Samsung reinvented its smartphone business with the Galaxy S6 series. The company left behind every “cheap” aspect of its flagship lineup, making drastic changes in the construction. The polycarbonate materials were replaced by high-quality glass and alloy. However, that came at a cost. With the new design language, Samsung dropped the support for microSD cards and removable batteries. This generated a huge backlash from customers that were used to these two features. One year later, the company brought back the MicroSD card support with the Galaxy S7 family. However, fans had to deal with the fact that removable batteries would never come back.
Removable batteries were pretty convenient since users were able to easily replace a battery at the end of its life with a new one. Moreover, users could easily buy two units and swap then always that necessary. Last but not least, we also saw several third-party companies producing batteries with extended capacity for several smartphones. Nowadays, we have more than capable batteries with 4,000mAh and even 5,000mAh capacity. This comes alongside fast-charging capabilities. As a result, the non-removable batteries are enough to provide a full day of normal use, and charging them doesn’t take much time as it did in the past. But there is a company that might be looking into giving back the convenience of replaceable batteries to its users. We’re talking about the South-Korean Giant – Samsung – one of the last companies to leave this trend behind.
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No, the next Galaxy flagship won’t come a with a removable battery
However, don’t hold your breath to see this in the next year’s Galaxy S21 flagship (S30, or whatever Samsung chooses to call their 2021 flagships). At first, we expect to see this feature returning only in low-end and mid-range phones. According to a recent leak, the Korean firm could be thinking of equipping a future low-end device with a removable battery. As you can see in the image above, the model I question is identified as SM-A013F. It is believed that the model will reach the market as Galaxy A01e.
As aforementioned, Samsung was one of the last companies to leave removable batteries behind. Even when the company made that change on its flagship lineup, we still saw several mid-range and low-end devices coming with replaceable batteries. However, this has changed in the past two years, when the company decided to make better smartphones for all audiences. Now, the company might want to explore this trend once again with a budget offering.
Upon further inspection, it was discovered that the SM_A013F code is a smartphone in development. It boasts a 3,000mAh battery and has 16/32GB of Storage. It may be just a test, to see how this trend will perform in 2020. Of course, the capacity of this battery is below what we have in modern mid-range phones, but it won’t be a problem if you will be able to get a second battery.
What do you think about removable batteries? Do you think this is something necessary for the sake of convenience or are bigger non-removable batteries + fast-charging the best way to keep moving the market?