back to article Samsung tones down sticky stuff in the Galaxy S21 series, simplifying repairs massively

Preliminary teardowns suggest the Samsung Galaxy S21 is easier to fix than its predecessors, sidestepping some of the more dubious design decisions that previously frustrated third-party repair shops. The most welcome change is that Samsung appears to have toned down its use of glue, historically a hallmark of the firm's …

  1. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    A revolutionary new idea

    The major issue with phones is replacing the battery - this is just a horrible thing to try and do when the phone is glued everywhere and made of thin glass. So why not a new approach to construction - make a small compartment on the rear that can be opened. then pull out the old battery, and pop in a new one? I think I will file a patent on this idea! Oh wait, was this done in the ancient past? Has someone pulled an old fossilized phone out of the recycle bin?

    When I was a kid cigarettes were the most profitable products, people would buy them and burn them, nowadays phones are mush more profitable, nice smooth cases so people buy them and drop them.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A revolutionary new idea

      I swear to God some shitty miserable work Samsung which was foisted upon me which has a sealed-in battery which dies in less than a day on the first day of using it has some coating all over it crafted from the purest unobtainium from the deepest Chinese mines where only children can reach which makes it actually levitate off the damn table and topple over the side. If they put half as much effort into the batteries as they did that coating then they could power your home for a week.

      1. Black Betty

        Re: A revolutionary new idea

        If a phone is killing the battery 'out of the box' then odds are there's an app or three on there tracking the shit out of you. Leave it in your desk drawer, or turn it off at the end of the day.

    2. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

      Re: A revolutionary new idea

      One argument for the "sealed-in" battery is that it makes it very hard to make a phone waterproof if the battery is removable, which is one of the selling-points on high-end phones. However, I'm sure this isn't insurmountable, for example, giving a battery compartment a separate waterproof seal. The problem arises though, that you are then relying on the user to not damage the seal when opening the battery compartment, and there is a trade-off between how good that seal can be, and how easy it is to open the compartment to replace the battery. I'm sure there's a sensible compromise somewhere with a removable back-plate that needs a specialist (or at least some effort) to open, but underneath having a battery which is easy to unclip and remove, rather than something glued in place underneath other components.

      1. TonyJ

        Re: A revolutionary new idea

        I am not sure how difficult that is to achieve but I suspect you're right and it's not technically that hard to do. I've got diving torches that can go down to 105m underwater and they have nothing more than a double o-ring sealing them.

        For a phone that only has to generally survive being dropped in shallow water for a short period of time...?

        1. Cuddles

          Re: A revolutionary new idea

          It comes down to size and weight. It's fairly easy to waterproof something like a torch by just sticking a few bits of rubber around the seals. But that's actually quite a large amount of rubber, and in addition requires a decent screw thread (or clamp) and supporting structure to put some force on it to make the seal. Even toning things down for lesser resistance, it's still a significant amount of extra material relative so something like a phone. If you look at waterproof cameras, just the regular point-and-click ones and not serious underwater ones, the hatches to access ports and batteries are chunky things about the same thickness as an entire phone.

          Even if you're a sensible person who isn't fussed about shaving an extra fraction of a mm off your phone, waterproof hatches for easy, repeated use are just not great for something you want to fit in your pocket. Maybe there is a clever solution waiting to be found somewhere, but the basic concept of needing something soft along with some way of applying force to it inherently requires more space and weight than just not doing it. Just sealing it and the factory and being done with it is always going to be more efficient from almost every point of view other than long term maintenance.

      2. Mike 137 Silver badge

        Re: A revolutionary new idea

        'One argument for the "sealed-in" battery is that it makes it very hard to make a phone waterproof if the battery is removable'

        I have a Sonim IP68 (1 metre, 30 minutes) rated phone, over 10 years old, with a removable battery. It's been out in the wilds, dropped in puddles and been hit by surf surges but it's never leaked. Uses a soft gasket on the battery compartment cover. The only problem is finding a replacement battery now.

        1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

          Re: A revolutionary new idea

          I suspect the real argument for not making easily replaceable batteries is planned obsolescence in order to drive sales of new phones. At over £1k a pop for today's flagships, and a battery life of somewhere between 18-24 months, that's a fair revenue stream that they won't want to be cutting off.

