Galaxy S6: Samsung Succumbs to The Sealed Battery Conspiracy - What's Your Stance on This Issue?

Lminipc on 25/03/2015 - 15:01
Last edited 25/03/2015 - 15:19 by 1 other user

As some of you phone junkies would have heard by now, Samsung has gone the way of many others by now introducing a non-user replaceable battery smartphone - the Galaxy S6.

The usual spiel - thinner, lighter, blah blah blah…

I want a user replaceable battery because I get a new phone and sell my existing one every 1-2 years.
Logically speaking, a user-replaceable battery phone should fetch more (all things being equal) than a phone with a sealed battery. Me, personally I wouldn't buy a second hand phone without a user replaceable battery, if I did, I wouldn't pay much for it - I know the iPeople wannabes (2nd hand iPhone buyers) go against this trend.

The day that ALL smartphones no longer have user-replaceable batteries is the day that I go from spending $500+ for a flagship phone to $150-200 for a low-end phone.

Q. What about you? Are you in the same boat as me? Or you don't really care that you're burning $500-700 every two years?

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  ozhunter on 25/03/2015 - 15:07

  Logically speaking, a user-replaceable battery phone should fetch more (all things being equal) than a phone with a sealed battery.

  That's the thing, it isn't equal as sealing in the battery lets the manufacturers use other materials such as glass or aluminium, which gives it a more premium feel. I prefer the plastic soft leather touch of the Note 4 and the durability that goes with using plastic.

  • 

    minipc on 25/03/2015 - 15:26

    Yes I see your point in regards to new phones, I was referring to secondhand phones. As a buyer I'd be dubious about a battery that's a year old…

    • 

      ozhunter on 25/03/2015 - 21:01

      If I were to buy a used phone, I'd prefer one with a removable battery, but a one year old battery isn't going to degrade that much.

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  iridiumstem on 25/03/2015 - 15:35

  +1

  The non-removable battery does have benefits, I've heard, in terms of manufacturing. I personally prefer removable batteries as a consumer, however.

  That being said, I think it's a general trend in smartphone market. I think focusing on design gets more people than making a smartphone with a removable battery. If focusing on design over having removable batteries make it sell more, why would companies make phones that have removable batteries?

  • 

    minipc on 25/03/2015 - 15:45

    Yes it does seem to be the trend nowadays. And of course it's no issue for companies if they are still raking it in. At the end of the day if the masses are still handing over their cash, then it's not an issue for many…just thrifty people like me!

    • 

      iridiumstem on 25/03/2015 - 15:46

      Though, that's what companies do. Minimise cost, differentiate your product, work for that phat profit.

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  Pigey on 25/03/2015 - 15:43

  +1

  LG went from a sealed battery in their G2 to a removable battery for their G3.

  They probably had to because their screen sucks the battery dry.

  But having a removable battery is great, we're on holidays in Japan and the cold really sucks the battery, it's good to just have the option of being able to swap batteries out that we carry in our wallet rather than having to lug around bulky power banks and cables.

  Probably won't go back to a sealed battery phone again.

  • 

    minipc on 25/03/2015 - 15:47

    Yes, a positive move by LG in my opinion anyway. I do have a Xiaomi powerbank and it weighs like weights!

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  mohammed on 25/03/2015 - 17:06

  Non removable is better because it's cheaper to produce and it's lighter with a more premium feel. phones get swaped every 1 or 2 years anyway so when you swap you get a new battery right?

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  plmko on 25/03/2015 - 17:25

  +2

  "I want a user replaceable battery because I get a new phone and sell my existing one every 1-2 years."

  That makes absolutely no sense, if your outlook is only 1-2 years of use, you will not experience any degradation of the internal battery. Ebay prices of used phones don't even reflect the age of use of the phone, only what's popular and in demand.

  It's a big non-issue, if you are one of those people who carry around a spare battery, because then you'd be OK with carrying a small power bank. However the real point is how much battery life does the phone have, sealed battery phones have larger battery capacity on average. Looking at it that way and coming back to the GS6, we get a sealed battery with reduced capacity and life compared to the previous generation all for a marginally thinner body.

  In otherwords GS6 is to be avoided, get the GS5 instead if the Galaxy stuff appeals to you.

  • 

    minipc on 25/03/2015 - 19:31

    +3

    Hi, the reason it makes absolutely no sense is because you are misunderstanding my point.

    If I was a millionaire and would be happy enough tossing my old phone in the trash and buying another one, then battery life is a non-issue. But because my phone sale subsidises my next purchase, I think how juiced up my phone is WILL have an impact on resale value.

    My whole point is about the resale value of phones with sealed batteries.
    For me it makes no sense for someone to buy a two year old Xperia Z with crappy battery life, which you cannot easily solve, than say a Galaxy S4 which has a removable battery. For all intents and purposes, if that Samsung has been kept in a protective case and has a protective film, then all you need to do is get a new battery, do a reset and you've practically got a new (old) phone. With the Sony, you're stuck with crappy battery life, or else you'll have to pay quite a bit to replace the battery.

