The European Union is working on legislation that would require smartphone design to have easily replaceable batteries, but we doubt Apple would agree willingly.
I don’t think anybody really cares about an extra half millimetre of thickness, especially if it means that you can save hundreds in replacement costs and extend its life by a few years. Nobody’s buying an iPhone and busting out the calipers to compare it to their previous phone.
You also start running into usability issues. There’s only so thin a phone can be before it’s less of a phone, and more of a blade that’ll bend if you sneeze at it wrong.
Especially since waterproof phones with replaceable batteries already existed. They aren’t exactly working from nothing.
I remember dunking my flip phone into glasses of water as a party trick and it was totally fine. This would’ve been around 2010 or so.
They exist but not at this thinness. That’s an important difference.
I don’t think anybody really cares about an extra half millimetre of thickness, especially if it means that you can save hundreds in replacement costs and extend its life by a few years. Nobody’s buying an iPhone and busting out the calipers to compare it to their previous phone.
Apple’s sales fall and people don’t buy new phones because “it looks just like last year’s phone.”
There are so many things a company can change about a phone besides its thickness.
You also start running into usability issues. There’s only so thin a phone can be before it’s less of a phone, and more of a blade that’ll bend if you sneeze at it wrong.
Happened with the iPhone 6