iPhone batteries are already pretty easy to replace. I’ve done it dozens of times for several different models. It requires two screws, a bit of heat and a suction cup, then a couple more screws and some pull tabs. Usually takes under 30 minutes to do.
I don’t know how you could make it much easier while keeping the waterproofing. Rossman is a highly opinionated guy and I appreciate his advocacy, but he also makes no attempt to be fair to the product designers and is very biased.
I really don't understand the issue with this, at all. Plastic saves on costs, and is more durable than glass. I genuinely couldn't care less as long as the screen itself is glass (which the S5 screen was glass).
There is good plastic and bad plastic. Samsung has always made shitty phones but the S5 was made of some seriously thin, chrome-covered toy-grade junk. The S6 and beyond stepped up the hardware quality a lot. Phone didn’t creak in your hand etc
What's wrong with plastic other than marketing people telling you it isn't 'premium?' If you want to talk about shitty build quality, how about modern phones that are completely encased in fragile glass and must be kept in a case? I rocked my plastic/aluminum Note 4 for 5 years without a case. I still own it, in fact, 8 years later and it still works great because it's made out of durable materials just like the S5 that I owned before it was.
Using a logical fallacy doesn't make your opinion any more valid and it doesn't take an expert to know that glass is more fragile than the plastic and aluminum materials used previously.
Fairphone 4 isn't IP68 though, it's IP54. I personally don't care much about waterproof vs water resistent, but let's not pretend these two ratings are identical.
The main thing for me is the quality of the pull tabs. It might partly be a skill issue but in my experience they break 3 out of 4 times, and then it transforms into a miserable experience. I’ve changed iPhone batteries maybe 6 or 7 times now and I’ve never managed to get better at it, even by being super careful.
They need to find a better system to stick those batteries, at this point I’m convinced pull tabs are terrible by choice.
I’ve had lots of luck removing them, but I’m usually very patient with the pull. Slow, relatively level pulling with the end wrapped around my tweezers twice always seems to work. I think I’ve only snapped one out of dozens, and a dropper of IPA dissolved the adhesive in a couple seconds, so it wasn’t that big an inconvenience in the end.