• Vlyn@lemmy.zip
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    1 year ago

    Back in the day this was even better:

    Original Galaxy S battery was getting weak? Order a new battery from Amazon for 13€. Battery arrives, pop the back of the phone off, pull battery out (just like that, no soldering), push new battery in. Push the back of the phone back on, done.

    New battery in and it had more mAh than the original one. Despite overclocking that phone it ran a day longer after the replacement.

    • Clent@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      If the EU has its way we might all get this.

      One can hope.

      People can babble about water proofing, etc. There is no legitimate engineering problem.

      The battery could power the device wirelessly at this point.

      They could even claim they’re saving the environment by not including the battery after a couple release cycles.

      • XanXic@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Oof i didn’t think of them selling the battery separate possibly with an upcharge. monkeys paw curls

        • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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          1 year ago

          You probably also didn’t think about them no longer making the battery two years after releasing the phone.

            • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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              1 year ago

              Yeah but then you have to wade through a million crappy Chinese products and be thankful when they merely don’t hold a charge (as opposed to exploding).

              I’ve been through this back when batteries were replaceable, decent 3rd-party were not easy to find. Best you could hope for was that the original manufacturer kept making them. Nokia went as far as making one battery model work with multiple phone models.

              Honest question, are phone batteries recycleable? Because if there’s going to be a ton of them being made I have to wonder what’s worst for the environment, replacing phones or replacing batteries.

              • moriquende@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                I’m not sure if you’re being serious but replacing a phone is the same as replacing a battery, but worse for both consumer and environment. Of course you’d want to do some research before purchasing the first thing that crosses your path, but both me and my wife have done this before many times with very good results.

          • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
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            1 year ago

            I had that issue with an Otterbox case. Bought it, it was bulky but protected the phone well. After 3 years the rubber tore near the charging port. They offer “lifetime” warranty (5 years). Well, wrote them for a replacement and they simply said nah, they don’t have that case any more for a phone this “old”. So they didn’t honor the warranty and just told me I’m out of luck.

            What the hell do I buy an expensive phone case for when they can’t even honor a 5 year warranty? That was the last Otterbox for me, Spigen was the choice I went with afterwards. Can’t go wrong with a 10 buck phone case, I don’t care if it breaks in a few years.

            When it comes to phones every manufacturer just gives you the finger if it’s 3+ years old it seems.

            • grue@lemmy.ml
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              1 year ago

              they simply said nah, they don’t have that case any more for a phone this “old”. So they didn’t honor the warranty and just told me I’m out of luck.

              That should’ve been an FTC complaint.

          • gatton@reddthat.com
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            1 year ago

            Oooh devious! “We listened to our customers so now all new iPhones will have replaceable batteries.*”

            • Battery not included. Purchase a compatible battery from the Apple store for just $99.99.
      • Lojcs@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        The battery could power the device wirelessly at this point.

        That’s not a thing. Wireless charging is horribly inefficient and produces lots of heat, reducing performance and battery life.

        • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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          1 year ago

          Sure, but it is possible.

          Might happen if it has some sort of benefit that we don’t know about for waterproofing separate batteries, even if it is indeed less efficient.

      • kamen@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        People can babble about water proofing, etc. There is no legitimate engineering problem.

        Even if it was a legitimate problem, it’s sad that only about half of the phones are certified waterproof even if almost all are sealed.

        • Ado@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Why is that sad? I can understand why companies don’t want to pay just to get a certification when the phone itself is up to standards regardless

          • kamen@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            “It’s easier to make the phone waterproof if the battery is not user-serviceable” is a common argument; if it’s really true, way more phones should be waterproof even if not IP-certified (which understandably costs money and raises the end price).

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        1 year ago

        Lol no doubt. Remember when Apple (and other manufacturers I guess) stopped including chargers in the box and they told us it was to reduce waste and was better for the environment? I wonder how many millions of dollars it saved them?

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        1 year ago

        I think the proposal went through. The Deadline is 2027 though. But hopefully, manufacturers will change in preparation of this rule so we maybe see the effects earlier like we saw with usb c? Officially, obligatory usb c usage starts in at the end of 2024, but I think everyone but Apple has already switched and Apple said they’re planning to comply within the time frame.

      • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        About waterproofing: I’ve had to replace a G6’s glass back twice and both times the new cover had the seal pre-installed and the phone could still be cleaned with soap and water, no issue.

      • socsa@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        So my consumer preference for a sealed phone with a specific form factor simply doesn’t matter I guess?

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      1 year ago

      Lol this post reads like grandma telling her kids about how phones were in her day!
      “When I was young, we’d just pop the back off the phone and replace the battery ourselves.”
      “Yea yea grandma. Let’s get you to bed.”

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        I mean they’re not wrong tho. This isn’t a I walked up hill both ways to school story. Its meant to convey how crappy companies have become with planned obsolescence.

        • BigNote@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          And it wasn’t even that long ago either. I feel like I’m talking to teenagers.

      • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        New Fairphones still have that feature.

        But those were also made with repair in mind.

        You can literally replace your usb-c port for 15€ with original parts by yourself, by spending 15 minutes with a screwdriver.

        And the parts of a Fairphone 2 are still available, nearly 8 years after it launched.

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      There was an even bigger benefit that most people maybe didn’t realise at that time or even now, but when the phone fell that energy got distributed into the parts flying apart, which used to reduce the damage the phone took

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        1 year ago

        That’s part of what makes the Noikia 3310 so infamously hard to damage from dropping it, even at extreme heights. It’s designed to come apart on impact instead of staying in one piece and taking the full brunt of the impact.

      • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
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        1 year ago

        Oh god, yeah. My original Galaxy S was dropped a few times and the plastic back cover and the battery flew apart. But the screen never got a scratch, just the plastic had a few small scratches.

        But in general the new glass on phone screen sucks ass. My Galaxy S22 has small scratches from normal use, just being in my pocket. The OnePlus 5 I had before that? Not a single scratch.

        They are making the glass softer now so it doesn’t crack as easily, but at the same time it starts to scratch more. Instead of going with really hard glass that doesn’t scratch and just telling customers to put a case on :-/

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            1 year ago

            Yeah, took like a month or so till I realized I already had a very visible scratch on the display. Never dropped, just on the table (display up!) or in my jean pockets. Total insanity :-/

            When you complain about it everyone just tells you to use a screen protector, but they all suck.

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              1 year ago

              Yeah I wish there was a good screen protector for the ultra but I’ve only heard horror stories about the pen, fingerprint sensor and even camera failing : (

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          1 year ago

          You pay extra because the materials were sourced through moral means and not sweatshops.

          I for one like that feature.

          • mintyfrog@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            I do too, but it’s a hard sell for the masses right now. I want Fairphone to succeed but it’s tough.

            Their subscription program is even less competitive.

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        1 year ago

        I only stick to my Note 9 (peak Samsung) because of stylus support that no one else offers. When Fairphone stars offering as awesome stylus support as Samsung does, I’m moving immediately.

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      I did the same with my HTC Thunderbolt. That phone had so many features that these newer “better” phones don’t. Removable battery, expandable storage, IR blaster. That generation was peak for smartphones. Now I just get pixel A’s because they are all the same trash, and at least it’s cheap.

      • Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi
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        My Galaxy SIII took soo much abuse before it finally died, when I got it, a friend of mine had already installed CyanogenMod onto it. Best rooted phone I ever owned.

        It was bulletproof in more ways than one, by the time I finally laid it to rest the charging port was broken and I had to charge it by touching wires to the 2 pins meant for a wireless charger, and the phone wouldn’t charge unless it was turned off.

    • lazyslacker@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      The batteries are not soldered even in the newest Samsung phones. Everything you’d want to replace is modular. Not sure about Apple.

      • harpuajim@lemmy.ml
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        My pixel 4a battery isn’t soldered but I needed to spend 45 minutes taking it apart and it’s definitely not something the average phone user would be comfortable doing. We need to pass (in the US) some sort of legislation that makes it simple to replace phone batteries.

    • Lojcs@lemm.ee
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      just like that, no soldering

      There’s never any soldering involved when replacing batteries tho?

      • Vlyn@lemmy.zip
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        Oh, could be. Looking it up they mostly use adhesives, custom screws and other crap to stop you from replacing. I could have sworn I heard of a phone where they actually soldered the battery in. Maybe I just made that up though.

