I bought my wife an S7 last year only to find you have to rewire the phone if you want to replace the battery.  Plus that generation can use a mini-sd card so doubly sucks.

I've needed to replace my S3 for years just never got around to it.   I've been swapping batteries twice a day for the last 4 years or so.  But I'd like to get another one off of Swappa that is going to be the same Android system but just newer.  Do any of the recent Galaxies have removable batteries?

Thanks

I went to a lg v20... Last flagship phone on the market with a removable battery...

Replaceable batteries went the way of the Dodo around the S5 time period.

huh?

Oh ok.  It's smarter on the manufacturer's part...engineered obsolescence.

Use your words, it's the same price.

On the S7 you heat up the back cover with your hair drier and pop the back off - a few Phillips screws - battery has a connection like everything else.



$15 - OEM battery - Newegg

SD cards can wear out too.

And they need to squeeze even more shit into a given area. Every mm counts

J series
Note 4

That's what I did too. I had a Note 2, it fially died, and I replace it with a Note 5. I had the Note 5 for less than a year and was so pissed off with it, not having a replaceable battery that I retired it. it was ridiculous having to carry around a spare external battery that was four times the size and weight of the phone to keep going when I was away from the power source. I replaced it with the LG V20. Now I carry a small  spare battery in my and I back up to 100% instantly, just like I used to be able to do with my Galaxy Note 2.

The S5 was the last Galaxy phone that had a removable battery. It was also the last Samsung phone I've owned. If I'm going to put up with a non removable battery and non removable storage I'm not putting up with Samsung's bloatware and UI.

The S5 had an easy to replace battery AND it was WATERPROOF.

I took my sons in to get the screen repaired and the repairman said it's also the last one that was worth repairing. They won't even repair the Note 5s because the boards heat up so much that the repairs can't be guaranteed and of course we all know about the sevens. He said if it was him he would just find an S5 in good condition on eBay if that one died. Or buy a refurbished one. But I've been pretty happy with the v20 as an alternative.

Same here. Don't know what I'll do when I need to replace it....maybe someone will smarten up and start producing another flagship level phone with a removable battery.

Looks really easy, like everything with smartphones.

Usually the S7 owners buy those cases with the built in battery. It's fatter but is a solution.

The tollish marketing campaigns that company could do would be epic.

"Oh you have the new  $1500 Samsung and it takes you 30 minutes to go from 0 to 50%. My phone can go from 0 to 100% in less then 15 seconds."

My S7 has been rock solid. The battery is replaceable if you really need to. You can still toss it in the pool, swap the SD card, and it takes a standard mini-USB charging cable. Pretty simple by today's standards.

 That's a GOOD thing.

But an SD card is a bad thing, I'm hearing.

That's what I have now, its been one of the best phones I have owned...

Yeah, wtf is that about?

I loved my S5, but bought an S8 Active last November...…..love it.
It's not perfect, but I'll take it over my S5 any day.

... fucking engineered obsolescence

SD cards are bad because it means Apple wouldn't be able to charge an extra $150 to double your storage when you can get a 256GB SD card a lot cheaper.

Samsung galaxy J 7 has removable battery and SD slot.
J7

It's like a s7 but a little smaller, and a little newer, with slightly lesser guts.

I've been buying S5s on eBay. I'm on my 3rd one. They're around $100. Just port my info over. No contract. I've got a mophie case for it, and I like it.

Welcome to this decade...

Some folks here really need to get a Jitter Bug Phone and stop having issues with everything. Or just stick to a landline?

The best part is that after a year the battery will go from 100% to 50% in 30 min.

The Galaxy Luna and similar still have replaceable batteries.

Same here.

I use Swappa - It's amazing that there are still S5's in mint condition floating around on the used market.

There's a huge gap on pricing right now between the used market and samsung trade-in price (I Really want a note 9).

NEver buying a new phone again, only gonna get used off swappa. Prices are insane.

Many of the prepaid Galaxy phones have removable batteries.

Don't the older ones lack security?

You realize some  Chinese 10 year old kid installed a battery when they assembled the phone.  That means you can un-assemble it and replace the battery.  You tube will show you how.  I replaced my wife's iphone battery when I replaced the screen.  The galaxy phones have a sticky gasket that holds it together, which isn't impossible to get into.  I opened up a galaxy tab to reset the battery connection.

