i've never seen a phone that works without a battery installed, but i've never seen a laptop that doesn't... though i think they exist...
i think this helps laptops age better, after the battery stops working it can still run from an outlet
also the drive can usually be removed (i'm going to ignore those other laptops) so your data can be retrieved/wiped if the laptop dies
idk how to get data off or wipe a cellphone with a nonfunctional battery
@onfy Also, generally speaking (assuming no NVIDIA driver problems 
), you can run Linux on an old laptop with no problem (whether the software that you want to use demands newer hardware is another problem, though...)
Have a "smartphone" that's more than 5-10 years old? Good luck finding any system that supports it...
Planned obsolescence or whatever
(I don't really understand why OS support for smartphones is so much more specific to the device than for computers... For a computer, typically I don't need to check "is it compatible with Linux?", I just go and install Linux...)
@vaporeon_ @onfy it all comes down to drivers. Linux devs have done a ton of legwork to make it run on basically any computer. There's also no ACPI on phones, you can run Linux on a lot of them (see PostmarketOS) but you have to basically write a file that describes the hardware to the OS and the build toolchain
