Maybe next time they'll offer replaceable batteries, which would have made this situation much less painful and is generally a plus for consumers anyway...
For me, it's no replaceable batteries. Anything with an internal battery has a finite span of usefulness. There's no real excuse for making batteries inaccessible, other than forcing people to rebuy.
A great example is Tile, little tracking tags for your keys. I bought one, and in a year the battery died, just in time to get an email from the company offering a 10% discount on a new one.
Not even a little consideration for this has made manufacturers ditch removable batteries. The primary driver has been increased capacity, followed closely by the ability to make them much thinner and develop water resistant handsets. All other reasons are so far below these they aren't even worth mentioning.
Your experience is either imaginary or ridiculously atypical. Its literally not a real thing. Devices with replaceable batteries don't normally fall apart unless you are in the habit of dropping them all the time. This isn't a design consideration or a justification.
Phones are designed without user replaceable batteries because it makes it slightly cheaper to manufacture, generates revenue from users who require replacement, and makes it less desirable to keep an existing device vs buying a new one.
Honestly, there’s another explanation that I think makes a lot more sense even though it’s less beautiful : the product team wasn’t sure they wanted to ship a battery with the device in the first place. Or at least they wanted to keep the option of shipping the device without a battery.
Removing the battery makes the device cheaper (you can also remove the power brick if any) and removes a supplier from the chain. Keeping this options makes a lot of sense from a purely economical standpoint.
I don't think the intended customers care at all about replaceable batteries as an issue against purchase. And even as an expense it's insignificant anyway (given the lifetime until replacement)...
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