Assembling a phone from scratch before it's GLUED together is vastly different than trying to take the GLUED pieces apart without breaking shit. Plus if you don't seal it right afterwards you loose your IP87 waterproofing.

There goes the resale value of 1 year old $1250 phone.

Posting from mine right now.

If you don't have anything on your phone that needs to be secure, does that matter?

The NSA has been discouraging companies from using easily removable batteries, so you can't evade tracking. And with no SD card, they force your data onto the cloud where it's more easily mined.

Prove I'm wrong.

Then why are disposable phones & Flip phones still made?

Why can you call from a tablet/wifi connection?

DUH!!!! Because you cant turn up the heat all at once or drop the frog into already boiling water, the frog will jump out! You gotta bring him up to temp slowly, a little at a time.

Its called water proofing.

My S7 spent 30 minutes at the bottom of a 10' pool and didn't even skip a beat.

J-series. Cheap, functional, mine has (so far) held up to a month of working in a wet and dusty environment (limestone mill).

You can buy a brand new s5 on eBay for about $125. Got one for the wife a few months back. But we are not "phone people".  We need a field replaceable battery for extended backpacking trips, so the s5 is it for us.

I just bought a second NOS S5 off ebay($135) because I like mine so much.

When you get a new phone, keep your battery at 40-80% charge.

That will keep it from being hammered too badly; as completely discharging (5% level) and completely charging the battery (95+% level) hammers the battery more than charging at the 40-80% range.

I know, it's frustrating that removable batteries are not a thing now. Makes keeping a phone going almost impossible.

Another vote for the V20 here. Best phone I've ever owned.

Here's the issue - Flagship phones.

Think about it, do you drive a Tesla, Ferrari, or Rolls Royce? Wear a Rolex Submariner or Omega? Carry only a Chris Reeve's Sebenza custom? Order all your tactical gear from TAD? 5.11 pants at $85 each?

Sure some will post up "go be poor somewhere else."

The reality is there are a lot of alternative choices and you don't have to pick the most expensive, advance tech platform to do - ? Text your family about pizza on Friday nite? Pick up Jimmy at soccer?

Nope, that flagship phone is an icon of status and wealth. Period. Sure it does all that cool stuff, usually "better," which is an incremental performance improvement over the commodity grade phones for 5X the price - like, watches, cars, even 1911's. A $3000 custom .45 ACP is still just a bullet launcher once you pull the trigger, and owner usage still the determiner of results. IE do you shoot it at the range at least every month?

Most don't.

Sending an snapchat of your coworker's foibles burning lunch in the microwave in the employee lounge doesn't require a icon phone. At that point it's jewelry. There's a decor/fashion guy on the east coast now wearing a non running Rolex to make that point. It's jewelry.

We all get into this locker room measuring contest if we are male, it's starts about age 13, we stumble thru life trying to be The Alpha and we indebt ourselves to buy merchandise to improve our public image with stuff. It's just stuff in the long run. What we DO with the stuff is what counts.

Go look at phones which have removable batteries - I agree with it being a requirement - and then choose. We should all be prioritizing our expenses to maximize our value as a tool, and let the imagemaking fall where it may. Sure I wanted a tactical tough notebook with certain features - budget said Lenovo T420. Turns out it IS pretty tough, SSD, removable battery, keyboard spill guard, etc. I'm not trying to save civilization with it, just post on line, I sure didn't see a chromebook or Acer doing as well. Much less that disaster called Win 8.

Fit your choices to the jobs you need. Me, I don't carry much of a phone at all. No internal compass, won't do GPS, cost me $11 and isn't very big. We used it last nite. Pizza.

Results were good, man. Results count.

Don't forget. They are always listening.

for what its worth, my s7 edge went scuba diving with me (unintentionally) to 68' max for about an hour.

We've had this one for a year. Samsung Galaxy Prime Wife uses hers for work and is on it just about constantly and the battery will last all day. I can go 3+ days without a charge.
Not the latest and greatest, what ever the latest and greatest is, but runs circles around the S3 it replaced.
You can get a little more phone for a lot more money IMHO. At least you could be a cool kid though. LOL