This is awesome! For only $450 you can get a machine that can automatically swap battery packs placed on bulky $120 phone cases.
You don’t need to plug a cable in your phone anymore, your over engineered machine can swap battery packs for you
I never imagined that I would live this long to see the future
IKR.
Why did we start building batteries into phones?
Because we kept buying thinner and lighter phones, and gluing the battery in makes thinner and lighter phones with better battery life possible. As a convenient side effect glue creates a nice watertight seal that can make devices more water resistant.
Hrm maybe.
I mean a wristwatch can be 200m water resistant and still be user servicable. A simple rubber gasket, some silicone grease and some screws.
I imagine it’s a hell of a lot cheaper/simpler/more reliable in manufacturing to use the adhesive over screws, gaskets, and grease. It reduces both the BOM and the number of processes required to ship a unit, and probably fails less often, which means fewer RMAs. Plus it just plain takes up less space, which leaves more room for the battery.
I don’t like it, my favorite phone I’ve ever had was a Galaxy Nexus with a zerolemon battery that was bigger than the phone itself, but I can see why gluing everything together would be an attractive solution for the engineers who design these things.
So they can sell you a new phone instead of a replacement battery.