47
votes
Why are integrated batteries so accepted?
Just something I was frustrated by ever since it became increasingly common even outside of smartphones and tablets.
For a few years now I increasingly see basically any battery powered product having mostly internal accumulator options(aka proprietary battery of uncertain ability to replace), especially in more expensive items in the category. Why?
I mean do see several advantages from the business side, I simply have no idea what advantage would there be for the actual user.
I could see it if the batteries had comparable lifespan to the product, which they most definitely do not unless the item is of truly bad quality.
The functional advantages for the user tend to be better waterproofing and/or smaller, less bulky devices. I don’t think that’s why they’re the default - I think it’s the manufacturers’ interests first and foremost, with those being nice side effects - but there are at least some genuine benefits. I’d still prefer an actual focus on replacement and repairability if it were an option, though!
Plus does anybody remember DROPPING a phone in the before-times? The phone, battery, and battery cover would explode and embed themselves under every piece of available furniture
Size and design. Designs where the LiOn battery can be removed tend to be bulkier, flimsier, and not resistant to water or dust ingress.
It’s not like consumers are purposefully eschewing it. But consumers gravitate towards slick, premium devices.
It’s also just not that big of a deal. Often the LiOn recharge cycle outlives the realistic lifespan of the device. For things like phones, there are comprehensive battery replacement programs - it’s certainly not something you have to do every week. So being a bit more of a pain isn’t something that’s going to weigh on most people’s minds.
I’d also add that for something like an AirPod, it’s just not feasible without significantly increasing the size and weight. When the device is hanging out the consumers ear, that matters.
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Edit: I’d add that it’s still common for devices where it makes sense. Mirrorless cameras, for instance. You need multiple batteries in many cases for long shoot days, and the camera body is more than large enough to support swappable batteries.
Exactly. In Apple products for example, internal batteries allow for an added sense of solidness. Empty space within the chassis that allows for resonance makes for a cheap feel.
If also kind of shatters the illusion of the device being a singular object, which was something Apple had been grappling even in the iPod era. Jobs said that he wanted Apple stuff to feel as if it sprung into existence as it is, like how a fruit grows as a single piece, rather than feeling like a bunch of discrete parts cobbled together.
Beyond that, lithium batteries that go in these devices are made specifically for the applications they get used for. Outside of phones, what devices commonly have replaceable lithium batteries? All I can really think of are power tools and laptops.
And if you really think about it, the vast majority of replaceable laptop and phone batteries are no longer being produced - neither from the OEMs nor from sketchy third parties. There are tons of netMD players that are basically useless for their original purpose because there is no way to get their “gumstick” batteries, and if you want to get your retro laptop portable again you better hope that those packs are just repackaged 18650s and they aren’t entirely potted in glue so that you can rebuild it. Having a battery that is user-replaceable does not mean that getting a replacement battery will be easy, and third party batteries of unknown quality have a higher possibility of exploding.
Beyond that, on a well designed piece of hardware replaceable batteries are much less necessary. When you had to tether your device, possibly with it unusable for hours at a time, that was a big deal. That’s why power tools still have quick easy battery changes, after all. But my 2020 MacBook Air charges fully within two hours for multiple days of use, and it’s fully usable in the meanwhile. My Apple Watch gets a full days charge in the time it takes me to finish a bath.
Beyond that, there really isn’t much benefit for having phones with removable batteries. Being able to quickly switch to a battery with 100% sounds really nice, but I have never in my life seen an external charger for a phone battery; you have to charge it in the phone. So you now have two devices to charge, which you cannot do simultaneously, and you have no way to tell what the charge level of one is without doing a battery swap. Worse, the actual experience of replacing batteries on smartphones is usually terrible. Getting the backs of them always feels like you’re about to shatter them, and with regular fiddling there is no doubt in my mind that they would.
I shouldn’t have to say that I don’t think replaceable batteries are a bad thing. I still think they are good. But the alternative isn’t always that bad.
