of your phones. Kinda sounds like you would benefit from replaceable batteries.
Regardless, those 4-5 year old phones likely went to ewaste immediately or soon after you were done with them because the cost of replacing the battery was less than their resale value after 4-5 years.
That’s a pattern our planet literally can’t handle. Wars over digging up minerals using slave labour then putting them in phones for 3-5 years just to send them to have children get chemical burns stripping the metals out of them.
My last computer lasted me 11 years, with two battery replacements along the way. My phone should do the same, just as easily.