I'm pretty sure the biggest problem the phone vendors are trying to solve is you being able to recover from dropping your phone in the toilet. Most people cannot afford a $1200 loss like that, so getting rid of all water ingress points is the priority. That means the case is superglued together and there are as few I/O ports as possible. (I am surprised phones still have a speaker and microphone for making phone calls with; who does that?)
While unlikely to be true for readers of HN, for many people, their phone is the most expensive thing they own. So it has to be protected against accidents, and that's what the sealed design is for. Sure, it's probably good for planned obsolescence or whatever, but that's a secondary concern.
Another controversial aspect is that phones can't be repaired or sold for parts. This is another "loss protection" feature. Nobody steals mobile phones anymore because they are completely useless on the black market. The phone can't be used without the consent of the original owner, and the parts from that phone can't be put in other broken phones. The incentive to steal an easily-concealable $1200 brick of metal and semiconductors is nearly zero. I think that's amazing.
>So it has to be protected against accidents, and that's what the sealed design is for. Sure, it's probably good for planned obsolescence or whatever, but that's a secondary concern.
Sorry, but this reasoning that sealing a phone shut is first for water protection is just bs. No mate, it's 100% first and foremost for planned obsolescence justified by other fluff.
You know why? Go to your nearest store and pick up a 20-40 $ Casio watch that's 30m-200m water resistant, and check out the mighty innovations that make this happen while allowing you to operate its buttons under water and replace the battery and repair it: tiny rubber gaskets around the steel pushers and between the plastic body and the steel back plate screwed down with 4 screws. That's it.
Surely the likes of Apple, who has more money than God and a mastery on cutting edge silicon innovation, can copy this unfathomable innovation from the 20$ Casio F-91W, and engineer a similar gasket solution to mount the back panel on a phone with screws and allow for easily replacement of the battery while staying water resistant.
Heck, Samsung already makes a phone with a replaceable battery (like phones had in the old days) just by popping the cover with your fingers, that's also water resistant, also by using a gasket.
