Apple has decided that people want to buy razorthin phones and there is just not way to fit a large battery in there.

I wish there were phones built like the old IBM thinkpads. Bulky, square, ugly but also indestructible and fully user servicable with replaceable batteries.

Not thin; light. Phone makers make phones lighter so that people can hold them up longer before their hands get tired. A battery is massy, however dense it is, whatever the shape. You can only add so much battery before your phone gets too heavy to comfortably hold. (Unlike, say, an external camera lens, which increases volume but not really mass.)

Thinness is just a side-effect of lightness, because the alternative—a “hollow” unevenly-dense phone—would be awkward and unbalanced in the hand. You make a phone lighter, keep the screen size the same, repack it to an even density to keep its center of gravity the same... oops, it’s thinner now.

>Not thin; light.

An interesting thought, but is it true? I cant really think of people complaining of arm fatigue from holding up a ~150-200g phone -- the effort of holding up your arm and hand alone are going to be substantially more than additional weight of the phone.

I also dont really see any evidence of phone manufacturers decreasing weight over the years, at least with a quick review of Apple's iPhones, which have definitely increased in weight over the past decade.

They don't complain, no. It's not a user-requested feature. But it's been observed (in at least one internal study I know of) that people just end up using their phones longer, the lighter they are.

And increasing the length of a phone use-session is important, because it "unlocks" experiences people wouldn't otherwise bother with, that might then increase their total satisfaction with the ecosystem, and so increase brand loyalty. For example, some people just don't want to read books on their phones... but hand them a lighter phone, and they suddenly change their minds. They don't realize that that's the difference; it just is. And this might be the first device that got them to read e-books—which means they now associate the positive feelings of reading books in situations they wouldn't have otherwise been reading, with your device.

> which have definitely increased in weight over the past decade

They do increase, but only to a point; far less than if it weren't an optimization problem between increasing battery mass to power the features promised, vs. decreasing total mass.

Also of note is the fact that as phones are made more durable, people use cases less, which decreases total in-hand weight. So switching various pieces from plastic to aluminum, or one type of glass to another, may be a win even if it increases the base mass of the phone, as long as it decreases the probability that the user will feel the need to buy a case.

iPhones haven’t increased monotonically. The iPhone 5 was significantly lighter than the 4s, which was by far my favorite feature of that upgrade. Then they started creeping up, which the exception of the 7 (which was slightly lighter than the 6s) and the SE (which is essentially the 5 form factor).

The iPhone X is significantly heavier than any previous (non-plus) iPhone, which is by far my biggest complaint about it.

iPhones have been gaining weight since 6.

>> Apple has decided that people want to buy razorthin phones

I wonder what percentage people who buy those razorthin phones end up adding a millimeter or more to their phones by adding tempered glass screen protectors and cases over them. IMO, that defeats the purpose of the thinness.

I once had a phone with a removable back, and a special case designed to hold a massive battery in place without the back plate. Sucker was almost like a brick in your hand, but I've got huge hands, and I LOVED the fact that my battery would last for nearly a week with intense usage(I read books, like, all the freaking time on my phone)

Actually, no. Due to the thinness, I can add a protector that adds just enough so the thickness feels right to me. A thicker phone would necessitate a thicker protector that would make it difficult remove the phone from my front left pocket where I always carry it.

One might make the argument that a thicker phone could be more durable and not require such a protector.

A thicker phone (presumably due to a larger battery) doesn't necessarily solve the problem of fragile front and back materials (glass).

Since I'm the most clumsy person of all time, I have to add these two things to any phone. It being pretty thin, it still fits my hand pretty good.

Not if you're factoring that in with the thinness. I've bought a thinner phone over a larger phone specifically because I know that the total size of the phone + case fits in my pocket better. Especially when using something like a Lifeproof/Otterbox/Tank case...

It doesn’t defeat the purpose of the thinness, most obviously because screen protectors and cases are optional.

