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Originally Posted by 4691mls
My phone also has a user replaceable battery. You've got to wonder why if some phones have it, they all don't. Obviously it's not an insurmountable manufacturing obstacle.
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It's a lot tougher to have a user-replaceable battery on waterproof devices, which are gaining popularity. They're also starting to have to cram batteries into odd shapes to extend or maintain battery life while making phones thinner and adding other features; the iPhone X has a weird L-shaped 2-cell. That's tougher to engineer removable bays for.
None of that excuses hard-wiring the batteries to the phone so that even someone savvy enough to open the case can't replace it without a soldering iron. And there's certainly an element of lock-in at play, to make it more likely that people just opt to buy a new phone or at least send their money the vendor's way.
(Headphone jacks and SD expansion slots are likewise being eliminated partially out of legitimate concerns for things like water/dust proofing, but also serve to sell more vendor-specific headsets and force data onto the vendor clouds).