The thing about power tools is real but also after my Dewalt drill just died, I found out they simply don’t make that type of battery anymore. It led me to ask “do I drill stuff enough for cordlessness to matter for me?” I think the answer is no, so when I replace it next time I’m probably going to just get one that plugs into the wall.
With electronics in general I’ve started to get a little annoyed with aspects of them being “wear items” in need of care and feeding. I wish we could prioritize interchangeable and generalizable parts in more things. I get customizability being useful, but who is served by every power tool maker using a slightly different battery connector especially when most of the time it’s just a bunch of D cells in series covered in plastic?
One category I like the most in 3D printing file repositories is battery adaptors. Turns out that some people really like specific power tool batteries a lot so they make adaptors for everything. I've seen someone make an adaptor for Dyson vaccums to use Ryobi batteries.
Happy Dyson adapter user here - it's so much easier to do the whole house when I can swap in another fully charged battery instead of plugging in the vacuum and waiting for hours before I can start again.
Also, who thought it was a good idea to require a screwdriver to swap the original Dyson battery, or change the battery holder configuration between models? Just more built-in obsolescence, from a manufacturer that's supposedly all about premium design.
Having an on-site 3D printer to make custom housings for batteries or small plastic parts is one of those things I wish hardware stores would do. The water dispenser in my fridge doesn’t work and there is basically no way for me to fix it because it needs a specific length and shape of plastic rod that Electrolux no longer produces. I’ve looked everywhere online and every parts seller is out of stock. I even looked around at the hardware store to see if I could steal the part off a floor model and the new models use a differently shaped plastic piece. It’s maddening that maybe $20 worth of extruded plastic (that they will sell me for $60) renders a feature of my couple thousand dollar fridge inoperable. I suspect it is easily printable since it really is just a plastic rod of a specific length that just needs to have a specifically shaped hook on the end. This seems like something a local hardware store should be able to do if I just bring them the broken part and ask them to recreate it.
Along with things like selling me speaker wire or network cables cut to a specified size. I guess maybe the labor costs don’t work out at the smaller scale of a neighborhood hardware store, which is a shame. Because I could fix so much cable clutter around my house if I didn’t have to settle for whatever sized cables I can get on monoprice.
If it's really a rod you need, you can likely buy a plastic rod already made and simply mold the end of it to the shape you need with a hot knife or a soldering iron set to a low temperature. Most 3D printers aren't great and producing long thin rods., so getting the extruded part might be a better job.
Just to edify you, because if I've retained this information in my brain for 30ish years, I need you to have it taking up space in yours. I know of two phones that had external battery chargers:
The Motorola Star Tac
and
The Motorola Micro Tac
Apparently the Motorola i370XL also had a charging dock that incorporated a slot for a backup battery.
As you can tell my the pictures... they aren't exactly modern phones and definitely not modern batteries.
I actually own 2 of these for use with my (currently inoperative for other reasons) Pinephone. I found it nice to not have to care about battery life, especially considering the abysmal battery life the Pinephone Pro currently has in active use
For those minidisc players there are a couple types of replacement batteries readily available, but they come with the caveat of not being nearly as good as the original Sony batteries.
On the point of ratio of charge time to battery life, I agree. I recently picked up an M4 Air as a secondary machine and it’s so nice to get almost a week of intermittent usage out of a single charge. Not just laptops but all electronics should be designed like that.
This is most prevalent on phones, and I don't think it has much to do with advantages to the manufacturer, it mostly has to do with customer demand.
When swappable batteries were common in smartphones, not many people used them. It was easier to just charge your phone at night. At the same time, thinner, lighter, and more waterproof phones became big competitive selling points. Those are things that are very hard to do if you have a removable battery, because you need to have very good gaskets sealing the battery compartment off, while still making it accessible.
Portable battery packs and USB-C PD were the final nail in the coffin for portable batteries. It's easier to just plug in your phone to a power bank for fifteen minutes than take the case off your phone to swap a proprietary battery pack out.
At this point the only real advantage as a consumer would be easy replacement of a phone battery once it wears out, but I can just take it to a shop and have them do that for 40 bucks every 2 years or so. I'd much rather have a lighter, thinner, more waterproof phones with a higher capacity battery than that small advantage.
