Are phones with removable batteries and SD card expansion slot going to continue?

[Sable]

Never thought I'd go for a phone without a removable battery but the Xperia z3c lasts me 3 days.

 

[blankslate]

Until this possible battery advancement (or one like it), reported below pans out and makes it to consumer devices....

http://media.ntu.edu.sg/NewsReleases/Pages/newsdetail.aspx?news=809fbb2f-95f0-4995-b5c0-10ae4c50c934

Scientists at Nanyang Technology University (NTU) have developed ultra-fast charging batteries that can be recharged up to 70 per cent in only two minutes.

The new generation batteries also have a long lifespan of over 20 years, more than 10 times compared to existing lithium-ion batteries.

This breakthrough has a wide-ranging impact on all industries, especially for electric vehicles, where consumers are put off by the long recharge times and its limited battery life.

With this new technology by NTU, drivers of electric vehicles could save tens of thousands on battery replacement costs and can recharge their cars in just a matter of minutes.

Commonly used in mobile phones, tablets, and in electric vehicles, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries usually last about 500 recharge cycles. This is equivalent to two to three years of typical use, with each cycle taking about two hours for the battery to be fully charged.

In the new NTU-developed battery, the traditional graphite used for the anode (negative pole) in lithium-ion batteries is replaced with a new gel material made from titanium dioxide.

Titanium dioxide is an abundant, cheap and safe material found in soil.
~snip~

...I think that I will be always looking for an option for for a replaceable battery in a smartphone.

If lithium batteries running devices like smartphones can last 10 to 20 years in typical use then the option for a user replaceable battery would be a non-issue, aside from a bad batch that needed to be recalled, because a smartphone would probably be a dinosaur by year 5.


....

 

[olds]

I don't see myself buying a phone without a replaceable batter and expandable memory. I keep two charged spare batteries and a battery pack with me at all times. I've had to use the first spare battery but never the second or the battery pack.
But I work in emergency management. When the aliens come and attack and you are all hiding under your beds, I will be working on keeping the highways open so the military can get through.

 

[lxskllr]

If lithium batteries running devices like smartphones can last 10 to 20 years in typical use then the option for a user replaceable battery would be a non-issue, aside from a bad batch that needed to be recalled, because a smartphone would probably be a dinosaur by year 5.


....

I like as many replaceable/expandable parts as I can get, and resent having to get rid of anything because one stupid portion of the total went bad.

I like those mock-ups of modular phones, where you can replace individual components. I'd happily use a phone that was 3x+ as thick as the current crop if that meant I could fit in commodity parts of my choosing.

Ideally it would be like a x86 pc where you can buy everything from Newegg, and you build the *exact* phone you want, and run the O/S of your choosing. Not this nonsense of buying a product that's /close/ to what you want, but you're left with this nagging doubt whether or not you made the right choice. You'll probably never see that since manufacturers would then have to compete purely on quality standards, and they'd lose the "I bought the wrong phone" repurchases :^S

 

[Midwayman]

Well, having two drives can be a little bit of a hassle. Google is right that having a single unified memory space is the right way to do it. The real problem is that companies either don't make large capacities, or rape you on the upgrade. Removable batteries... for the 1% use case where I really need one, the external packs are fine. A 10-20k Mah pack is better for those days than an extra battery is.

 

[poofyhairguy]

or rape you on the upgrade.

Like Google did on the Nexus 9.

 

[blankslate]

I like as many replaceable/expandable parts as I can get, and resent having to get rid of anything because one stupid portion of the total went bad.

I did mention that at the moment with current battery tech I do like having the option to replace a drained battery. If batteries had a usable lifespan of 10-20 years before losing significant capacity and could be charged to about 70% capacity in less than 5 minutes then I still would prefer a user replaceable battery when comparing two phone options that were alike in pretty much every way except for that feature.

However, if that new battery technology was available I'd be a lot more willing to give up on the user replaceable battery for a phone that offered other compelling features over one with the replaceable battery


I should probably should have said if that potential battery tech makes it to the market then in most cases replaceable batteries in smart phones will be a non-issue except for a people who absolutely will not compromise on a removable battery and in cases of a defective battery shipped with the phone.

I have been looking in on Project Ara. That is an interesting project. It would, imo serve a fairly limited market that would probably be comprised of the sort of people who build and often upgrade their own PCs.

I wonder how long the life cycle of connections for the modules that can be changed out on the phone would be. It would suck if that life-cycle on those were too short or if the designers weren't forward looking enough. As an example perhaps that cpu upgrade would be hampered by the connection speed of the module interfaces on your phone and you had to get a new base phone module to take full advantage of it.



....

 

[blankslate]

Like Google did on the Nexus 9.

Or the base model of the new iPhone only having 16 gigs of storage then jumping to 64 and 128 gb of storage....

Too much penny pinching imo. I really doubt that a 32gb base model would have been too expensive to implement but I guess the 16gb base model might have been a sly method of getting more customers to opt for a 64gb one.


...

 

[Zodiark1593]

MicroSD is a must have for my anime habits. No home internet (and a 5GB mobile internet limit is truly peanuts in this use scenario), so the work wifi is put to work, hence a need for a ton of storage.

I must go, my phone says it's hungry again.

 

[Bateluer]

Shrug, I can see the appeal of an SD slot, and on a tablet, I demand one. On a phone though, so long as 32GB+ models are offered, I think its fine.

My last three phones have all had non-removable batteries and I've never had major issues with any of them shorting me on battery life; the One m7 was shortest and still easily made it a good 20hrs with above average use for me. Z3 lasts 2 to 3 days easily.

 

[BoberFett]

Regarding mSD, during the previous generation the S4 had it, the HTC One (M7) did not, and neither did the LG G2. The next year, the S5 had, the M8 had it, and the G3 had it. So if anything the popular flagships increased in mSD support.

Yeah, I kinda want to upgrade my G2 to the G3. Between the specs and the mSD slot, it's a very attractive upgrade.

 

[Azmat]

i like the battery removable, if you are going away you can have a few spare.... saves charging.