battery Why do phone makers let us limit the battery charge? Isn't it bad for business?

[Ertio]

I am glad that phone makers have finally added an option to limit the battery charge to extend its life. What formerly required third-party software with root access is now pre-installed.

 

The user no longer has to pay attention to unplug in time, but the phone stops charging by itself at 80% or 85% (depending on vendor). Some laptops (Aptio Setup Utility) had this ability since 2010 or even earlier, even though phones need it more.

 

However, what seems strange is: Wouldn't phone makers want us to wear down our non-replaceable batteries as quickly as possible so we have to pay for expensive repairs or get a new phone altogether? (This is why they made PowerShare / reverse wireless charging, a battery killer.)

 

Non-replaceable batteries were bad enough, now we have serialized batteries so only "authorized" repairs are possible. In other words, Samsung still has the authority over a device that you paid for. You paid for it but it is still not entirely your property. That's how tech works in 2024. And unlike sealed batteries, serialized batteries can not be pseudojustified with "it's required for water resistance" or "it makes the device thinner and more premium".

 

So why do they let us limit the battery charge? Even the worst anti-consumer offender, Apple, has the mercy to let users do this.

[adm0n]

I think you are thinking about it a bit too cynical. Usually the people working on a product want to create the best possible product. And their main goal is for you to buy that device in the first place. So if someone comes out with a feature, that people want, they will also adopt it. Not having it would mean missing potential sales.

 

The people working on long term plans are usually concerned with creating features only accessible in their ecosystem. So that when the time comes and the user decides on buying a new phone, they will want to buy it from the same company.

 

You get massive problems, if the user doesn't want to but is forced to buy a new product, because it aged faster than expected. So giving the user some control over the aging of their own device, seems like a pretty smart decision to me. It makes the user more aware, that the battery degrades. If the user decides to go with only 80% charge, they will likely not question battery life as much, as they have limited it out of their own volition. And if they always fully charge it, they will feel somewhat responsible for it, thus likely not blaming the company for it.

[whispous]

Why do phone makers refrain from putting the explosive charge in the phone that goes off the second the warranty is done?

[venomtail]

They can get both potential crowds of customer base. One's who don't care, never turn on anything and will replace a phone sooner and then the one's who look for phones that have settings to allow them to extend their battery life.

[ImWilly]

Well, I understand that cynical way of thinking, especially with big brand that does extremely bad anti-consumer behaviour such as SAMS*NG and AS*S in recent news.

But remember that not everyone/company is going min max on capitalism to keep on milking the user. 

Some engineer/product lead that works on the product are passionate on what they do and have mindset of putting themselves on their user's shoes, so that we as users would have good experience on using their product and thus build a long-term customer brand loyalty

 

[PDifolco]

  3 hours ago, whispous said:

Why do phone makers refrain from putting the explosive charge in the phone that goes off the second the warranty is done?

Don't give ideas to Apple, pleeease !

[Ertio]

  3 hours ago, whispous said:

Why do phone makers refrain from putting the explosive charge in the phone that goes off the second the warranty is done?

Because this is dangerous for the health of the user, where as battery weardown is accepted as a normal occurance in portable devices.

 

  3 hours ago, adm0n said:

So if someone comes out with a feature, that people want, they will also adopt it.

Ideally yes. But somehow, smartphones with replaceable batteries and MicroSD card readers have become a rarity.

 

  3 hours ago, adm0n said:

You get massive problems, if the user doesn't want to but is forced to buy a new product, because it aged faster than expected.

This already happened with non-replaceable batteries, yet users kept buying.

 

Smartphones used to be optional in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but now the majority of people are dependent on them, giving smartphone manufacturers the ultimate leverage, which they didn't hesitate to use.

 

Or in Louis Rossmann's words (2m55s):

  Quote

You can say that customers chose this […] when the reality is a bit more nuanced than that. […] People started to get used to having smartphones […] Once people got hooked in the smartphone, […] every smartphone manufacturer just kind of on a whim took away the removable batteries

 

  3 hours ago, venomtail said:

They can get both potential crowds of customer base. One's who don't care, never turn on anything and will replace a phone sooner and then the one's who look for phones that have settings to allow them to extend their battery life.

Then where are the phones for the user base who want replaceable batteries?