Hard disagree there. Everyone I know did one or more of these things, though my population was skewed by commuters and on-call folks:
My Galaxy S5 still works fine. It was IP67, with a removable back. Would be excellent as a communication and 2fa device if it was still getting security updates.
I've churned through multiple Pixel 3's because the battery life becomes unusable. Which again, would be a perfectly fine phone still if it was getting security updates. But would have been better if it had a user-swappable battery.
I think portable battery packs came around because of batteries that couldn't be hot swapped. I had one way back, but it was so incredibly slow to charge because this was before fast charging.
I'm sure some people used them, but most didn't. As battery capacities got higher, the use case just kind of went away.
The proof is in the pudding though. If user swappable batteries were something people cared about, they'd still make phones with that feature. It's not like nothing in the world has user swappable batteries after all. Handheld radios, drones, digital cameras and a number of other electronics have user swappable batteries standard. It's just that for phones, it's not nearly as high priority for most people as having a phone that's resilient, thin, light, and with good battery life, and a user swappable battery makes it harder to do all of those things.
I think it was more to do with Apple not doing it, and then phone makers going along with what Apple was doing because Apple was winning. If Google had managed to get the level of "remove vendor garbage" that Apple managed back then, I have no doubt the market would be much more competitive now.
Samsung proved removing the headphone jack was not necessary for IP67 ratings. My Galaxy S5 is lighter than any of my other phones. If it had today's improved glass, it would hands down be just as good, if not better, of a mobile phone than any contemporary one by those metrics. I still contend that it was one of the best smartphones ever made, from a sustainability and durability standpoint.
And as users learned: It doesn't really matter what user demand is if it's easier to market changes as "good for the user." The cost of ramping up a competitor is incredibly high, so it's not really competitive if everyone just says "copy Apple without violating patents." It's much more profitable to have arbitrary price points primary based on fixed internal storage, rather than giving an SD card slot that could triple available capacity for a fraction of the price.
See also: Carmakers eliminating buttons for years. Rumor has it that VW is going to re-introduce more physical buttons soon because of immense negative feedback finally.
"copy apple" worked not because of the association with apple, but because people generally like the things apple does. A lot of people got grumpy over the removal of the 3.5mm jack, but it enables phones to be thinner and have better battery life, which are virtually the most important thing about a phone for an average consumer. Yes, you can have a removable battery phone that's thin, waterproof, and with good battery life, but it's harder, which means more expensive, and it's not something that super important to the average consumer so it doesn't get designed in.
If people were really clamoring for removable batteries in 2025, we'd see removable batteries.
I won't argue with the battery life, but the thinnest iPhone ever appears to have been the iPhone 6 - that is, the one so thin it bent when put in back pockets. Notably, it also had a 3.5mm jack. I'm not sure you can claim "thinner" as an argument against the 3.5mm jack.
The iPhone 6 also has a 1800mAh battery, which would be a complete nonstarter today. Everything in a phone is a tradeoff. You can have a thin phone with a 3.5mm jack, and good battery life, but it wouldn't perform well. Or you could have a thick phone with a 3.5mm jack, good performance and good battery life. Most people buying phones prefer thin, powerful phones that last a long time. Comparitively few really care that much about a 3.5mm jack.
There were Android brands selling phones with 3.5mm jacks long after apple got rid of theirs. If I remember correctly, Samsung even made an ad explicitly pointing this out and making fun of Apple for it. Turns out that none of those phones outsold the iPhone. So was a 3.5mm jack really that important to most consumers? Probably not.
I intentionally didn't comment on battery life. I didn't say a 3.5mm jack is popular, or considered a required feature by the majority of consumers. I didn't say the iPhone 6 had a battery that was reasonably sized for a modern smartphone.
I am exclusively calling out the statement that dropping the 3.5mm jack allows for thinner smartphones.
Maybe dropping it allows for larger batteries, a better layout for other components, easier engineering, better water or dust proofing, or a litany of other benefits for both consumers and manufacturers.
