You must be joking if you think its just a BOM adjustment and a small cost... way to oversimplify the actual implementation

There was a beautiful period where phones had a headphone jack and a USB-C connector and a replaceable battery and IP67 water resistance.

Which phone was that?

Galaxy S5 did it just fine

Only if you kept the flap on the headphone jack…

https://www.gottabemobile.com/samsung-galaxy-s5-water-test-d....

According to the article, the flap was to protect the USB port. The other internals were protected by an internal gasket on the removable back cover.

Only if you made absolutely sure that the battery was secured tightly - from the same article. Out of the 200M+ iPhones that Apple sells every year, how many people do you think wouldn’t put the battery and the cover on perfectly?

The same applies to gluing the rear cover back on, except instead of simply ensuring you've applied enough pressure and the gasket is in good condition, you now need to check that you've soldered the battery properly, positioned the glue correctly, heated the glue enough that it melts but doesn't fry your phone, and applied enough pressure evenly.

Well you don’t have to do anything. Spend $69 - $89 and let an Apple certified repair company to replace it and if they do something wrong, it’s covered under warranty.

Ah, there's nothing better than being granted the opportunity to burn money.

You bought an iphone and worried about spending $30 extra dollars?

All I'm saying is that you used to be able to get smartphones that were like this, and they weren't any more expensive than any other smartphones. (EDIT: I was wrong, they were about $25 more expensive.)

So this is demonstrably possible. The only reason I can think of that it's not done anymore is cost savings.

And shaving 0.3mm of the thickness!

Modern phones are packed to the brim with features. My phone has a goddamn LIDAR scanner! I really don’t think it is feasible anymore, and I think most people would prefer an extra 2-300 mAh over swappable battery. Of course replacing it once by a dedicated shop each 3 years should be possible.

Yeah, more like $200 on price and added trait of overheating.

Kyocera has been doing it for years.

Only actual people who must have an IP68 battery replaceable phones are that kind of people. Others just go for an iPhone and just pays for shop replacements few years later.

It looks awesome.

Looks like what a 15 year old at a 90s LAN party would have their desktop themed to.

Galaxy S5 did it