LG G6 ditches removable battery for water-resistant body

From CNET: LG is looking to play it safe with its next flagship phone.

The company's upcoming G6 phone, which will be unveiled next month at the Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, will have a sealed battery like the iPhone and Galaxy S phones, according to a person familiar with the company's plans. LG opted to skip the removable battery to make the phone water resistant. This follows confirmation that it will also lose the modular gimmick of the G5.

The decision to ditch the removable battery -- a longstanding feature on its flagship phones and one of the elements that made its devices unique -- underscores how every phone maker is slowly moving to the same place in terms of design. Last year, LG went out on a limb with a design that let you swap out the bottom piece of the G5, an innovative move that turned out to be a commercial failure. This year, it's falling in line with the look and feel of other high-end phones.

There's a lot at stake for LG, which has fallen out of the top five players, with about 3.9 percent of the world's market share over the first nine months of 2016, according to IDC. The company on Wednesday posted an operating loss of 258 billion Korean won, or roughly $220 million, partly due to weak sales of the G5 and marketing expenses for its V20 phone.

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