Shoutout to fairphone who actually updated the firmware themselves, surely a loss leading project, but a very respectable dedication to end users.

I am not sure how much of a shout-out they deserve. For example, Fairphone 4 is still supported until this year. They ship with firmware from 2023 and with a kernel patch release from 2024. Every one of their phones is full of holes because their software lags so much.

Even on their most recent model, they are frequently more than a half year behind firmware updates, ship 1-2 year old kernels, and are late with major Android releases (meaning you miss out on security patches not classified high/critical).

Good examples of software longevity are iPhone, Google Pixel, GrapheneOS, and to a lesser extend Samsung flagships.

> I strongly recommend those magnetic USB connectors

Note that these connectors are in violation of USB standard and potentially harmful as they expose the pins in an unintended way. For instance, notice that all the connection on the USB port are not all the same length, it is a form of protection, to make sure the power lines are well connected before the data lines make contact. With magnetic USB connectors, you lose that feature, in addition to potential issues with ESD, short circuits, etc...

I have a friend who swears by them and never had a problem, but still, that's good to know.

I not sure how much we’re disagreeing here. Applying my argument of taxing externalities to certain food additives would result in taxes so high that it would effectively be a ban.

The externalities of integrated batteries are that people probably replace their phones sooner than otherwise, resulting in more electronic waste. But phones are only a tiny fraction of e-waste. Most e-waste is from household appliances, displays, & HVAC equipment. Phones are less 10%. I mean, how could it be otherwise? Phones are small and people use them for years before upgrading.

I’m not sure what the Android/iOS duopoly has to do with removable batteries. Mandating removable batteries would not change the operating systems available. And while there isn’t much choice in which OS you can run on a phone, there is enough choice that you can buy phones with removable batteries. If anything, this is an argument against mandating removable batteries, as governments are not mandating/subsidizing another phone OS despite far less choice in that area.

Lastly, I don’t see how banning people from having phones with integrated batteries gives them more choice. Most people (such as myself) don’t really care about removable batteries, and would rather have a phone that is smaller, cheaper, and/or more resistant to the elements. The way to give people the most choice is to tax externalities commensurate to the harm they cause, and let the market figure out what people actually value.

> (And if you think you truly have choice as a consumer, I challenge you to use a phone that isn't running either Apple or Google's code.)

Why doesn't this count as a choice? Was it more of a choice when Windows Phone was still around?

What do you mean by "rare"? You just click "order". It's not like you have to go on the quest for the lost arc or anything like that. They are uncommon in the sense that people don't actually get them, but that's not because of a lack of availability. People do not want them.

Phones with removable batteries are rare because only a small fraction of people want phones with removable batteries. Phone manufacturers also dislike removable batteries because customers buy cheap 3rd party batteries and complain when these batteries perform poorly or malfunction, sometimes by exploding. And then the headline is, “Phone made by company X explodes.” not, “Cheap battery explodes.” Removable batteries also introduce new failure modes like contacts degrading, causing phones to power off unexpectedly when jostled or flexed in certain ways. That increases the risk of a recall and bad PR.

I and millions of others want a phone that is smaller than the current offerings. Heck, my 13 mini is too big for my tastes. But I don’t think that means the government should force phone manufacturers to make smaller phones. So too for features like removable batteries, physical keyboards, or headphone jacks.

They're rare because outside of the tiny minority of people who complain loudly on HN, nobody cares about this feature.

Aren’t newer washers/dryers full of electronics because of laws mandating higher efficiency? My parents have an old Maytag washer that uses around 30 gallons per load while my washer uses less than 8. I know Speed Queen makes dumb laundry machines, but at least one of their models was banned for residential sale by the Department of Energy. They ended up figuring out a workaround by gimping the default cleaning mode and encouraging users to not use that mode.[1]

But I don’t see how mandating removable batteries helps this situation with phones. I don’t replace my phone when the battery degrades, as it’s pretty cheap & painless to replace the battery after a few years. I upgrade when my phone stops getting security updates, or when a new phone comes along with some feature I want.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/speed-queen-revie...

For that matter, I put a chonky case on my phone anyway... would rather have a sturdier phone that doesn't need an additional case that has the features I'd like, including an easily replaced/swapped battery.

Beyond this, hell, make the "internal" battery solid-state with minimal capacity and have an external power pack from the get-go as part of case designs. Get the size of battery you want... if you want a big booty phone with battery for days, you can get it.

E-waste is a minuscule rounding error compared to all the other forms of environmental destruction modern industrial civilization causes. European countries are massive polluters and net carbon producers (though not quite as bad as the US); e-waste shouldn't even be on their radar since it is a distraction from almost infinitely more important environmental concerns. People complaining about this don't actually care about e-waste, they just talk about it because it's convenient for their argument.

I don't disagree with your statement, but an increase in design durability also does those things. A phone that you can drop and it doesn't break creates less pollution than a phone that you can drop and replace the screen.

I would expect that one of the main reasons that people prefer non-removable battery phones are the engineering tradeoffs inherent in making a phone with a removable battery. They will have strictly less choice on this axis when they no longer have the option to buy a non-removal battery phone.

That's with the latest iphone, not the equivalent iphone from when this was released.

So the fun plateau will be less pronounced and fun?