iPhone: has the time come to have removable batteries?|igeneration

Will we see next generations of iPhone with a better designed design for the rapid and easy change of their battery?The turmoil in which Apple has plunged itself (and which is not over, between legal actions and the image seriously deceased as the media coverage has been intense) may be the occasion for apriorities readjustment in the design of a new model.

It is certainly vain to hope for an upheaval from the next generation of 2018, the designs are defined well upstream and the room for maneuver is probably quite low.

Just as one may wonder if Apple will have the "courage" to go to a design where the battery accommodation is directly accessible to the user.This would go backwards with all the evolution of its products in recent years and it implies predicting the sale of batteries as consumables in its shops.

At this point it is good to recall obvious, as we can hear everything and anything in recent days: the battery of the iPhone is not welded.Over the generations, Apple has even made it easier to change for its Genius teams who have several cats to whip on a daily basis.This can be done at Apple or a third party, but it is possible and planned.On an SE for example, it is feasible in four steps which are not complex but which still impose the fingering.We don't just open a drawer and hop we take out the battery to put the news.

What is not planned today and which would represent a hell of a novelty is that we go to buy a battery in an Apple Store and that you change it yourself in your living room.A handyman can do it, not Mr..What is true on the other hand is that this (relative) replacement facility is reserved for iPhone - so much the better they are products that Apple sells in huge volumes - and not iPad or Macs.

The closest competitors of Apple, themselves, do not always give an example.There was a time when the Galaxy S battery was removable, this is no longer the case.Ditto for the last LG G6 after the oven of the previous more modular model.Ditto also with the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, to name a few.There are other opposite cases: Motorola for example which has interchangeable battery models.

If we had to summarize in large lines: the more expensive the phone, the more it is, the more the chances of having a removable battery are reduced to skin of sorrow.

Reacting to Apple's communication, Walt Mossberg, the former Tech journalist of the Wall Street Journal and The Verge says that Steve Jobs' desire not to have removable battery was motivated by the need to win place to putA larger battery, the finesse in his eyes was secondary.

By evacuating all the small mechanics which allows to hold and remove the batteries thus the removable hood, there is material to grab a little space.Especially since such accommodation must be further reinforced if you also want a waterproof device.

However, adds Mossberg, the statistics a few years ago showed that purchases of replacement batteries did not represent large volumes, beyond a core of customers who needed it.That people too frequently changed phones.While today, in view of their prices that have skyrocketed, we will tend to keep them longer and to be more frequently faced with the aging of their battery.

Another factor to take into account in the evolution of phones, they have become almost as powerful as a computer.The impact on their battery is all the stronger since the uses are intensifying.We quite easily forget the enormous time that we devote today to these devices that have become real games and pocket televisions consoles.

With its mea-culpa yesterday, Apple began to correct its first communication errors.We would have obviously preferred that this replacement program is still more attractive.Rather than a reduced price over a year, offer for example a free exchange over a shorter period but then substantially lower this cost of the battery permanently.

Remains that by appearing willing to fully redeem itself, Apple leaves unanswered at least one question.Why does this program start with the iPhone 6 and not with the 5S, for example?It is not a question of going up to the first iPhone but, beyond the annual improvements of the components, what changed on a material level so that from this generation and those that followed,It is necessary to modify the system so that it avoids unexpected extinctions?Apple does not explain it.

During the presentation of the iPhone 6, Phil Schiller had praised an A8 processor faster than the previous one, capable of better endurance on actions that strongly request it.He had also rented the efforts of engineers for the results obtained on autonomy.In short, nothing new compared to what Apple dispenses with each launch.

But go tell an owner of 5 or 5s that his phone is excluded from the program while the was taken care of.It is understood that these phones are completely different internally - two generations of gap - but externally an average user will judge them similar.

Obviously, this trigger factor which did not exist before the iPhone 6 is still there with the 7.In addition Apple does not say a word on what is 8 and x.At most, she said that this power drive would also be used on "future products".

Yesterday's declaration is a real step in the right direction but it is always lacking in Apple this ability to communicate fully and completely, without letting shadow areas that open up to all kinds of speculation.Even if the subject would be complex, a work of complete pedagogy is never useless, Samsung did it after the fiasco of his note7 and did very well.Especially when you position yourself on the top of the range and we have only the word quality to the mouth.