There is an answer to that question in this video:

"Responding to your comments on the Framework investment" - One of LTT channels

Surprisingly NSFW, because they show a clip from Louis Rossman's Video talking about Linus' investment (its pretty funny, because it was Live)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7f3DTDsocA

Because they are BGA chips designed to be soldered on, and most people do not have the capacity to do that at home.

And why are they BGA chips these days? That's the real problem. Did mobile CPUs somehow advance past desktop ones while I wasn't looking?

Any kind of socket would require additional height. Probably at least 5mm. And you would certainly want to avoid that on mobile devices. For memory thats less of a problem, because you can plug it from the side, but CPUs have way more pins, so that won't work.

Yeah, the usual. Same reason used for everything soldered and non replaceable keyboards.

Probably to shave off the cost (and volume) of a socket.

Of course they have! Take a look at ARM. Or Apple's M1 chip. It's crazy what mobile CPUs can do nowadays.

And look at a Ryzen with an integrated GPU. Wow, it has pins and fits in a socket, it's a miracle!

power efficiency? saving weight?

Then you can certainly carry your desktop around with you? Since these things are negligible.

Yeah that's my plan for the future.

I don't think that mobile CPUs are available socketed

Well, not anymore.

What a fucking travesty.

And note how this laptop has removable DDR4 SODIMM sticks!

I couldn't believe it when people were arguing that's impossible because signal pathways or some shit (too many laptops have it soldered these days).

I think that argument has been applied to LPDDR4, which is what most laptops use now in pursuit of battery life

Oh yeah, I always forget they're different. Anyway, soldered = dead to me.

They also offer instructions to update that for when you need to upgrade that.

It's not bring your own but still upgradable, which is what I care about, especially with a smaller company obviously trying to keep everything ethics of repairability.

Even in desktops it feels like socket+chipset is becoming more and more tied to specific CPU so that you need to swap the motherboard and the cpu together.