Any benefit of non-removable battery technology in personal gadgets?

[idleprocess]

Why would they want you using anything other than original parts?

Of course they want you to use original parts sold under their label - they typically make usury margins of 400% or more on them. When I was working for a small manufacturer, we typically charged 4-6x our cost on parts. The only reason that the parts business wasn't a big profit center for us was because we were small with no scale to build efficiency.

One of the problems with custom li-ion/-poly cells and battery packs is the fact that they are highly proprietary. Even if they use semi-standard cells, the packaging, contact locations, and mechanical/aesthetic requirements of any housing are highly variable. In order for a 3rd party to replicate such batteries, they must exert no small amount of effort to duplicate what the OEM has done at appreciable expense via R&D effort and low-quantity custom parts. Since a 3rd-party replacement must be cheaper than OEM (or outperform it), a common means of cutting production costs is to use inferior components such as cheaper cells or other safety-critical components.

The proprietary issue is aggravated by numerous manufacturers using patented serial I/O communication between the device and the battery pack. The communication between device and battery is patented solely so the OEM can extract rent from the marketplace. 3rd-party manufacturers that do not license the patent (at significant cost) risk their products simply not working or the host device might misbehave - ie refuse to charge the battery, discharge it at an accelerated pace, not use the full capacity, etc.

Industry could easily standardize on a handful of battery sizes - ie 18650 packs in standard sizes for laptops (or RC-style minimalist li-poly packs), flat prismatic li-ion cells for cell phones, etc - if it chose, but it seems they believe making fat unit profits on low volumes is a more attractive proposition for their annual financial statements.



Anyway, back on topic.

A common argument for integrated non-replaceable batteries is that it forces the manufacturer to use quality components because they need to meet the warranty period. While this can be true for some manufacturers sitting at the upper end of the market, it's hardly a universal rule - especially as one comes down from companies headquartered in Cupertino (witness cheap li-ion/-poly powered anything on amazon or fleabay). 3rd-party replacements for removable cells can certainly suffer from quality problems as I've mentioned above, however there are often good choices available from 3rd-party makes with brand reputations to defend.

Another is that it improves the structural integrity of the product. There is some truth to this, although actual execution in the market is highly varied and opinion on the subject often comes down to aesthetics rather than performance (witness tech news sites ascribing miraculous build quality to things that "don't flex", without any useful examination of what that has to do with utility or durability). Part of the problem with removable batteries is designers' common insistence on more packaging than is necessary and integrating them into the exterior of the product - this used to be common with cell phones and it still the rule with laptops. Environmental resistance is certainly improved with fewer seals and mating surfaces, but the average consumer product simply isn't designed for much more than a splash to say nothing of immersion.

 

[RickyPaul]

I can't say anything about it but i must say that there is no any difference between normal removable battery and non removable.batteries. I have seen many non removable batters who damaged soon.

 

[RetroTechie]

Tries to ensures that users don't buy cheap unsafe replacement batteries.

That's the official blurb (no offense Norm ).

keeps you buying new products every time the battery fails

And that's the real reason. Yeah a burning iPhone might reflect badly on the brand, but if user replaced the battery with a cheap knock-off, it's user's fault when things catch fire. And no reason OEM can't sell quality replacement batteries @ a decent price.

 

[Bullzeyebill]

i'll take the high road here and refer to the thread topic. I do not want gadgets that have no way to replace a battery. It's just the flashaholic in me. LOL.

Bill

 

[mcnair55]

I have the best of both worlds off my son for xmas.He bought me a rechargeable torch where as all i do is plug the charger into the torch but if needed can unscrew the back and take out the enclosed 18650 battery.

 

[curby]

tl;dr: The benefits are cost and packaging.

Disclaimer: However, not all product types benefit equally from these improvements, and not all benefit enough to outweigh the disadvantages.

Wall of text: In the case of laptops, you see a packaging improvement: you can pack individual rectangular cells in various nooks and crannies. Replaceable battery packs would be considerably bigger than those raw cells, and would be nearly impossible to fit into those little areas.

As has been mentioned, the addition of more components, electrical connection, and more points of failure would necessarily increase the price of building devices with user-interchangeable parts.