 

At least Samsung had the mercy to make the A series with MicroSD. The entry-level A series (A14, A15) even have a 3.5mm audio connector that the S series dropped loooong ago.

 

  2 hours ago, ImWilly said:

Some engineer/product lead that works on the product are passionate on what they do and have mindset of putting themselves on their user's shoes, so that we as users would have good experience on using their product and thus build a long-term customer brand loyalty

Let's hope so.

 

  2 hours ago, ImWilly said:

But remember that not everyone/company is going min max on capitalism to keep on milking the user. 

Unfortunately, capitalism seems to reward planned obsolescence. It's in the name. Capitalism is about maximizing capital, not about maximizing repair-friendliness.

[adm0n]

  1 hour ago, Ertio said:

Ideally yes. But somehow, smartphones with replaceable batteries and MicroSD card readers have become a rarity.

This tells you, that in the transition time between phones existing with those and phones existing without them, buyers didn't care about them and went with the sleeker design instead.

  1 hour ago, Ertio said:

This already happened with non-replaceable batteries, yet users kept buying.

 

Smartphones used to be optional in the late 2000s and early 2010s, but now the majority of people are dependent on them, giving smartphone manufacturers the ultimate leverage, which they didn't hesitate to use.

 

Same as before. For you it might seem that way. But people have not cared about it enough to not buy those phones, therefore they keep being made. And there was a period of time where you could choose between both options.

[venomtail]

  1 hour ago, Ertio said:

Then where are the phones for the user base who want replaceable batteries?

 

At least Samsung had the mercy to make the A series with MicroSD. The entry-level A series (A14, A15) even have a 3.5mm audio connector that the S series dropped loooong ago.

Phones with removable batteries still exist. Consumers didn't stop buying phones when batteries stopped being removable so companies kept making them with everything glued in to chase cheaper durability. Blame the consumer for not voting with their wallets.

[Ertio]

  1 hour ago, adm0n said:

This tells you, that in the transition time between phones existing with those and phones existing without them, buyers didn't care about them and went with the sleeker design instead.

Perhaps you're right. People kept buying iPhones when the replaceable battery phone (Samsung) was just around the corner (or on the same store shelves).

 

But I wonder if people would have kept buying iPhones if Apple made the batteries replaceable. I have the impression many people were hooked to the Apple brand (so-called iSheep).

 

Similarly with the audio connector. Until 2016, a phone without it seemed unthinkable, yet iPhone users kept buying after the iPhone 7.

 

  1 hour ago, venomtail said:

Phones with removable batteries still exist. Consumers didn't stop buying phones when batteries stopped being removable so companies kept making them with everything glued in to chase cheaper durability.

Sadly, most people don't know about it, and it is not even on store shelves.

 

How does one even advertise such a thing? The problem is that the benefits of replaceable batteries are not immediate, only long-term.

 

When most people seem to have the attention span of flies, it is hard to advertise benefits that occur in years' time. Most people seem to only care about showing off at friends today and tomorrow. This is the shiny object syndrome.

 

Or in other words:

  Quote

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT!

 - posted from iPhone

 

[venomtail]

  55 minutes ago, Ertio said:

Sadly, most people don't know about it, and it is not even on store shelves.

 

How does one even advertise such a thing? The problem is that the benefits of replaceable batteries are not immediate, only long-term.

 

When most people seem to have the attention span of flies, it is hard to advertise benefits that occur in years' time. Most people seem to only care about showing off at friends today and tomorrow. This is the shiny object syndrome.

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Many people don't care and even more people don't know. I advocate for computer upgradability, I think it's cheaper in the long run and less wasteful but I know people who don't care. Easier to buy a midrange prebuilt every 5 years.

 

Same thing with Apple's iPhone battery slow down lawsuit. Regardless of whether Apple was in the right or wrong about slowing down customers phones to make them last longer, the customer who sued didn't care about how long their devices will last and the issue of how fast their phone is was a far more serious matter to be concerned about. 

 

You just gotta accept that you're a dying breed of a customer cause most don't care about the things you look for in a phone and because there's more people like them than you, companies such as Samsung will chase these customers over you.

 

It's not your responsibility to save the world. You can only do your part on your own terms because if you try and change society as a whole you'll always lose.