          1. DS999 Silver badge

            Re: A revolutionary new idea

            This is a stupid argument, people don't throw away their phone when the battery starts crapping out. Maybe some decide "guess that means its time to buy a new phone" but they will sell or trade in the old phone, so it isn't leading to more sales overall. If you kept using the same phone for a couple more years because you could swap its battery in five seconds, that would be one less used/refurbished phone on the market so new ones would still be sold.

            1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

              Re: A revolutionary new idea

              Wanna buy an old phone?

              No, the battery doesn't work, and the labour costs for a replacement cost more than the value of the phone.

              Yeah, it'll be a cheap eBay Chinese knock-off battery because the originals aren't available to buy.

              Hello?

              Oh, he's gone.

              My old HTC-10 was a great phone, but after a couple of years, the battery wouldn't hold charge for more than about 10 minutes, so it had to be permanently plugged into a power bank. I tried my best to find someone who could do a battery replacement. Of the various phone repair places I tried, only one would take the job on, and then they couldn't get the replacement battery. It would have cost me £50 to get it done if they could. HTC quoted something silly like £80-90 to send it off to their service centre. That's a significant portion of the price of a reconditioned one, and only about half the price of a new one at the time.

              Okay, so maybe HTC aren't a great example, because they aren't a major player in the phone market any more. Which is a shame, because over the years they have made some pretty good phones, and have been in the game almost as long as Apple, and longer than Samsung. You might get better luck with battery replacements for those brands, but it does sound like they try to make them as hard as possible, with lots of glue, so the odds are if you get it done at a cheap phone repair place, you'll end up with something else not working, like the GPS aerial being detached, or the phone's case being damaged because they're harder to open than Pinhead's puzzle box.

              1. DS999 Silver badge
                Thumb Down

                Re: A revolutionary new idea

                Well that's your fault for buying a phone that loses its value so fast that it is not worth the cost of a new battery after only 18-24 months. That's not the case for any iPhone, or for Samsung Galaxy S/Note.

                1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

                  Re: A revolutionary new idea

                  You've entirely missed the point I was making - Apple and Samsung (and other manufacturers) make it incredibly hard to replace the battery in a phone. If you were to try to do it yourself, without specialist tools, you would almost certainly damage the phone. An industry has grown up around replacing batteries (and broken screens) because of this, but if you go to the cheapest one on your local high-street you are taking an appreciable risk with whether your £1000 phone will come back completely broken.

                  They are relying on the fact that a good number of people are not willing to take the risk and will just upgrade to a newer model. Not least because a lot of people would be entirely lost without their phone for the time it takes to send it off to a workshop somewhere and replace the battery properly.

                  Sammy and Apple users have an economy of scale which means repairers will probably have the parts in stock, because they have the market penetration. They also have a (much) higher price point to match, so you can be all smug about owning an iPhone or Samsung phone if you like, but it is a trade-off. People replace the batteries in these phones (and there is a market to do so) simply because they are such a huge investment. I could buy a high-end gaming laptop for the amount you are outlaying on something you probably don't use for much more than making the odd phone call, reading web sites, and trawling FaceBook.

                  Yes, there's a resale market for old phones, although I'm curious to know how much of your £1k outlay you'll get back after 2 years on an iPhone, compared to buying a cheaper, but equally good phone for half the price, and accepting its obsolescence. It's a shame I can't replace the battery in my old HTC, but I'm not exactly cut up about it because it didn't cost me the price of a holiday.

                  1. DS999 Silver badge

                    Re: A revolutionary new idea

                    I've replaced the battery in a couple iPhones for friends, with a kit from iFixIt. It is quite easy to do for anyone other than the tech-phobic types who would be afraid to swap RAM in their PC.

          2. Mike 137 Silver badge

            Re: A revolutionary new idea

            "I suspect the real argument for not making easily replaceable batteries is planned obsolescence in order to drive sales of new phones

            Another very real argument is "ultra slim" design. Many phone batteries now dispense with the hard protective covering that a replaceable needs to be safely handled by the non-technical. They are commonly just enclosed in a soft plastic sleeve in order to keep their thickness down to a minimum. Add to that the extra thickness needed in a removable battery cover that won't snap the first time it's opened, and practicality comes to bear (assuming you really want to shave with your phone).

      3. onemark03

        very hard to make a phone waterproof with a removable battery

        Oh?

