Flic Twist battery cover is terrible

seth_flic · 31 Oct 2023, 06:50

There is so much prior art for the design of easy-to-open but secure battery covers. How did they get the cover on the Twist so wrong? It is extremely difficult to remove the cover. It has such a tiny slot, not wide enough to be able to use a fingernail. And the slot is so narrow that even when you wedge a small flathead screwdriver into the slot, the angle that you need to release the cover is awkward and fussy and it feels like you're going to break the plastic. And no guidance in the instructions, either. Very disappointed. Use a wider and deeper slot, or a screw, or a release mechanism that works with everyday objects most everybody will have on hand.

seth_flic · 31 Oct 2023, 19:58

@amir I strongly disagree that the battery hatch comes off easily by simply pushing the tip of a screwdriver towards the center of the Twist, especially with the typical angle of a small flathead bit. There is a certain finesse to it; I have to "dig" out the hatch after releasing the catch. Maybe if you happen to have exactly the correct size implement, it would be easy. I have seen a lot of battery hatches over the last half century, and regardless of what design constraints you may have had with the Twist, there must be a better way to have done this.

seth_flic · 31 Oct 2023, 19:40

@amir I have no problem with your choice to not pre-install the batteries; that seems like a great decision based on the factors involved. But that is not the source of my criticism here. All it would take to address my gripe with the out-of-box experience would be better instructions on the packaging. Step 1 of the setup instructions should not be "Connect"; it should be "Install batteries". I appreciate that changing batteries is likely to be a rare occurence, but it is the very first experience customers have with your product, and it is a poor one.

amir · 31 Oct 2023, 13:20

@seth_flic thank you for your feedback we will definitely make sure to provide better instructions for how to open the battery hatch.

Using a tool such as a screwdriver, it simply needs to be put into the slot and the tip pushed in towards the center of the Twist and the battery hatch comes off.
See below video

Regarding why we have made the design as is, here are more details in case you are curious about our reasoning. During the design stage we explored having the batteries pre-installed in the product and adding a tab that could be pulled out that creates contact between the batteries and battery contacts. However there were two challenges, firstly we wanted to have no single-use plastics inside the packaging or product. paper based pull-tabs did not have sufficient strength and could break when pulled out. Secondly due to dimension constraints the entire Twist size would have needed to be slightly enlarged in order to have a small gap for the pull-tab to stick out. There were also safety concerns that were taken into account.

Installing/changing the batteries should be a rare occurrence due to long battery life so we decided that using a tool to open the battery hatch was the better option.

seth_flic · 31 Oct 2023, 07:12

The out-of-box battery experience is not great, either. The included batteries are not immediately visible in the packaging, so the "Batteries included" text with an arrow that appears to be pointing to the Twist itself together with set up instructions that omit any step about inserting the batteries had me thinking the Twist was broken until I found the batteries hidden in the packaging.