iFixit has already presented their tear-down review of the Droid 4 and given it a 4 out of 10 score in regards to ease of repair by the owner. This is pretty bad, but the one point that caught my attention is that Motorolla has made it difficult to remove the battery, even going so far as to put a sticker stating the battery is to be removed by Motorolla only.
This is an epic failure in technology terms. Let me try to explain this is a way that hopefully everyone can understand.
All electronic devices use electricity. Hopefully you comprehend this much, otherwise you're not really going to understand the rest.
Your toaster, microwave, refrigerator, dishwasher and other electrical appliances are able to continue operating even when there are fluctuations in electrical current. Fluctuations occur as a result of electrical surges. For example, let's say that somewhere in the electric power grid your home is attached to there is an equipment failure. The grid is established in such a way so as to offer redundancy - other sections on the grid will support it until repairs can be made to the failed component. However, as electricity is rerouted through the grid it can cause an electrical surge.
As I said, most electric appliances will be unaffected. However, your computer, laptop, and any other fine electronics can be affected, and potentially damaged. This is why it is recommended to plug your fine tech into a surge suppressor instead of directly into an electrical outlet at the wall. The suppressor is designed to prevent these surges from being passed directly to your delicate electronics equipment.
This holds true for cellular phones, but because they also act as receives of wireless transmissions they can begin behaving strangely even if they are not plugged into an electrical outlet. Smart phones are particularly susceptible to this issue.
The reboot was invented as a way to clear up any strange errors the system may have built up as a result of unforseen issues created by the environment. However, a reboot does not always clear all issues, and occasionally it is necessary to power the equipment off and unplug it to remove it from any sources of electricity that could be maintaining these errors in the system's memory. Upon plugging the system in question back into its source of power and starting it back up, it is completely free from these errors. This is called a "cold boot".
In a desktop computer, a printer, a fax machine, etc. it is pretty easy to remove the equipment from its source of power by unplugging it. However, laptops, cell phones and other battery powered devices can only be rebooted in this manner by removing ALL sources of electricity, including the battery.
Therefore, the Droid 4 and the iPhone are (in my opinion) failures of engineering design for the simple reason that they cannot be "cold booted" to clear memory related issues, at least not without a significant amount of work.
While I doubt this warning will prevent the vast majority people from continuing to fork over their hard earned cash in order to acquire the Droid 4 (or iPhones for that matter), I hope at least a few intelligent individuals will stumble across this post and make a better purchasing decision as a direct result. At the very least, it might inspire some individuals to communicate with their tech vendors and request this very important feature be restored to later models.
