And all of the commenters complaining they would never buy this phone is great proof that the removable battery movement is DOA.

These phones exist. Companies have been producing them intermittently. When they do, few people buy them and there are always complaints that it's too big, too ugly, not fast enough, or something else.

The vocal minority demanding this feature but refusing to buy phones with the feature believe they can have their cake and eat it too. They want phones with all the benefits of built-in batteries and none of the downsides of removable batteries.

Well, I want a phone that's about one tier below flagship and has certain features. I don't think that's unreasonable.

For comparison: The feature I look for the most is a microsd slot. The last time that option existed that was in the quality range I want, I bought it. For anyone buying a phone right now, samsung has dropped microsd support from multiple more tiers, google and apple have never offered it, motorola and some others have the physical hardware but won't properly update the phone...

That's a feature that has been demonstrated to have no meaningful downsides, and manufacturers won't put it in to good models. I'm not convinced batteries are very different. People's refusal to make huge unnecessary compromises doesn't prove any features are DOA. I can guarantee that the above phone using LCD instead of OLED isn't a compromise for the battery's sake.

The biggest downside of removable batteries is that it's not an option on good phones. There might be some solid physics-based reasons, unlike with microsd, but I'm skeptical.

> And all of the commenters complaining they would never buy this phone is great proof that the removable battery movement is DOA.

I had to reflect on that statement for a bit. I've always bought a new phone when there are battery problems or something else. BUT, that's because I can easily afford it.

There are plenty of people in this world who just can't go out and buy a new phone because one part wore out.

Or, to put it differently: I'd really like to replace the battery in my spare phone that I bring into my hot tub.

I always felt the issue with removable batteries was they had a smaller capacity and would run out of life faster - so the need to be able to replace a battery if you wanted your phone to last more than a few years was important.

Now, with much higher capacity batteries that work better and are more efficient at handling all the demanding displays, high end gpu's and now AI tasks running the background? There's really no need to have removable batteries any more.

Sure, you're going to get a few lemons here and there, but for the most part, batteries these days have no problem lasting the 4-5 years that you need them. You still see three or four year old iphones on ebay with 80-85% battery being sold like hot cakes.