PHONES WITH NONREMOVABLE BATTERIES

Why do mobile phones come with non-

removable batteries nowadays ?

I am afraid it is purely and solely a commercial strategy. 

Up to now,  technologies were rapidly changing,  and newest phone generations were vastly better than the previous one. Look behind: screen sizes,  DPIs, android /iOS  features,  touch screens,  electromagnetic radiation limits,  gprs-2g-3g-4g.  All of this  occurred in a decade or so, but it was the first decade of the smartphone Era. Remember when the 4.77MHz IBM pc came out? 

Up to now,  users had very good reasons to buy the next phone generation,  and invested  a significant amount of their earnings into it. 

Network standards were changing too,  and phones had to be changed to cope with new data protocols, taking significant steps forward in data bandwidth. 

However, network providers will hardly  keep increasing  speed as they did in the past,  since the available bandwidth for phone communications is being saturated,  and the demand for faster and faster connections slows down too.

So you are not compelled in buying a new phone because of new networks arriving soon. Where smartphones could improve? Your existing phone is good enough for 99% of the tasks. 

Better DPIs?  Your eyes don't see it. Faster CPU? No need. Larger or smaller screen? All options are available already. Newer software? Just upgrade. 

So,  manufacturers need a legal way to avoid people using the same phone over a long  time. In particular, the  smartphone should be thrown away in few years to avoid that the manufacturers market shrinks dramatically. Their need is purely economical: phone manufactures are  kept away from the recurrent revenues of subscriptions that go to the network  providers. 

Admittedly, phone manufacturers have found a legal and technical way to limit the lifetime of a phone: a component with a limited lifetime that cannot be replaced.  In theory,  it can be replaced, but in practice it will cost you as much as a new phone and it will be a hassle to do it. Nobody wants to stay anymore without phone for days, so you have a good reason to swap it.    

The argument of reduced phone size and larger battery capacity when the battery is not removable  is simply a fake one: take the galaxy note 5. It has the same dimensions of the galaxy  note 4 and 10% LESS  battery capacity, with the same overall functional features.

We are simply blinded by marketing, and by the common interest of phone manufacturers that need to find a way to survive and keep selling more and more,  as publicly traded companies need. 

I own a galaxy note 4, and 3x replaceable batteries with their own charging box and a dual port USB charger : in 2 hours,  I recover the autonomy of a week,  and if a battery approaches its life end, as every battery does,  I replace it for about 15$. It was a marginal investment with respect to the phone purchase,  less than 10% of its price. 

My phone is always up and running. If I would run short of juice in the middle of a call (actually never happened to me since I can afford changing the battery approaching 20% charge,  that's actually a great way to keep a long Li-ion  battery lifetime  too) it will take less than a minute to replace the battery and keep going. With a minor investment,  I can use my GPS for long trips without being plugged in. I can watch movies without asking myself where is the next plug, or being ridiculously sitting in front of a power plug. 

As users,  we should stand with our demand,  and buy the equipment that fits our need. I am an intensive user of phones,  cannot afford downtime,  and I will buy phones from those manufacturers that offer me a replaceable battery solution. Convince me I am wrong.

ADDENDUM: some comments pointed out that batteries have significantly improved and they don't fail anymore. There is a significant misunderstanding.  Even apple itself declares that batteries have 80%of their capacity after 500 charging cycles, and it is an exponential decay.

http://www.apple.com/batteries/s...

This is an intrinsic behavior of Li-ion batteries, and the design performances are not even guaranteed! It depends on temperature and type of use. Not by chance,  companies like Apple prevent you to count your charging cycles without jailbreak,  they could allow you to do it but... Better not! 

So, you are now aware that  your telephone is designed to loose value from day one,  and if you charge every night after 2 years you will have lost one quarter of your autonomy. If you are happy with it, fine with me - but don't expect me to buy your used phone with a non removable battery!

Source:
https://www.quora.com/topic/Mobile-Phone-Batteries