Why is Samsung the only company with Replaceable Batteries for higher end phones?

? don't most low end flip phones have replaceable batteries.

btw: true phone ganstas (14yr old Japanese girls) have two phones. One they carry while the other is charging...

 

If the battery is replaceable you need to have a back cover that comes off which adds thickness and weight. When the back cover is designed to come off you need to have critical parts protected so you basically have two backs of your phone creating more weight and thickness.

Also limits your interior design options of the phone.

How many people buy an extra battery? Even when I had a Note II where the battery could be removed I never had the need. The 3100mAh battery was plenty, plus now that every phone has a universal micro-usb charging, running low is unlikely.

 

You can't have a premium unibody case and have a removable battery.

 

Que?

I'll take the extra .1 oz and .1mm thickness to have the option of removing the battery. Sometimes a guy doesn't want to be tracked by the NSA and the only way to make sure the phone isn't on is to remove the battery.

 

Samsung Galaxies have amazing specs, but their build quality is cheap and terrible.

Nokia Lumia phones on the other hand like the Lumia 920 and 1020 are tremendously designed and built like tanks. They couldn't achieve the same build quality with a removable battery, simple as that. I'll take a quality design over replaceable battery any day, especially when portable chargers can be found for $20 now.

 

Exactly. To have a removable battery you need a removable back cover, having a removable back cover pretty much equals to cheap build quality and material.

I had a Note 1 and Note 2, but the build quality and the very very cheap feel of the Galaxy phones turned me away from Note 3.

 

First world problems.

I still use public pay phones on occasion.

 

The responses are hilarious to me. There are people that think Nokia or Apple couldn't build a phone as "premium" without a replaceable battery? Moreover, there are people that think there are smart devices that don't have parts outside of batteries that fail after 2-4 years requiring a user to replace it? lawl

 

I've never had a part on a smartphone go out. I've had screens break (fault of user), and that is it. Others drop in water and such, but again - that is fault of user not fault of hardware. I've owned upwards of 25+ smart phones, and about 10 feature phones going back to the earliest Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices... and components just don't fail.

Also, most people that have smartphones pay $7 a month for insurance on their phones... and even if they didn't all cell phones sold in the US have a 1 year manufacturer warranty.

Parts just don't "go out" on electronics anymore. If and when it happens, it is extremely rare. Just as modern cars don't blow up when they hit 100,000 miles on the odometer.

FYI - People replace Samsung (read removable battery) phones faster than Apple (source). Also, the average smart phone user keeps their smartphone well less than the 24-month contracts that are normal (source).

 

Did you just argue against yourself? You complain that the Samsung has a poor build quality and then you go on to say that you've never had a phone go out on you. Also, if you've had 25+ phones then you probably change out phones every 6 months. Why do you need such a 'premium' build quality anyway? Even a 'cheap' phone like the S4 will last you 6 months.

 

Build quality ≠ component quality. As I said, Samsung makes phones with fantastic specs - but their build quality is inferior to Apple, Nokia, HTC and Motorola to name a few. Although Apple, while making beautiful devices doesn't always make solid devices. As an example from personal experience, I loved the screen and speed of my Samsung Focus, but my HTC Arrive blew it out of the water on build quality. Cheap plastic vs. aluminum and rubberized metal.

I like getting what I pay for. If I'm paying $500 for a phone off-contract I want it to last. I never use cases on my phones, so build quality is extremely important to me. Why should a $500 Samsung Phone be made of cheap plastic that can easily be flexed or broken but an HTC is made of sturdy materials or a Nokia is nearly indestructible?

Also, just because I change phones constantly doesn't mean I "retire" the old phones. I keep some, I resell some and I "hand me down" most of them to my family and friends. They still retain value when I'm done with them and on to the next bigger and badder phone.

Unibody design on electronics is just better, especially for "mobile" devices that are picked up, set down, dropped and carried in bags all of the time. There is a reason tablets don't have removable batteries, and that same reasoning carries over to the best-made smartphones.

 

Lawl at build quality. I've used all three Notes and never had any issues with their designs. He'll, I've dropped my Note 2 multiple times on different surfaces and all that happened was the battery cover flew off and the battery fell out. It took one ding on the top corner when I dropped it on concrete and aside from the cover and battery ejecting, no major damage that rendered the phone unusable. I'll take Note 2's build quality over a cold feeling unibody any day.

 

Has the Samsung 'cheap' plastic broke on you? I've dropped mine numerous times and it's fine. It's always the screen that breaks anyway and that's true regardless of cheap plastic or unibody. I dropped my ipad original on the corner and it spidered out immediately (not over time) to cover 40% of the screen. So much for unibody quality. The metal body itself was busted pretty good too.
I have had 4 iphones and the S3 was my first Android. I still might go back to Apple since my entire family is on it, but I've had no issues with Android or Samsung at all.

 

my cheap LG's battery comes out….life's good..

 

Ah I guess I should be jealous of the ohhhs one gets when you drop your phone and it splits in 3 pieces all over the mall courtyard like it's middle school and You drop a tray of food.

Nothing like scrambling around the ground picking up dead phone, back piece and battery under some old women's leg to make me feel futuristic

 

1. Stop giving a sht what people think when you drop your phone. If you think you look cooler because you dropped a unibody phone then you're an idiot.
2. I've dropped mine plenty of times and the back doesn't even come off.

 

When I drop my phone in public, I just do the Nae Nae.

 

Because they have to because the cheap crap plastic back covers probably can't stay on.