Claiming it allows for thinner phones is the one and only claim I'm attempting to push back on.
Removing the 3.5mm jack didn't improve battery life. It simply gave manufacturers the option to use that small amount of small for more battery capacity if they so chose. The actual reason for removing it was to push first party wireless headphones that were both more expensive/lucrative and would eventually need to be replaced when... the integrated battery dies. Everyone other than the consumer wins!
Two thoughts:
Whom should I contact to write an impassioned letter to produce a few trial phones with removable batteries to see current consumer demand? How would users provide useful feedback to companies so they know customers want phones with removable batteries? Do companies even include that question as part of their marketing research? Would any and all desires be ignored because it would cost $10 more per phone while not really being able to increase that purchase price significantly? I'm sure huge numbers of users would love to throw a 1TB microSD card in their phone for their videos/music/pictures, but I also know the number of companies that want to provide that is 0. And look at the lobbying Apple does against right-to-repair and compatibility laws. Is that really because there is a lack of consumer demand....or because the consumer demand is against the profitability desires of the company, and is thus ignored or marketed as "a bad thing?"
Second, Apple has been the best at marketing for years. I'd contend that is their primary advantage as a tech company long term. Coming in fresh to an Apple computer or phone, it is certainly no more intuitive than any other functioning operating system. When they make the pitch to build support for a decision they made, their existing base will echo it regardless of how "true" it is. I remember a chorus of people in the iphone 5 days saying that "Oh IP rating doesn't really matter" when comparing Samsung's phone against the iphone 5. And that tune changed rapidly once the iphone had attained that IP rating. So the question is: How much is users actually desiring certain things, or presuming that Apple's patterns are the best because of marketing and tribalism?
I would suggest writing that letter to the consumer around the year 2013 when both phone models with user-serviceable and non-user serviceable batteries were on the market. They chose non-user serviceable models and that's how we got to where we are. Marketing may have played a role in it, sure, but user-serviceable just isn't a feature that consumers generally care about - despite the loud lamentations of us relatively few who do care.
The advancement of right to repair laws would show otherwise. It's just that circa 2013 nobody noticed because it was pretty standard across the board. Like having a speedometer in a car.
And, yes, consumers did pick phones with removable batteries. At least, when they were available. The iphone never had one as an option.
Phones in 2013 without replaceable batteries:
Phones in 2013 with replaceable batteries:
Marketshare for Android: 51%
Marketshare for Apple: 41%
It's just that....all of those options vanished within the next 2 years. Starting in roughly 2015, they just stopped making them. They didn't release two versions of the S6, one with a battery swap and one without....they just took it away. The S5 was the last option, and it still sold well...it was just facing more competition on the cheaper end....as well as the S4 being one of the best selling models at the time, and people not ready to trade in their phone after 1 year. Even the S6 didn't sell as well as the S4.
Right-to-repair laws are principally championed by those who want third-party technicians to be able to service these devices. The proportion of people who want to service their own phones is much smaller -- for instance, I believe very strongly in right-to-repair but have absolutely no desire to service my phone's hardware issues myself. Right-to-repair is related to user-serviceability, but they are not the same thing, and if user-serviceability was a sufficiently important feature to a sufficiently large number of consumers, user-serviceable phones would have remained competitive on the market a decade ago, without requiring legislation.
If you could replace the battery yourself by purchasing a $30 battery, and opening the case with a simple pry, would you prefer that to paying $150 to a tech who needs to desolder a battery?
Because I sure as heck did.
And am I the only one that remembers high-end user-servicable phones just straight-up disappearing within a year? It's not like there was a 7 year overlap in comparable feature sets which would have revealed this preference.
The S5 had a removable battery. The S6 and beyond didn't. So unless you wanted to downgrade generations, you didn't really have options.
That was true for basically every feature I lost from the S5. IR blaster, FM radio, headphone jack, removable battery, SD card slot.
I didn't really have a choice in the matter. I just had to choose which phone had the least compromises.
