|
I agree it's all about money, but not in the way Poppaea proposes. It's not about service income, it's about sales income.
Having designed enclosures for "technical aids" before, I can say it's an engineering tradeoff between user requirements (size/features/speed/charge time).
To create a service panel that works reliably, one has to compartmentalize the area (you rarely see the guts of your cellphone or TV remote when you open the battery compartment). The space for the internal compartment walls and door come out of the space budgets for screen, mainboard, connectors, battery and buttons.
To put one in, you'll end up with a bulkier, less responsive, shorter life device -- but what do you gain? A high quality rechargeable battery's lifespan typically outlasts the device's expected lifespan. End users may like a battery compartment, but few will use it and very few weigh maintainability into their purchase decisions.
For the PRS series, dimensions and performance are optimized at the cost of user maintainability. In this case, to slip in a battery compartment would be an EXPENSIVE design feature. It may not drive up costs, but the loss in performance WILL drive down sales.
|