This is kinda of a gray area, if they really wanted to treat their customers well, they'd have easily-replaceable batteries and a notification that lets people know their phone is slowing down because they need a new battery. Still seems like planned obsolescence, or at the very least, encouraged obsolescence.
>if they really wanted to treat their customers well, they'd have easily-replaceable batteries
It's an extremely infrequent service, but it's not difficult. Certainly much much easier than an oil change on a car, which is a frequent service. Instructions, third party supplies, and third party services are abundant for it. I don't think it's fair to call it anything but "easily-replaceable."
> I don't think it's fair to call it anything but "easily-replaceable."
Yeah? Well that is peculiar. Here [1] [2] it says: "Difficulty: Moderate". I guess someone is wrong on the Internet, and I don't think its iFixit.
You see, the battery in my phone can be replaced in literally under half a minute. Without any special tools. Without any guide. The only thing is, I gotta buy the battery from the vendor, for 20 EUR.
That is, according to my reference point, "easily-replaceable" indeed (I could even do it whilst I'm hiking without any special tools), while the circus act you're going to have to put up (which includes all kind of non-standard tools (with additional price tag) which you can read about at [1] and [2]), clearly -without the shed of a doubt- makes it a lot more difficult to replace the bloody thing.
And let us be honest: that is entirely intended. Because else, Apple would use standard screws, and wouldn't use all kind of acts to use more obscure screws.
Fun fact: my mother, in her 60s, has changed oil numerous upon numerous times in her life. She's never replaced a battery in a phone though. Some people are scared opening up hardware. Heck, I bet she was scared refreshing oil the first time as well but my father guided her (he became blind, so couldn't do it anymore). Another one: the other day I was replacing a battery and reapplying thermal paste on my partner's MBP and my partner's sister complimented that I was doing that, even though it was my first time doing that and I was just using iFixit's guide. (I still managed to kill the iSight camera, even though the guide said I shouldn't worry about that connector. GG). That guide said Moderate difficulty as well IIRC. And I screwed it up. So... easy? Give me a break. Its tedious. And that, too, is way more difficult than opening up a ThinkPad T61.
Ergo, my point is that calling it "easily-replaceable" completely and utterly ignores how easy it used to be to replace your cellphone's battery. Call it a reality distortion field if you must.
So your reference point is yours, and mine is mine. We can call it there. I won't though; I want other people to take iFixit's reference point more serious than randomers because they are experts at defining the difficulty and their guides have been proofread and used. By many eyes.