Lastly, if your interchangeable battery pack is built of cells encased in plastic, and this in turn sits in another fully enclosed battery bay, that's four layers of material around the battery. By contrast, a layer cake of case+battery is much thinner, allowing for simultaneously larger battery capacity and thinner devices. If you think the resulting larger battery capacity powers the device long enough for most users, you improve user experience for those users by not requiring them to buy and lug around replacement batteries.

In the case of flashlights, these benefits are marginal to begin with. There is little packaging benefit as bare cells are generally used in flashlight, and they already have the shape of the final device: there's little capacity improvement or weight/size reduction to be gained from sealing off he battery at the factory.

The cost savings are likely also negligible, as the electrical and mechanical connections that a user would use to access the battery are probably similar to the ones you would use at the factory when assembling the light.

These meager benefits pale further based on the expected run times of lights and the needs of users. A city user might only ever need one battery worth of use: they can carry the light and no spares at all, and not be burdened by the cost and weight of either a larger integrated battery pack or spares. A more demanding user might appreciate the benefits of a larger integrated pack, but they might prefer a smaller light along with a larger set of backup batteries.

 

[Unicorn]

They can be made smaller and better seald from the elements while being smaller. No battery door, less bulk of the battery pack itself. And if it's something made to be water proof there is only less point of ingress, without having to have a larger seal and locking mechanism. The battery dor on the Galaxy S4 Active really isn't all that great for instance. It's easy enough to not get it tight enough. However, I'd rather be able to replace the battery myself, either to get a larger capacity one, even if oversized, or to replace an older one because I decided to keep my phone longer than a year or two.

 

[idleprocess]

I gambled on an integrated battery with my new phone. We'll see how it goes. Positively sips juice relative to all of my previous smartphones, so perhaps it will last for a few years without obvious loss of runtime until the phone's eventual obsolescence leads to yet another replacement.

 

[Spiffytexan]

I have a huge zero lemon battery on my Galaxy s3! 4-8 DAYS OF RUNTIME!

Integrated are silly imo

 

[ScaryFatKidGT]

Fit a slightly larger battery and cost? and language deleted everyone off... I just wish everything took 18650's so I could put 3400mah ones in everything lol

I love being able to swap batterys on my BB Q10.

 

[theilluminati]

Thank you for your insights so far!

Here is the deal: I need a new (small, portable) laptop. Current and liked models are sold with a more or less non-removable battery (less removable: MacBook Air; more removable: everything else; think of a Chromebook).

I use the laptop 99% plugged in at a home/office setting, and in the 1% cases when I am on the road I can still plug it it.

So I thought I might want to remove the not-so-removable battery and simply charge it to 50% every 6 months and keep it in storage (laptop gets lighter as a portable device as well; when reselling later I can resell it with a newish battery).

Question: do you recommend the above practice; anyone did it? then every 6 months will I still need to insert the battery to the laptop to charge or can I charge outside it without special gear?

Main question: how to preserve battery life in the MacBook Air, especially, can you, or are you supposed to remove its battery? (It is quite expensive to just kill it by charging - discharging all the time for no reason)

See this thread - and linked article - for reference as well: [Lifehacker article] Simple/cheap way to cut off charging at 80% of battery?

Bottom line: so, you ain't supposed to charge your batteries over 80%, and discharge fully; non-removable batteries in portable devices like smartphones and tablets might be fine but I find them in laptops overkill.

 

[curby]

Haven't read the entire thread since my last post here; just responding to the post above. Apple's battery management tech is quite good. Just cycle the battery at least once a week and you'll be fine. The thing to NOT do is leave it plugged in all the time without discharging it at all. So if you're on the road, drain the battery even if there's a plug available. If you aren't on the road that week, let the battery drain one day anyway.

In my honest opinion, if you buy a laptop with the plan of micromanaging the battery and the goal of increased resale value, it's a fool's errand that you'll soon abandon anyway because it's like manual data backups (you'll do it for a week and then forget).

Enjoy your MacBook, and don't sweat the battery too much.

 

[Norm]

Enjoy your MacBook, and don't sweat the battery too much.

I'm of the same opinion when it comes to my iPhone, I have always put my phone on charge at about ten PM And it sits on charge until eight AM every morning. I've treated every phone I've ever owned with a lithium battery this way and have never experienced any sort of battery problem.

Norm