I may prefer a replaceable battery -- if it didn't involve compromise on other parts of the phone. My current phone, for instance, is much more water-resistant than the phone I owned back then and handles being dropped better too. Now, is it possible to get those benefits with a properly removable battery? Perhaps, but perhaps not. If a compromise on something else is required to include a removable battery, then consumers will have to weigh those features against each other. Other consumers would, like you, choose which phone to purchase based on which compromises thet can bear with most. And it turns out that the advantages of a removable battery were simply not worth it to most consumers compared to the compromises.
I understand your frustration and I'm not trying to argue that you're wrong to prefer a removable battery -- I think there are a ton of advantages to them and I'm hopeful about things improving in that respect in the future so that we can have the best of both worlds! But ultimately I don't think this issue is as important to most of the general consuming public as it is to you. It definitely isn't even as important to me! If paying $30 for a new battery instead of $100 for a third-party technician comes alongside, for instance, my phone being more likely to break apart and have the battery fall out when I drop it (something that happened a lot when I owned phones with removable batteries back in the day!), then I'd honestly prefer paying a technician more on the rare occasion I need to replace my phone battery in exchange.
Given the number of folks (myself included) who pay someone else to mow their lawn, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if most people would still pay someone to replace a battery for them.
You can make a phone with a headphone jack waterproof; it's just harder. You can't use an off-the-shelf jack; it has to be specially made and integrated with the case, which makes the engineering and tooling more expensive. Honestly, there's pretty good arguements that iPhones had space to keep the headphone jack. Heck, someone added one to an iPhone 7. So really, I think it just came to simple cost-cutting, and to pushing people to buy AirPods. And as much as I love using mine, I still think it's a dumb thing that I can't use regular headphones without an adapter that I have to pay extra for.
Another important piece is the fast charging protocols. Used to if my phone was run down, I either had to swap the battery or wait hours and hours for it to charge. Now I can get back to 50% in under an hour.
As someone who has owned a mobile phone of some sort since about 1998, I can tell you that I never once swapped out a battery on one. Only reason I ever had to remove the battery was to reach the SIM card slot.
This is obviously anecdotal so take it as that.
I don't think it is possible to accurately assume this from the current market. There is simply close to zero option for a removable battery smartphone. Anecdotally and very tragicomically funny is a Samsung rugged line, specifically for work outside if I remember correctly. I am not even holding out hope for standardized battery which would be significantly better but realistically won't happen without legislation forcing it. Another alternative to that would be the manufacturer having to keep batteries available for a reasonable time, measured in no less than decade after support ends.
Back to the point, I think people who would specifically seek out this feature are in the minority but not so much for close to no models across product range to be available if customer desires were the main driving force.
I think it’s just because the buyers accept it. It’s worse on laptops than on phones because the waterproof argument is gone.
Here’s a scenario of why the glued-in battery is bad: For work I use a MacBook Pro. A few years ago the battery went bad and started bulging. This distorted the entire case. The whole laptop needed to be replaced. I’m not the only one this happened to, I think sometimes the laptop would come on when it was in a bag and would overheat. (This was an Intel Mac from 2015, it may not happen with newer ones).
Previously I had a Lenovo laptop which also had a battery issue. But when the battery expanded the access door just popped off because that gave room to expand without damaging the whole unit. And it was relatively easy to just replace the battery.
For me the lack of a headphone jack on phones is more user-hostile than the battery thing.
It’s not the easiest thing out there but replacing batteries on modern MacBooks is doable. They still use some adhesive, but it’s now the gummy pull strip type that is practical to remove.
I own a ThinkPad and while the battery is much more easily replaced, it’s unfortunately almost moot because Lenovo stops selling replacements a couple of years after each model’s EOL, and third party replacements are all of poor quality and sometimes don’t even have 80% of the capacity of the OEM battery. The health of the battery in mine is already down to the low 80s and so I think I’ll probably just replace the whole laptop if it gets much worse.
This isn't the case. Macbook Pro batteries can be replaced without issue. It's not a super easy process, mostly due to how deep within the motherboard it is, but certainly any computer technician could do it easily.