Contrary to popular opinion Thinkpads are not durable as they seem. There are various conditions such as deep coma (when the laptop won't wake from a sleep) or random shutdowns unrelated to heat/any observable cause etc.

I thought my thinkpad x201 was like a tank, but then random shutdowns became more frequent. I disassambled the laptop 4-5 times, replaced thermal paste, checked connections, replaced all software (including BIOS), couldn't find a solution. Then I stumbled upon a 45 page thread at the lenovo support forum. Many people were claiming the existence of the exact problem, but the only solution was to "replace the motherboard".

At least, apple offers world-wide decent for their products. With used thinkpads, you're basically on your own, no matter how tech-savvy you are.

If I were to purchase another laptop for on-the-go usage I will think twice before opting out for a thinkpad for it's durability.

Thinkpads are marvelous machines, but in my experience not all that glitters is gold :).

*current thinkpads can also still do this.

I switched from a MBP to a ThinkPad because of Apple's decisions with product design; performance sacrificed for purely aesthetic reasons.

Sounds a bit like Fairphone (well, not the ugly part)

https://www.fairphone.com/en/

It's cool that they have two SIM slots and an SD slot. I wish more phones had that. But the removable battery doesn't seem to be particularly large.

Its not, and its a smartphone from 2015 with a SD800 with 2 GB RAM. There's a lot of pros and cons about it, but at least you can repair the components yourself. Just the other day I installed a new camera module, all on my own. I also replaced the battery. For a mere 20 EUR. (The camera module was front + back for 75 EUR.)

If the battery capcity could be increased to the point where I didn't need to worry about charging it every day (night), like an old feature phone, then I would see the point. Otherwise I'm agreeing with apple - let's make the hardware faster and the screen brighter instead and just make sure the battery lasts a whole day.

Having e.g. 50% more battery wouldn't do anything for me. It would save me that one day per year when I'm using a ton of GPS/video and actually run out of battery before I go to bed, but that's about it. I'd still have to remember to charge it every night.

> and just make sure the battery lasts a whole day.

But the problem is that the iPhones seems to last a day only when they are new-ish and there is no safety buffer down the road. If it is fine on release day it will not be fine after 2 years if there additional capacity build in.

Yes, that's a perfectly valid point - if they made it last 150% of a day on release they could ensure it lasts 100% of a day after two years without having to throttle the hardware.

I'm all for that - I do want all the power of the hardware and a full days charge, for the whole lifetime of the phone.

Unfortunately it's very much in the sellers interest to not do this. If they make it last 100% of a dayt on release they can instead make it cheaper/lighter/more powerful, AND if they throttle or make it behave worse some other way after 2 years, they also make it obsolete at just the right point in time.

They offer bigger batteries in the form of the Plus and now the X.

They’ve obviously determined that it’s not worth it on the regular iPhone. I guess their surveys and stuff show that their customers would rather have the thin phone, on the whole.

The X has worse battery life than the plus so i got the 8+.

Really? I know it had more than my 7. I guess I misremembered.

Sounds like a blackberry and we know how that turned out for them in the current market.

> there is just not way to fit a large battery in there

And if they do find a way, they'll just make the phone even thinner instead.

It's not about Apple not being able to do it. It's about their priorities. And in this case their priorities seem to coincide (as if by magic) with getting people to upgrade the phones faster.

It's especially silly when you consider that Apple, a design-focused company, is making phones thinner despite using very obvious camera bumps on their phones -- a clear sign that maybe their phones shouldn't be that thin.

Or a battery that can be replaced.

It's replacable, either DIY if you tinker for <5% of the cost of the phone, or under warranty for ~10% of the cost of the phone. It's typically done either 0 or 1 time over the lifespan of a phone. I can't really see how that's a big problem. I haven't owned an iPhone yet that hasn't done 2 screen replacements for every battery replacement - and changing battery when you are changing screen is even cheaper.

I wouldn't want to have a user replacable battery behind a hatch if it made the phone worse in any way (less water sealed, less sturdy etc).