Want a smartphone that offers long battery life? Your best option today is usually to find a model with the biggest possible battery (and/or the most efficient hardware). But Chinese phone maker Gionee is taking a slightly different approach.
The company’s upcoming Gionee M5 smartphone doesn’t just have a big battery. It has two batteries.
Gionee isn’t telling us much about the phone’s other features yet, and it’s not even clear how much capacity each of those batteries has. But the company says the phone should be able to last for up to 4 days on a charge. And if you wan to go even longer between charges, you can just take a spare battery or two with you: the batteries are hot swappable.
That means you can take out one battery and replace it without even shutting off the phone, as long as the other battery is still installed.
Giaonee’s phones aren’t widely available outside of China. But if the dual battery concept proves popular in China, maybe other smartphone makers will borrow the idea. Or maybe they’ll go in the other direction and stop offering the option to replace your smartphone battery.
via GizmoChina and Weibo
non-removable batteries is the dumbest idea ever. It’s the manufacturers way of ensuring obsolescence and a captive market. Fortunately if you are handy with a screwdriver that restriction is easily bypassed.
True there are almost no (or no) phones where the users cannot somehow replace the battery, having it intended to be a user option is a good thing for many reasons. As an example, my wife once had a phone where its charging system died, but fortunately I had the same phone so I was able to charge batteries for her phone and just swap. That not only diagnosed the problem as being with the phone, but it also make life a lot easier while the replacement phone was in transit.
lumia 640 xl has removable battery, it’s not android though
“Giaonee’s phones aren’t widely available outside of China”. Not quite true. Blu has been re-badging Giaonee phones for years and selling them in the States.
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“We don’t need removable batteries or multiple batteries.”
Even the best batteries eventually wear out. Being able to change the battery on a cell phone helps to reduce the amount of tech waste. This benefits everyone (but the sellers of phones).
The ability to hot-swap batteries is the main reason to have two batteries. Makes lots of sense if you can’t get a charge wherever you are or you just need continuous-on operability.
Guess it would also reduce the impact of a bad battery, but such seem rare nowadays…
We don’t need removable batteries or multiple batteries. We need high capacity batteries that can last for days. When they finally come out with these batteries then electric cars can finally get a long range and our phones will last days on a charge. It also needs to be able to turbo charge and not depreciate
There are lots of reasons for removable batteries besides just running out of power. The battery being damaged by age or heat is a huge reason to want a removable battery, but there are other reasons. I have never and hopefully will never buy a phone without a removable battery.