    • ZiemekZ@lemm.ee
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      Or, better yet, you should be able to hot swap the battery, which means that you can change one half of the battery, then the second half and the phone won’t shut down at all. Foldables make it easier since they already use 2 batteries, 1 for each half. Just wire them up in parallel and the voltage won’t drop when one is taken out for replacement by the user.

    • gigachad@feddit.de
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      11 months ago

      But customers want water-proof devices! Therefore we cannot make batteries replacable, it’s not what the market wants you know /s

    • rodolfo@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      there’s a channel on YouTube, by louis rossman. you’ll find plenty of examples of bs answers from apple tech support in order to make you spend a great deal of money.

      furthermore, nowhere it talks about “vital parts”. So yeah, it makes no sense, but for other reasons.

      Read your comment twice, now I got what you mean. took me a bit, but you’re definitely right.

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        Does Louis rossman do anything else?

        Because I can see making bank off gathering bad experiences. Statistically there must be dozens each day.

        The anti-Apple crowd would binge the shit out of that.

        Idiocracy is here and now.

      • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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        Well that’s because there all college kids. Apple is all about the perception not the reality.

        Apple but more effort into designing the aesthetic of the store than they do training the staff.

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      My best guess is he removed the screws from the phone and maybe they couldn’t service the phone because of that? Wild guess, used to work behind the Genius Bar, but that was almost 15yrs ago. But it sounds like a made up excuse tbh.

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      They claimed my daughter’s phone had a cracked screen and couldn’t replace the battery, while showing a picture of the very clearly not cracked screen.

      ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    • CyprianSceptre@feddit.uk
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      I imagine this is how Apple would justify it - if there are internal screws or shields missing then it’s a sign that it has been repaired previously by a 3rd party. It might work fine, but it’s not to the original Apple specification.

      The Apple store don’t want to take responsibility for those repairs so refuse to do further work in case it leaves them with liability.

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    “your phone is missing some parts”

    I’m sorry what? Did they fall out when I turned it to the side?

    • coffeekomrade@lemmy.ml
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      I used to do 3rd party repairs, and it’s impossible to describe how fucked up some devices were that came to me from other repair places. Missing screws, shields, screws put back int he wrong places and occasionally they had worked with a bad tech that damaged the mainboard.

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    It’s almost like Apple is incredibly anti-consumer, and go out of their way to make buying a new phone more appealing than trying to repair the one you have

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        1 year ago

        I went to the John Deere museum in Moline, and they were playing fucking devotional music about their tractors,

        For God so loved the world that he gave us his sole-begotten tractor…

        🤮🤑

      • Th4tGuyII@kbin.social
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        Oh mate, I’m aware of John Deere and their “but we can’t let the farmers repair their own equipment because the environment

        Yes, because independent repair shops are definitely going to sabotage your tractors to make them worse for the environment if you don’t step in and stop them!

        It’s totally not about establishing a monopoloy to force farmers to pay exorbitant repair charges, or face paying for a whole new tractor entirely when you refuse to do repairs. Not at all!

        /s in case it wasn’t obvious

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    How are they only just now coming to that conclusion.

    A screen replacement for an iPhone is like 80% of the price of the new phone. They’ve been doing this for years now. This isn’t a great revelation.

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    Happened to my friend. His son dropped his phone one time too many and facial recognition didn’t work from them on.

    He took the phone to the service center and was told the true depth sensor was broken and would need to be replaced. Cost was 38000 INR to replace when the entire phone cost around 65000 INR.

    He said fuck it and came back. After a couple of weeks, it started working on its own.

    Genius scamsters, alright.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    Apple was shit during the Steve Jobs iphone years, too. Just ask Louis Rossman (used to do mac repair videos on YT, nowadays mostly talks about current computer stuff)

    Oh, and the iphone 4 had a “feature” where holding the phone “wrong” made it lose all signal.

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    1 year ago

    “Your iPhone has detected that the replaceable battery you have inserted is not a genuine Apple battery. Please purchase and install only genuine Apple parts. Think Differently”

    A little taste of the future even if Apple is forced to make phones with replaceable batteries…

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        What’s funny is that apple did this because “batteries are dangerous”.