    I don't know, maybe most people are not like me…they just jump on eBay, buy a 2 year old phone with a sealed battery that won't last even a day…

    • 

      plmko on 25/03/2015 - 19:59

      If you're that concerned about resale value to 'subsidise' your next purchase, you should be looking at iPhones (ironically has sealed battery) and not any of the Android phones. They will all depreciate heavily and equally despite what you think about batteries.

      IMO the battery doesn't degrade after 2 or so years of usage, if it has, it's probably because people don't realise they're phones have accumulated 2 years worth of apps and updates to burn through battery life as compared to fresh from the box.

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  RockyRaccoon on 25/03/2015 - 17:51

  +1

  That makes absolutely no sense, if your outlook is only 1-2 years of use, you will not experience any degradation of the internal battery. Ebay prices of used phones don't even reflect the age of use of the phone, only what's popular and in demand.

  Absolutely!!

  My wife uses my son's old iphone3 and the battery life is still good.

  Smartphones with cheap components need simple ways to replace these parts. Those units dont really have resale advantage anyway.

  Samsung makes good products, by having the battery enclosed, they can make them smaller with better battery life.

  • 

    twister292 on 25/03/2015 - 18:05

    +1

    Not with better battery life, just smaller.

    The S6 has worse battery life than the S5 in reviews; it has a smaller battery plus the screen has a much higher resolution.

  • 

    minipc on 25/03/2015 - 19:33

    Hi, I'm wondering if your wife just use the phone sporadically or is she constantly on it, like most teenagers?

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  syousef on 25/03/2015 - 18:08

  +3

  Let me put it this way: I have no intention of buying the S6. Battery gone. SD card gone. This customer gone. There are things I haven't liked about the Galaxy line preivously but I bought them because they gave me the features I want. The S6 doesn't. End of story.

  • 

    ozhunter on 25/03/2015 - 19:53

    -1

    It will some customers happy, others not so much.The S6(including the Edge version) have broken the record for pre-orders in Korea.

    What will be your next phone?

    • 

      iridiumstem on 25/03/2015 - 22:06

      Korean smartphone market is very distorted at the moment thanks to idiots (or corrupted bastards) in charge. I don't think the pre-order number in Korea represents how decent Galaxy S6 is. I think it looks amazing and everything but the preorder number I think is distorted at the moment. Korean people are choosing either Galaxy or iPhone after the law on cell phones distribution got through, because the law made it so that all smartphones are expensive.

    • 

      syousef on 26/03/2015 - 15:28

      I have no idea at this point.

      I do know that a few annoying bugs on the S4 have left me with a bitter taste in my mouth where it would otherwise be a great experience. First is an unacknowledged bug of killing SD cards that managed to eat 2 weeks worth of my wife's photos. The second is an annoying bug that means application launch preferences are lost on each reboot. I'm sure there's more I'm leaving out but those are the two that struck me the most. Recently the touch screen on my wife's S4 has stopped responding for half a day. It may have been change in humidity, but whatever it was I reset the phone before it resolved itself.

      I also detest Samsung support. I tried to get the mini-usb charge port fixed, on which my daughter stuffed the charger cable in the wrong way. Couldn't get a rough estimate on replacement without putting it in for assessment for $50. That's after chasing them on the phone on 2 different numbers, finally going into their pretentious "experience" store and being treated like I had excrement hanging off my face. Ended up voiding the warranty and fixing it myself with the part bought off Ebay. Thank heavens it was a ribbon connector not soldered.

      Few devices are without fault, so i'm not saying my next phone will be trouble free, but I can hope for a better experience than that. There's certainly nothing there to keep me brand loyal.

      You know if I'm going to get a bad experience I may just go with a cheap and nasty phone.

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  [Deactivated] on 25/03/2015 - 19:18

  +1

  I'm not by any means brand-loyal, but among others, I have owned four Samsung phones.

  Samsung's sales have been in a slump recently. Sales of the S5 have been hit severely by LG's success.
  Largely because lots of buyers have remained perfectly content with the performance of their older models, sales of the Note 4 have also failed to reach expectations.

  All the while, sales of Apple phones with their 'premium feel', non-replaceable battery and absent microsd card slot have just exploded.

  Can't beat 'em, join 'em…

  Chassis-wise (with other motivations aside), it is easier to manufacture a solid / 'premium feel' device with a fixed back cover.

  Samsung, purportedly, has a strategy to (at some point) dramatically undercut Apple's ridiculous increment pricing in relation to high internal-memory phones.
  Samsung manufacture their own (new foundry tech to boot) flash memory, so this could be a gamechanger of a sort.

  In relation S6 performance and 'feel', reviewers are, by-and-large, gushing.
  Presales, apparently, are huge.
  Maybe, sales-wise, Samsung are on to something…

  Irrespective - if new Note models lack a readily replaceable battery or a memory card slot, Samsung will also lose me as one of their (loyal-ish) customers.