Your work just decided that spending the money on a new laptop is cheaper than paying someone to replace the battery. Which is fair.
Yeah by replaced I don't mean "they threw it out". They gave me a new one but probably had someone fix it. But the fix probably included fixing the bulge in the body and maybe damage to the keyboard.
It’s absolutely possible to replace the battery of a 2015 MacBook Pro. Here is the ifixit repair guide. I don’t have much experience with electronics repair and I would be more than comfortable doing it. An independant repair shop would absolutely be able to repair it if they have access to parts. It’s also worth noting that modern MacBook batteries can be replaced much more easily.
I’ll add that the average consumer voted with their wallets on this one. The industry followed the consumers, who in turn have been following convenience. Of course, this isn’t the only reason, but I think it’s worth looking at it.
There are very many ways in which I think the average consumer votes against their own interests—and that includes me, by the way. This is a bit of a tangent, but just to give an example, I am someone who can’t be bothered with electronic devices that require any sort of tinkering or maintenance, hence why I’ve voted for Apple since 2010, and why I’m pretty much “stuck” in a beautiful, yet walled garden.
This is something I've unfortunately had to realize as well. It's not just that I've gotten older and I have less time to tinker than I used to, but it's just that I have so many fucking devices now.
I have a gaming computer, I have a personal laptop, I have a work laptop, I have two cell phones (both computers), I have a home server, a NAS, 4 smart TV dongles (which are computers), a car infotainment system, an e-reader, and on and on and on. They're all computers, they all require updates, and they all have various bugs, idiosyncrasies, and security vulnerabilities.
I honestly kind of hate it, and I don't know how anyone could have a DIY style operating system on all of them and also do their due diligence on updates and keeping them running.
I used to dream that one day, we'd all have powerful smart phones that would be our one device, and it would do everything we need, but it seems like as time goes on, we all just end up getting more computers, and they all have to be managed by someone else to avoid going insane.
I mean, all of my personal stuff that I can install an operating system on is running the same OS, including the smart TV client, excluding my locked Android phone. It's quite easy to port those setups at that point. The work laptop is managed by work, so I don't count that.
It wouldn't be so hard for everyone to manage these things if proper tech competence were taught and expected at the same level as a foreign language in middle school. Everyone over the age of 10 should understand how to choose and setup a backup solution, and understand why they are being taught to do so.
Is that a realistic expectation? What level of tech-savvy-ness are we talking about? If it’s anything more than using basic Office software, then I doubt that it’ll work. I cannot imagine teaching kids how to do anything with Linux, and they actually making use of that knowledge. I would like to be proven wrong, but I am skeptical.
And if this was done, then I would add that kids should be taught other practical skills as well, like paying taxes and maintaining a home.
Yes they should. They used to do this. It was called Home Economics, Electronics, Woodworking, and Metalworking. All of which were prominent parts of Middle/High School circa 1998.
Algebra is harder than anything relating to more technical use of computers, provided that you actually teach it as an important skill and not "here is the bare minimum to function in an office."
I know this is possible, because from the very beginning, I taught my kids what things were.
At the ripe old age of 2.5, they were afraid of the camera we had in their room when we talked to them through it when on toilet and couldn't get to them. So we went through what a microphone did. At an extremely basic level how wireless worked. And then how a speaker worked.
We never let a "Why" question go unanswered. If we didn't know an answer, we would search for it and learn together.
In 1st grade, they wanted their own computer. We went over most of what parts of a computer did (store things, calculate things, etc), and they built and we installed Linux together, and that's now our family computer. And they can use Linux at approximately the same proficiency as they do with a Chromebook. If there is a problem, we work on it together.
In 2nd grade, I explained the importance of having a good password. In a time when all their passwords at school are firstname1, my kid has two different 8 character passwords memorized that they picked, including a special character.
We're not supergenuises or anything. Just two parents that learned about this stuff in middle/high school, and have the privilege of enough time to teach them this stuff at home when it is relevant.
All humans have the capacity for incredible things. But it comes down to the heirarchy of needs being met at home, proper funding for schools, and for a societal understanding of why this is important. All of these are sorely lacking in the USA.
