Engage with the content of his comment instead of resorting to ad hominem.
He's right - the market wants embedded batteries, although perhaps not directly. Embedded batteries have improved price, battery capacity, water proofing, size, and strength. If the consumer really wanted a removable battery and all that that entails then there would be more phones that offered that. The reality is people misjudge what all that entails. By all means, I would love to just make the iPhone battery directly replaceable without any compromises but that's not reality.
Incorrect. Replaceable battery is a feature that decreases sales. Why would you implement it when battery being weak will cause substantial amount of users to replace phone instead of paying for service to replace the battery ?
If the feature isn't expected and it decrease sales, why would manufacturer put it in ?
And decreasing sales is exactly what the EU wants to accomplish. To stop people buying a whole new phone every couple of years.
Unfortunately I do expect other tricks towards planned obsolescence. Long-term support is now a thing but what they can still do is make phones slower over time. Even Apple did this with the iPhone 6.
Why would they break more often? I don't really see that.
We have thousands of Xcovers (also replaceable) in the factories at work and they break no more often than the regular phones in the office environment. In fact people treat them pretty roughly because they're handling heavy requirement and you know how well people look after equipment they didn't pay for :) They're not perfect but they walk the walk.
Another point: I know several people that have Fairphones where almost every component can be user-replaced and I've held them but I don't see them being any more fragile than any other phone, really. And these are not rugged models.
And a Fairphone battery is 40€. An Xcover battery (including NFC antenna which is weirdly enough in the battery) costs similar. The screen 90€. All a lot cheaper than Apple, probably because there is no labor cost. You can just do it yourself or ask a friend who's handy.
You can buy phones with non-embedded batteries but they suck. That's not a coincidence.
What is your hypothesis for why more phones arent designed with non-embedded, directly replacable batteries? If it's such a highly valued trait in a phone, why doesnt some company just gobble up that market share? Why havent existing solutions sold well? Mine is that consumers dont actually value non-embedded batteries when accounting for all the tradeoffs. What's your hypothesis?
They were given the choice years ago, when some Android phones had removable batteries and touted that as a feature. Nobody seemed to care.
In contrast, users were also given the choice between headphone jack and Bluetooth for years when every phone had both, and clearly chose the jack. BT headphones were rare. But Apple and many other phonemakers figured out they make more money by removing it.
I originally did engage with the comment. Water-resistance absolutely still is physically possible if the replacement battery is waterproof. Water can over time be corrosive at the contacts, but that's a risk for the user. It does not in any way imply that water will enter the internals of the device from the point of contact with the battery. This will require a bit of engineering at the contact to ensure that water doesn't enter the device. As for the size argument, adding 2 mm of thickness is less important than providing five years of extra life.
Wait, are you proposing sealing the phone and sealing the battery separately, but not sealing the contacts between them? That’s… super sketchy for salt water immersion. Unless you add fuses and a BMS and safety mechanisms into the “battery”. In which case wouldn’t customers want to be able to replace the actual battery within the now-a-battery-plus-computer phone accessory once it wears down?
He's right - the market wants embedded batteries, although perhaps not directly. Embedded batteries have improved price, battery capacity, water proofing, size, and strength. If the consumer really wanted a removable battery and all that that entails then there would be more phones that offered that. The reality is people misjudge what all that entails. By all means, I would love to just make the iPhone battery directly replaceable without any compromises but that's not reality.