Eric Zeman / Android Authority
Most major smartphone brands today promise long-term upgrades, though they’re usually limited to high-end devices. Samsung is undoubtedly the leader in this regard, offering four OS updates and five years of security patches for its phones, but other players are not so ambiguous with three OS updates and four years of patches.
It’s a far cry from the early years of the modern smartphone era, when not even a single OS update was guaranteed. These commitments reflect the shift people have made in holding smartphones beyond the standard two-year upgrade cycle. But the promise of a long update doesn’t mean much if a critical hardware concern isn’t addressed first.
And we’re not talking about performance, as even today’s budget phones offer respectable horsepower that should last for several years. Instead, we’re talking about removable batteries being ditched in favor of fixed designs.
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Your battery will die before your software is out of date.
Apple was one of the first products to adopt a permanent battery since the original iPhone. This forced users to visit a repair store or take a potentially dangerous DIY approach if they wanted to replace their iPhone battery.
Fast forward to 2022, and most of today’s Android smartphones have non-removable batteries. There are exceptions like the Fairphone 4, Samsung Galaxy Xcover series and Nokia C21, but these devices are few and far between. Today, you can forget about full-blown flagship phones that pack a portable battery.
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It’s a stark contrast to the late 2000s to mid-2010s when devices like the Samsung Galaxy S5, Samsung Galaxy Note 3, LG G4, LG V20 and Motorola Atrix offered portable batteries. All you have to do is pry off the back cover of the phone with your bare hands (no tools required) and pull out the old battery.
One downside of that approach is that if your current battery is low and you don’t have a charger or power bank handy, you can quickly switch to a full charge. However, a removable battery is especially important because battery degradation is the main hardware issue that stands in the way of long-term smartphone use today.
Battery degradation is a major hardware bottleneck for many years of smartphone use today.
Modern fast charging phones are designed to maintain 80% battery health after 800 charge cycles (only if used for more than two years). That’s like a 5,000mAh battery turning into a 4,000mAh battery over time, or a 4,000mAh battery slowly turning into a 3,200mAh battery.
Although there are exceptions in this regard, such as the latest 150W charging solution from Oppo and OnePlus, which allows phone batteries to maintain 80% battery health after 1,600 charging cycles (over four years of use). That’s a good way to solve the main problem, which is battery degradation in the first place, but these two companies are really different. Most OEMs are still specifying 80%/800 cycle figures for their high-end fast charging solutions.
Most of today’s flagships see a significant decline in battery health after the two-year mark, long before updates stop coming.
These figures are concerning because people are keeping their phones for more than two years, and have been doing so since the late 2010s. In fact, according to a 2021 study by Haila, the average age of a phone sent as a trade-in program was 3.32 years. In other words, even if your high-end phone is getting four years of OS or security updates, you can still feel its age due to its short battery life.
In fact, our own Bogdan Petrovan owns a three-year-old Huawei Mate 20 Pro and notes that battery degradation caused by recent charging is now more noticeable. In particular, the juice was coming out of the phone for two days, but now it has only a day of endurance. Having had the same phone and switched to a new daily driver earlier this year, the difference in battery life after three years was really night and day.
Going to the repair shop to replace the battery may not be a problem for many phones with non-removable batteries, but it is one more obstacle to making phones last as long as possible. And while replacements can be quick and easy in some markets, they can be very time-consuming and complicated if you don’t live near an official, let alone a repair shop. That’s how people in remote and low-income areas are paradoxically more likely to keep their phones on for longer.
Companies talk about being eco-conscious but fail to address the biggest reason their phones end up in landfills.
It’s also hypocritical for companies to talk a big game about reducing their environmental impact by ditching bundled chargers and switching to eco-conscious materials and packaging, while failing to address one of the main reasons smartphones end up in landfills in the first place. .
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Portable batteries are not a silver bullet
C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
There are a few reasons why OEMs started switching to permanent batteries many years ago. For one, a non-removable battery means the entire phone can be locked shut, which obviously makes for easier and better intrusion protection. That being said, we’ve seen waterproof phones with removable batteries (eg the Galaxy Xcover 6 Pro) so it’s not impossible.
Going for a fixed battery design means manufacturers are free to experiment with more flexible battery shapes to deliver more capacity. You can get more creative by using battery placements inside, which creates more space for other components. We’ve seen some companies like OnePlus offer phones with permanent dual-battery designs to facilitate fast charging.
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So it’s not that manufacturers don’t use fixed battery designs. But the mobile way is still important for those who want to keep their phones for more than two years.
Durable hardware corresponds to durable software
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
The trend towards long-term commitments – both voluntary and by the EU – is great news for the industry, as it is addressing a long-standing barrier to smartphone adoption. But if a phone lasts a few hours on a charge, the software means nothing, and it’s time to address the biggest hardware-related reason why manufacturers release old phones.
As the battery slows down, a return to removable batteries will go a long way toward keeping as many phones out of the landfill as possible. But even offering a free/cheap battery replacement would be a start.
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