I wouldn't expect everyone to retain everything for the rest of their lives. But I would expect enough retention to prevent exploitation. Especially given the total permeation of computers everywhere.
Dang. Reading this made me wish I had you as parents. You’re doing a great job!
We're overcompensating for a lack of that in our own childhoods. The upsides of trauma I guess?
Kids are taught how to do taxes in school. They’re taught how to read, how to follow instructions, and how to do basic arithmetic. That’s all taxes are. It’s not like it’s an art form or something, its just forms to list your income sources and deductions.
The hard part about taxes are the endless extra bits that complicate things needlessly. Partially because lots of federal stuff needs phrased as tax rebates and penalties because of the Constitution, but also because wealthy people love a loophole to lower their tax rates.
We wouldn't need a standard deduction if the brackets were set appropriately. Capital gains taxes are an explicitly designed method of tax evasion which require immense extra paperwork that's easy to stumble into with something like Robinhood.
Turning a fairly straightforward process into a complex spaghetti ball of math and documentation ends up requiring a specialist to properly understand. Much like law.
It's also simply because the US tax code is extremely old, and things that get iterated on over and over again look like this. The reality is that if the US tax code had all of it's exceptions and deductions removed, it would be a infinitely more regressive (in the economic definition of the term) than it's current existence.
For 99% of americans, the main possible sources of large deductions can be counted on one hand, and whether or not you could possibly exceed the standard deduction is a relatively simple process.
It certainly has a lot of cruft, but people vastly overstate the complexity. No one without some kind of intellectual disability who works a simple W2 job, and maybe has some investments, cannot do their taxes from scratch simply by reading instructions, copying figures, and doing basic math if they tried it.
One part that seems almost designed to confuse people is how non-standard most tax documents are. The information contained within obviously has some standard, but how they lay it out can vary widely and sometimes be quite confusing to decipher. You then get stuff like trying to figure out which of the 4 "Box Q"s from across the 11 pages are the one it's referring to.
This doesn't apply to W-2s, but seemingly every other tax document I have is some random format specific to the issuer.
Not me. I have operating systems for various stuff that wouldn't really be suited for use cases other than what I use them for. I use arch on my laptop which I really wouldn't want to run a server on, Debian for my container host, which I wouldn't want my laptop on. Proxmox for my hypervisor which I wouldn't want on anything that's not a VM host, pfsense on my router, homeassistant on my home automation server.
All of those things make sense, but managing all of them is a pain. Plus all the proprietary stuff like my Windows PC for gaming, Kindles for ebooks, android phones, android TVs. Granted, these are a bit easier to manage but I still need to install updates and reboot them every so often, and every little bit adds up.
OpenSUSE Leap for me across the board, except OpenWRT on routers which I totally forgot about. Admittedly I run almost all server stuff in Docker, which simplifies it tremendously.
There is tooling to make all of this stuff relatively simple, but it's also incredibly expensive to all but giant corps.
It would be nice if there came a standard API for update management for all devices, but yea that's a pipe dream.
I think other people have made good points, but I think one of the other largest issues is simply: replaceability requires a standard form factor and battery availability. For many devices with different form factors this would be cost prohibitive, and who would stock them? For things like flashlights they are built around existing standards like 18650 or 21700, readily available form factors used in a lot of other, larger battery packs, and it's not as if you could buy one at the grocery store like you can with AAs. I think proprietary batteries like cameras etc are almost as bad as non-replaceable, so considering many devices need the former I don't think it'd be much improvement from consumer perspective. I'm just glad modern batteries don't degrade like old ones used to.
I do think standardization of such an important component should be incentivized generally and it is not as if it is a monumental technical challenge. It would simply for some categories of devices make them slightly larger with slightly lower initial battery capacity. For others it would simply require not gluing things on, done.
Where there is will there is way and while I don't actually know how much waste is caused by this specifically I feel confident that is not negligible amount.
There is virtually no use case that justifies the use of AAA batteries over AA batteries.