        Have there been any reports about how the Galaxy XCover 4s (which has a removable battery) has fared in this respect?

        I've got one so I'm interested.

        1. Gene Cash Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: very hard to make a phone waterproof with a removable battery

          > I've got one so I'm interested.

          Well, if you want to experiment, I'm sure it might be a slam dunk for commentard points!

          1. Dave 126 Silver badge

            Waterproofing nothing related to sealed-in batteries

            It's an oft repeated myth. There have been plenty of phones with swappable batteries *and* waterproofing in the past, from Samsung and Sony. Also note that the trend to seal in batteries started long waterproofing became mainstream.

            These days the waterproofing largely depends upon a factory-applied vapour-deposited hydrophic coating to the phone's innards.

            The reason batteries tend to be sealed in to phones is that a swappable battery (unlike a replaceable battery) needs protection from the elements - a hard casing, just like the swappable batteries that power digital cameras. A swappable battery needs a few mm of material to prevent it from being punctured by whatever else lives in your glovebox / handbag / toolbox / rucksack. This few mm of material, translated over the area of the battery, results in a phone containing a fair volume of inert plastic rather than actual battery.

            I don't think any phone vendor wants the bad press or publicity that might ensue if some idiot puts a damaged battery in their phone and caused a fire. Or leaves a naked battery on their dashboard in hot weather.

            Samsung still make a phone with swappable battery, waterproofing, SD card slot and headphone socket - if you want it, buy it. Otherwise, a lot of people can justify to themselves spending 5-10% of their phone's initial cost every few years on an official battery change, less if they go backstreet or DIY.

        2. Dave 126 Silver badge

          Re: very hard to make a phone waterproof with a removable battery

          @onemark03

          Don't worry about it. Your phone likely has a hydrophilic coating inside in addition to whatever gasket it has around the battery cover.

          What is true of every waterproof phone is also true of yours: waterproofing can save your phone from a clumsy moment, but don't tempt fate by 'testing' it!

          1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

            Re: very hard to make a phone waterproof with a removable battery

            Hydrophobic coatings are good, but hydrophobic just means water-repelling. If you accidentally drop your phone in something, it's unlikely to be pure water. Depending on what it is, that coating will have varying degrees of success in protecting the phone's innards.

            If it's in a (non-muddy) puddle, or a flowing fresh mountain stream, you're probably okay, once the moisture has been driven out with a solvent.

            If it's a toilet or urinal, then you've got problems with all sorts of corrosive things, like ammonia from urine, and cleaning products like bleach and urinal cakes. Depending on how clean the establishment is, you might be okay.

            If it's a swimming pool, you have water treatments like chlorine oxide - if it's a community sports centre or such like, probably quite a lot (and you can smell it). That sort of thing is likely to be quite corrosive inside the phone, especially as the water evaporates.

            If it's the sea, you're probably screwed. All sorts of electrolytes there will both promote corrosion by facilitating oxidation through electron transport, and form conductive bridges between any components that aren't completely electrically insulated, so even once it has completely dried out, it will probably never work again.

      4. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Re: A revolutionary new idea

        My S5 was "waterproof", well, water resistant, but good enough for practical purposes such as navigation on a bike and it had a removable battery.

        I think the biggest argument for non-removable batteries is that it is not a problem for most people. If it were, you could expect the market to say no. Lithium Ion batteries last much longer than NiCd or NiMH and most people are probably happy with the battery lasting from dawn to dusk most of the time. For heavy use, a powerpack is more flexible and packs a bigger punch. That said: I'm all for more modularity and repairability.

      5. fishman

        Re: A revolutionary new idea

        I have a Samsung Galaxy Active Tab 2 that is waterproof (up to 5 feet up to 30 minutes) and it has an easily replaceable battery (that has to be installed when you open the package). However a replaceable battery would make a phone slightly thicker - something that isn't an issue for a ruggedized tablet.

  2. JWLong

    Self Drying phone

    This is better than the self Drying feature of the "Flame On" model S7 ( I do believe ).

    I do still wonder why people pay $1000 for a phone and then sit on it.

  3. marcellothearcane
    Flame

    > which demonstrates the Galaxy S21's backplate effortlessly detaching following a modest application of heat.

    So long as it doesn't then pop straight off when the battery/processor gets a bit toasty...

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