Right to repair. That’s the term used by activists when they push for things like replaceable batteries on electronics. There are some states and countries pushing for all electronics to have the bare minimum of repairability. I’m not talking about the hard stuff. I’m talking about a case you can actually open, and a battery you can actually replace.
It seems like DIY is dead, at least on some of this stuff.
Certainly, there are things you can repair, or at least clean out the muck from. With a little care and skill you can do nearly anything to most computers. (There are exceptions.) But, try to do something as simple as replace the battery on a cell phone and you’re essentially out of luck. There are sites like iFixit that give decent instructions on how, sure. But unless your hands are incredibly steady and you have a whole suite of tiny tools, you’ll never actually do it.
There’s probably a place near you that advertises that they can change the battery in your phone. I’ve heard some places can do a good job there. But, on the other hand, just opening up today’s cell phones ruin their resistance to water. Replacing the batteries involves taking massive risks. You’re apt to break the whole thing. The biggest risk is that the thing won’t work in the future because Apple or Samsung will come up with an update that kills it. They’ve done it before.
In the end, that’s why so many of us give up perfectly good devices when the battery begins to fail. I’ll admit freely that my iPhone 6 would still probably meet my needs if it had more than 15 minutes of battery life. That was literally what was left on it when I traded it in.
Would it genuinely be that hard?
It makes you wonder what it would take to put user-replaceable batteries back in phones. I get it. A battery needs a casing and there’s also the matter of giving you a hatch on the back of the phone to make it so you could get to the battery. These factors add millimeters to the thickness of the phone. We all want thin and light phones, and manufacturers figured out that putting the battery in a thin bag and sealing the back up tight saved quite a few of those precious mm’s. That was the easy move. It would have been much harder to come up with better batteries that could be smaller. That’s the move we’re still waiting for.
In the meantime, rather than fix the issue from the inside, companies like Apple gave us $80 battery packs that magnetically attach to the back of our phones. This just makes the phone thicker again. I suppose it creates an option… you can have a thick phone that lasts more than 6 hours on a charge or a thin one that doesn’t.
I’d like to say, on behalf of the entire tech world, that we’d like to see the third option. I’ve been writing this blog for 11 years. I’ve written stories about improved battery chemistry, solid state batteries, solar and kinetic charging, and even little tiny fuel cells. None of those things came to pass. I’m willing to bet that batteries today are better, but they’re not better enough.
Here’s my proposal
Do you remember when the battery was built into the back hatch of the phone? That worked pretty well. I’d like to suggest to Apple and Samsung that they start doing that again. Give us a battery that lasts only 4 hours on a charge, if you must. Build it into the back hatch. After all, you’ve insisted for years on having big camera bumps on the back anyway. Take some of that real estate on the back and build it out so the back is flat again. Use the extra volume for a battery.
Now, if you’re one of those people who want more than 4-hour battery life, you could buy replacement batteries. You could have a second one to swap in. Or, you could have a thicker one with better life. It could be your choice. If you want a phone that’s as thick as your wallet (your phone is probably that thick if it’s in a case anyway) you might actually be able to get a week on a charge. 20 years ago I had a phone that lasted a week on a charge. I’d like to get back to that, please.
What will it take to get them to listen?
The economics of tech seem to be changing on a daily basis. I’m not sure how many people will be interested in a $1,500 phone next year; it seems like demand is holding steady now but we don’t know for how long. Phone design has been largely stagnant now for years. Phone makers have tried foldables, screens on the side, better cameras… most folks today have a phone largely indistinguishable from the one they had a decade ago.
Maybe things will finally get dire enough for Apple, Samsung, or some other company to give us what we really want: better battery life. Trust me, I’d take that over a 50 megapixel camera any day.
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