        Now to replace a battery we have to cut adhesive attached to the battery with sharp tools (if battery is punctured it becomes a bomb), remove and cut off covers for the terminals and the little battery board, cut the leads of the old battery off, sperating the battery board, use a Dremel to prep the leads of new battery terminals and original battery board, place parts into a jig and spot weld the terminals, melting and fusing them together (if the terminals get too hot or it takes too long the battery becomes a bomb again), then plug the new battery and battery board to a sketchy reprogrammer from god knows where in china and then apply new adhesive to plant it back in the phone. Fuck me.

        • sillyplasm@lemm.ee
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          Don’t they use the adhesive instead of, I dunno, screws, because it specifically makes it more difficult to repair?

          • weeeeum@lemmy.world
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            Haha the adhesive is the least of my worries. The battery is individually paired with the phone meaning if you got 2 identical iPhone 14s and swapped the battery between then youll get a bunch of popups and errors about “non genuine apple parts” and it disables features of the phone too. This practice is called serialization.

            It is because of that we have to butcher the battery, remove that special little board (this is the part that is serialized) and Frankenstein the new battery together and then reprogram it (the battery board keeps track of battery health and without reprogramming it will register the new battery as bad health).

            Same thing with tons of the components, new screen? No auto brightness. New front camera? No face id. New back glass? No wireless charging. No home button? No touch id. Hell, repair your iPad? No drawing straight lines. (Seriously your apple pencil will no longer draw straight after repair)

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            1 year ago

            What makes it even more disgusting is pushing the blame towards the repair shops, popups citing “non genuine parts” and completely unrelated issues like not being able to draw properly on iPads.

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      I work at an AASP and I can 100% guarantee you that’s Apple’s fault too cause they literally started that practice. It’s bullshit.

    • Fish [Indiana]@midwest.social
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      I went to a Samsung certified repair shop to get my screen replaced and they said they couldn’t do it cuz they couldn’t repair my color of phone. Idk what they have against white phones, but I ended up having to mail it to Samsung to get it repaired.

      • ZiemekZ@lemm.ee
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        Another Samsung Store couldn’t fix my screen without wiping my data (because procedures) and of course they had to do a full replacement of both the glass and the actual screen.

        A Ukrainian guy came to the rescue and replaced just the glass (screen was working just fine), thus at half the price, and most importantly, kept my data intact. As it should’ve been at the official store.

  • ______@lemm.ee
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    This is such a fake and dumb story and largely why 4chan post 2005 is so shallow. These kids don’t have the writing skills to write anything remotely convincing

    • irmoz@reddthat.com
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, everyone knows apple fix things for free, instantly with magic and a blowjob on the side. Apple anti consumer? Never heard of it

      • Jessica
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        There’s plenty of things to hate on Apple about, no need to make things up.

        Unless one has taken their phone to a dodgy repair shop, there is no feasible way it would be missing pieces.

        My own anecdotal experiences with Apple range from The fuck? to Nice! It seems that like most companies, it depends on which person helps, and if they are willing to help.

    • sciawp@lemm.ee
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      You’re right but people are mad because they think you’re defending Apple for some reason.

      • irmoz@reddthat.com
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        There’s really no way to know if they’re right. We don’t have evidence for the original story either way saying if it happened or not.

        However, we do have plenty of people’s experiences saying similar things have happened to them.

        If we’re being honest, we can at least conclude the story is plausible, even likely. Saying absolutely either way is dogmatism apropos of nothing.

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          The burden of proof is on the poster to verify the story. I think it’s safe to say like 80% of stories on the internet are fake (what does ‘some missing parts’ even mean??)

          I don’t doubt people have had similar experiences but greentexts are rarely true and this one sounds incoherent to me

          • irmoz@reddthat.com
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            Yes, the burden of proof is absolutely on them. As for the missing parts, I thought it was just bullshit they made up about it being out of warranty so they wouldn’t fix it. It turned out there weren’t any parts missing, after all.

    • Rambi@lemm.ee
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      They’re just talking about those repair shops you see everywhere, they will have a sign outside saying something like “repair iPhone/Samsung/Laptop/Computer”