Features

Comparison: Removable Vs In-built ‘Phone Battery’

July 12, 2016

Battery life is one of the most important things to consider when buying a new smartphone. How you use your smartphone greatly determines its battery life. Big, bright screens, 3G/4G, GPS, Wi-Fi, NFC, and Bluetooth modes enabled makes your battery run out fast and further added that you should look out for the battery material type and the power capacity usually rated in mAh.

The higher the mAh, the higher the phone’s power capacity.

Although Non-removable (In-built) batteries are not very common, they are of high value and fashion. These are batteries designed not to be taken out of the phone/tablet by the consumer. For example, all Huawei premium smartphones like MATE8, P9, GR5 & Gr3 and tablets come with inbuilt batteries.

Our reporter had a one-on-one with Samuel Cris Ayo, Devices Service Manager at Huawei Uganda who cited the advantages and disadvantages as below;

Advantages

Fewer parts that can break – It is very difficult to get inside the phone and tamper with delicate parts that could cause damage.
Less gaps – Literally less room for dust or dirt to access the device, and no chance for dirt to be transported in through changing a battery
Slimmer battery – Phone manufacturers can make their phone slimmer as the battery unit is designed and seal together.
Single frames or ‘unibody design’ are usually more solid than phones with battery ‘doors’ and often look far sleeker.

Disadvantages

Battery issues are terminal: This is the big disadvantage of sealed units, if your battery malfunctions or begins to fail, you’re stuck with it, as it cannot be (easily) replaced. In most cases you’ll need to replace the whole phone for a simple battery fault.
No Battery Boost: As you can’t remove the battery it’s impossible to swap it out for a spare or even upgrade to something more powerful.
No hard restart: if the phone freezes as you can’t whip the battery out, you’ll just have to wait for the battery to die or hope the manual restart works.
Water damage: Ok, this one is a little on both advantage and disadvantage because it’s difficult to prove, but in our experience, getting water in a non-removable sealed phone is terrible. Unlike a removable battery, where you can attempt to dry out the innards before the battery can short the phone, sealed units with non-removable batteries struggle to dry out before damage is done.

On the other hand, removable batteries are batteries that are designed to be taken out of the host device.

Advantages

Hard restart: The old adage “Have you tried turning it on and off again” is often the fix for many of the world’s tech problems. Although whipping your battery out at the first sign of trouble if not often the best idea (it can be damaging in some circumstances) this ‘hard restart’ method is proven to work when all else is frozen and the manual restart won’t work.
Easy to dry: If you do happen to get a little too much water on a phone, removable batteries have a slight advantage over their sealed counterparts as you can try and get said battery out before it has time to short. You can then dry the separate component and pray to the god of tech for compassion.
Replaceable: Unfortunately, batteries don’t last forever, and frankly modern batteries don’t last that long at all so buying a replace is a good fix for when your old power source is just not holding its charge.

Disadvantages

Untraceable: this might be an advantage for some, but for most people, if your phone is stolen and the battery is removed, it’s effectively untraceable (digitally).
Damage: removing a battery usually requires the phone to be literally cracked open, meaning the internal working of the phone have a higher chance of damage or contact with dust and dirt.
Size: Phones with removable batteries tend to have a slightly larger frame size as the battery is not sealed or manufactured into the closed case.

For every smartphone owner out there, he mentioned the following tips as ways to save power on your smartphone battery: