In at least one area, namely cars, durability relative to actual usage has improved a lot over the past 50 years or so. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity “According to the New York Times, in the 1960s and 1970s, the typical car reached its end of life around 100,000 miles (160,000 km), but due to manufacturing improvements in the 2000s, such as tighter tolerances and better anti-corrosion coatings, the typical car lasts closer to 200,000 miles (320,000 km).”
The area where I’m most aware of claims of reduced durability is home appliances e.g. https://ryanfinlay.medium.com/they-used-to-last-50-years-c3383ff28a8e but I think there are a bunch of factors here that make it a little tricky given (a) low cost: there’s a much wider selection of home appliances, and the low end that are quite cheap still last several years, which is obviously less than the high end and the older great devices, but probably good enough and a great comparison to costs. Low-end refrigerators for instance cost only a bit more than phones, which is remarkable considering the size differences! (b) energy use as a major component of cost over the long term: for appliances like refrigerators, the electricity use becomes a major cost component if the appliance lasts too long, so that having a long-lasting refrigerator that doesn’t benefit from energy efficiency improvements may ultimately cost more.
In the realm of electronics, quality improvements in hardware even over the last 5-10 years have been very impressive; for instance, batteries have gotten better, design/form factors have gotten better. However, repairability in particular has gotten worse but this seems tied to the trend toward miniaturization and portability. If people anyway plan to replace their devices every few years, then portability probably wins over repairability.
(1/2) I doubt it’s entirely fair to blame Apple for this; they may not have even been the first manufacturer to use a non-removable battery pack. They were certainly the first biggest company to make that switch, but plenty of others did the same, and in some cases way too quickly for it to have been a case of them “copying” Apple. They simply came to the same conclusion: Removable batteries, like physical keyboards, hurt sales more than they helped. So, out they went.
Because, the frustration of it is that device manufacturers genuinely have really “good” reasons why batteries are no longer removable. Actually, at least two good reasons: Water-resistance and miniaturization.
Today’s phones are surprisingly watertight, to the point where many can survive a brief dunk with no immediate ill effects. (Though I personally suspect that water infiltration is a trigger for subsequent battery swelling.) My Galaxy Note8 once survived a complete submersion lasting 2-3 seconds. Don’t try that with your Nokia 3310!
FeRD—Sep 21, 2023
(2/2) All battery-powered devices are also continually getting smaller and smaller. (Or, failing that, they’re packing more and more stuff into roughly the same amount of space.) And the fact is, removable batteries require MUCH more space than non-removable.
If a battery is removable, it has to have an outer, protective case of its own due to the dangerous chemicals inside. The phone would then also have to have mechanisms to align and secure the battery, a latch and release mechanism, and electrical contacts between what are now (effectively) two completely separate devices. That all takes up space.
A removable battery makes a device significantly larger (in particular, thicker), or else it has half the capacity of the non-removable design. Either way, 999 out of 1000 consumers will choose the smaller, thinner, lighter fixed-battery device with twice the runtime between charges, over a bigger, thicker, doesn’t-last-as-long alternative with a removable battery.
FeRD—Sep 21, 2023
Actually, now that I think about it there’s a third reason that’s even more damning:
Removable batteries were never about extending device lifetime.
Manufacturers will tell you, and they can provide reams of consumer data to back it up: The percentage of consumers who keep a device long enough to wear out the first battery is TINY. Laughably tiny. The overwhelming majority of mobile-device owners want to replace their device with a newer, faster one every 2 years or less — long before the battery is even starting to degrade. (After all, until very recently the technology was advancing so quickly, a 2-year-old phone was nigh-unusable, given its limitations compared to newer models.)
Removable batteries were always intended for power-users who needed more runtime than they could get from a single battery. They’d own two+, and swap them out as needed (charging externally). In the end, rapid charging, larger capacities, and improved power-management software provided a better solution to that problem.
A few thoughts:
In at least one area, namely cars, durability relative to actual usage has improved a lot over the past 50 years or so. See for instance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity “According to the New York Times, in the 1960s and 1970s, the typical car reached its end of life around 100,000 miles (160,000 km), but due to manufacturing improvements in the 2000s, such as tighter tolerances and better anti-corrosion coatings, the typical car lasts closer to 200,000 miles (320,000 km).”
The area where I’m most aware of claims of reduced durability is home appliances e.g. https://ryanfinlay.medium.com/they-used-to-last-50-years-c3383ff28a8e but I think there are a bunch of factors here that make it a little tricky given (a) low cost: there’s a much wider selection of home appliances, and the low end that are quite cheap still last several years, which is obviously less than the high end and the older great devices, but probably good enough and a great comparison to costs. Low-end refrigerators for instance cost only a bit more than phones, which is remarkable considering the size differences! (b) energy use as a major component of cost over the long term: for appliances like refrigerators, the electricity use becomes a major cost component if the appliance lasts too long, so that having a long-lasting refrigerator that doesn’t benefit from energy efficiency improvements may ultimately cost more.
In the realm of electronics, quality improvements in hardware even over the last 5-10 years have been very impressive; for instance, batteries have gotten better, design/form factors have gotten better. However, repairability in particular has gotten worse but this seems tied to the trend toward miniaturization and portability. If people anyway plan to replace their devices every few years, then portability probably wins over repairability.
Regarding the topic of batteries getting better while also being harder to remove/replace, I found these interesting comments by FeRD (https://www.ifixit.com/Wiki/What_to_do_with_a_swollen_battery?permalink=comment-911590#comment-911590 + the next two comments) that I quote in full below: