I recently changed the battery of my Switch 1, if for most of the process it was easy, and I really struggled on two points. 1) the plastic part into which the screws are screwed broke, and it is tough to remove them. 2) ungluing the battery with isopropyl alcohol without breaking anything was very long for me. I recently changed the USB port of my Fairphone 4 and it was just unscrewing and screwing. So for me it is a great change from Nintendo.

> Also, as the device is Japanese, it uses JIS screws rather than Philips (in addition to triwing), which could surprise some.

My understanding is that Europeans also generally tend to not use Phillips screws, but Pozidriv instead.

There are also screws more commonly available than JIS but not as comically bad as Phillips. Hopefully they use those

>it uses JIS screws rather than Philips (in addition to triwing)

I don't think this is an issue for anyone who has had to disassemble a japanese device before, and the bits are widely available online. Countless youtube videos have discussed that JIS vs Philips in the consumer space are largely compatible outside of american aircraft construction.

Phillips Heads: The design is often criticized for its tendency to cam out at lower torque levels than other "cross head" designs. There has long been a popular belief that this was a deliberate feature of the design, to assemble aluminium aircraft without overtightening the fasteners.[15]: 85 [16] There is no good evidence for this suggestion, and the property is not mentioned in the original patents.[17]

iPhone batteries are actually relatively easy to access and replace. The only annoying thing that Apple (and most other gadgets) insist on is adhesive strip mounting of the battery. Just use screws please.

Torx is also common and also way way better than philips. Really we as a society need to phase out philips screws yesterday.

Disagree. The market will not decide on that, at least for the nintendo product. Your or your kid want the switch and the pokemon and mario and others game, you're buying the switch, you don't switch to something else because the something else allows battery switch.

That's Nintendo's entire business model and the reason why they've been thriving since for ever in gaming and even the bad times where actually positive cash flow wise. They're not losing a single sale because the battery cannot be replaced, unless that sale was far from guaranteed to begin win.

As mentioned elsewhere, it's also important to remember that the batteries were fully serviceable - available for purchase, nicely compartmentized and with easy connectors. The products were definitely not designed to die with their batteries. They just weren't compliant with the new rules - this is quite different than a certain fruit company that have historically made battery replacements difficult for even service technicians to complete without consequences like constant user prompts.

I imagine the various products had their specific own conflicts with the rules, like requiring too much disassembly (the Pro controller in particular has to be disassembled from the front first), or the Switch 2 holding the battery with double-sided tape. Not to mention that you might not realize that the screw are JIS spec, stripping them with the Philips screwdriver you found in your drawer. Also triwing.

This doesn't really take into account the real history around user replaceable batteries. It's been happening for years and when there are no alternatives to choose from its not a "vote with your wallet" situation. For example at some point MacBooks just stopped shipping with replaceable batteries and its disingenuous to expect someone to then switch to Dell, Lenovo, or something else. Those platforms can't run MacOS so the choice was made for the users. If you depend on MacOS and the software that runs on it, then your choice was clear--buy a new MacBook with a glued battery.

How would you ever measure market motivation in such a small market that has max 2-4 viable alternatives?

The market mechanism breaks down in such circumstances.

Consumers do not decide anything, they will buy whatever is in the store.

I mean, XBOX has been doing replaceable batteries in joysticks since forever.

I have both a PS5 and an XBOX Series X. Whenever I am playing if I get out of battery on the XBOX, I just change them. In the PS5 is not possible.

I don't get what the advantage is.

It's not about the console itself, but the accessories, anything that makes you buy more controllers means more money for them. And batteries aren't even the worst offender here.

Controllers have been using USB and an almost identical layout since the Xbox1 days 25 years ago, yet most game controller remain incompatible with each other, even within the same company. PS3 won't work on PS4 and PS4 won't work on PS5. Ironically, PS4 and PS5 controller will work on PS3, since that was the first and last console that supported plain old USB HID. Meanwhile Xbox360 had a lock-out chip to prevent third party controller and the Xbox360 controller don't work on XboxOne/Series either. XboxOne and XboxSeries at least are compatible. Meanwhile on PC pretty much everything works.

And then you have the whole stick drift problem, that has been solved since Dreamcast and PS3 SIXAXIS with Hall effect joysticks, but even decades later we still have controllers going in the bin due for easily avoidable reasons.

Rubber coating is another very common way to add an expiry date to devices that wouldn't have one otherwise.

If we wanted to get serious with the whole "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle", there are a lot more low hanging fruit than just the batteries.

That's true for Sony, but Nintendo doesn't sell the Switch at a loss.

Batteries are chemical devices and have a finite lifespan. There's enough confounding variables involved that some people get real superstitious about it.

Through a combination of internal and external factors, lithium batteries go through irreversible chemical changes on every charge cycle. Total charge capacity always trends down. Depending on a large number of variables, this might happen quickly or it might happen so slow you might never notice at all. It's all down to how and where the battery is used because temperature is mostly what drives the chemical reactions.

The other thing is that lithium batteries which have been deeply discharged below safe levels are permanently damaged. Just like charge cycle wear, this can be immediately apparent, or something that goes unnoticed forever, but the cell is damaged and will never be the same. Recharging such a battery can cause physical damage inside the cell.

Point is, batteries are chemical cells. They don't last forever because most chemical reactions are not perfectly reversible. Their specific application and environment strongly affects how long they last. But we do know conclusively that when lithium batteries are kept hot and charged and discharged at high current (such as in a handheld gaming device), they degrade faster. Cells which are kept at a stable temperature and low currents (such as headphones) degrade very slowly and can last a long time.

If you look past superstition, there's an entire industry that's been rigorously studying this problem for decades. There's a lot of literature and evidence.

Lithium cells do degrade. How fast they degrade depends on cell quality and environmental factors. It is, unequivocally, a question of when a battery will fail. It might well be a decade or two, but it will fail eventually.

Battery failure is a "when" because batteries have a limited number of charge-discharge cycles. Modern lithium-ion batteries have a life expectancy in the range of 300-600 cycles. So if you've never had such a failure, it probably just means you're not a heavy user of your devices.

I try to keep my cell phones as long as I feasibly can. Every single one I've used for more than 3 years has had its battery fail (as expected for a device that sees such heavy cycling). My current phone is on its 3rd replacement battery.

My PSP, maybe five years ago, had a swollen battery. A friend a couple days ago was complaining that his PS4 controller's battery held no charge at all.

The Switch 1 is almost 10 years old. Batteries don't have that much longevity.

And it was unnecessarily hard (actually dangerous due to fire risk) to replace it with a 3rd-party battery replacement due to excessive amounts of strong adhesive holding the battery in place.

All li-ion batteries degrade over time, they may not fail completely, but the capacity will be diminished for sure.

How many years do you use them?

It's not really a small percentage of users. All users will have trouble with the battery - eventually. My DS4s ran out of battery life in about three years of usage; I still have one of them that I use wired with my PC, but I absolutely cannot use it wireless. Likewise with my DS5s - one of them barely held a charge 2-3 years in. I'm sure with good battery management you can extend the lifespan to be closer to 5-6 years, like my M1 MBP from 2021 that still has a 9+h battery life (though down from 12 as I remember), but that only keeps them going for a little longer. It's just a fact of how Li-ion batteries work that they will lose their capacity eventually.

E: DS4 = DualShock 4, DS5 = DualSense; these are the standard PlayStation controllers for the PS4 and the PS5 respectively.

Props for using the Apple wording, I guess.