I remember, and I’m gen z. And some higher end laptops had two battery slots so you can hot swap the batteries without turning it off.
Those were the days. Everyone talks about how smartphones nowadays get people addicted to instant gratification and convenience, but IMO the ability to swap out the battery when it died was a level of instant convenience we had decades ago that modern devices are severely lacking. Having to tether your phone to a battery bank while on the go is nowhere near as good as just popping the back cover and replacing the battery.
More than that I remember when you could MOD your phone
You had some money burning a hole in your pocket and/or were good at tinkering? You could change the casing of your phone, add gaudy flashing LEDs, etc
Real nerds like me would wire LEDs into circuits on the phone so that when it rang they triggered. Combine that with some of the circuits from the “baby’s first circuits” book and then you have a ring of LEDs around the screen that chase each other like the knight rider car when it rings. You can see them because OF COURSE you swapped the case with translucent plastic like a 1998 N64 or gameboy color. The resale value is now $8
Some designer asshole was like “b-b-b-b-but that’s not good design!!! My training says so! Myspace.com, livejournal, and geocities are a travesty! Soft edges and muted colors everywhere! All logos have to be a stupid flat piece of shit! Webpages should take much longer to load even though computers are literally hundreds of thousands of times faster! Now everything is BLAND and it SUCKS. I hate the future