Mice? Remotes? Wireless sensors?
Mice are generally large enough to accommodate AA given it needs to be large enough to comfortably hold. Is a difference in 11 grams really so big that it isn't better to not have to keep two sets of batteries around?
Smaller remotes are easier to lose, making that an anti-feature. Again, does the extra 20-30 grams make a gigantic difference to something you might lift a handful of times per day?
Double A batteries range from about 1800mah to 2400mah, while triple A only range from 800mah to 1400mah. So for less than 5 cubic cm of difference, your sensor has double the lifetime.
I stand by my opinions. My most favorite TV remote is the remote for the Logitech harmony hub. It is far too thin for even a AAA; it uses a CR2032. My second favorite remote is the Apple TV remote, which uses an internal battery.
I can agree that many things that are currently using AAA should be AA, but not all. Actually I’ll even go against the grain in this thread and say I prefer integrated batteries. Just give me universal USB C charging and I’ll be happy.
I'm happy to have an integrated battery...if it is possible to swap it out and refurbish it.
I love my EGO power tools. I understand the need for custom design there. And a specialist can refurb for cheaper than a new battery, because the underlying parts are common enough that it doesn't require the specific manufacturer to keep making that part.
I get that there are use cases for smaller batteries. I don't want AAA batteries even on my car keyfob. I'm just saying there isn't a use case for the AAA. If you want smaller, there are better options.
Related gripe: To hell with everything that uses 3 AAA or AA batteries. Chargers want to charge rechargeables in pairs at the same drain level, and this becomes unweildy and unmanageable. Use 2 or 4.
For remotes it really depends on the size and number of buttons.
With how I use my TV setup, the ideal remote would be the Apple TV remote with maybe three additional buttons for controlling receiver and TV power and switching inputs on the AVR. All the other buttons commonly found on remotes are wholly redundant and never get used. For a remote like that, accommodating AAs makes for awkward proportions, making CR2032s or a custom lithium-ion pack like the ATV remote uses a better fit.
I think that simply taking less space is good enough reason to use AAA over AA.
There are other batteries that accomplish that better, which many things do...like car keyfobs.
The reason I call out AA and AAA in particular is because their use case rarely justifies such a tiny shift for the loss of capacity.
A key fob will use something like a 2032 battery, which has a bit over 200 mAh of energy capacity. A AAA battery is several times larger in volume, but it is also several times larger in energy capacity at around 1200 mAh. And they are often much cheaper to purchase on top of that.
Sometimes you just don’t need the extra capacity of AA and having more space is more valuable.
Speaking as an iPhone user, because I get the benefits of a tightly designed product that maximizes features in a limited space custom to what the company has decided to focus on that year. Engineering is always about tradeoffs. I've noticed that I don't typically feel the need for a battery replacement until 3 years have passed; why use a sub-optimally designed product for 3 years so that it's a little easier to do a maintenance task once? I'll deal with the slightly increased pain later in exchange for having a better experience overall.
Because odds are, if it's not designed to do that maintenance task, the costs to get it done safely will be at or above the threshold of "f it, I'll get a new phone for that price."
That sounds pretty likely to be true for most people. I can't speak to others' situations, but I chose to buy iPhones because the availability of OEM iPhone batteries, the Apple stores near me, and the overall cost-to-replace all worked out to make me more likely to want to replace the battery. If I had to ship a phone to change the battery or if batteries were only available on eBay through dodgy sellers, then yeah, my mind would push me towards just buying a new phone.
I have got a Fairphone 5 which has got a removable battery and while I do really like the feature, I do see why it's not as popular anymore. Though personally for me it was the greatest reason for getting the device, the ability to not worry about battery degradation is huge for me but still, the chance that companies like Apple start having batteries like that again is minimal
I don't think anybody has mentioned it but cost may be a factor. Someone mentioned flashlights taking standard 18650 cells (that would be ok) but a manufacturer wanting to use a pouch type cell has extra design steps, extra failure points, more material... if you want a water resistant device then it's more steps, designing, materials, parts.
I would imagine that all ends up costing more money.