I am really fed up with all the "nobody keeps a phone long enough to make battery replacements useful" arguments around here.
Out of the 10+ phones in our family over the last 5-10 years, one was water damage and one was failure of the internal flash memory. Every other phone was replaced because the battery died. Every single one.
Official replacement was no longer available and DIY was either impossible (lack of parts) or eventually ended up damaging the device beyond economical repairability.
Regular people that don't have thousands of dollars in disposable income (and nothing useful to spend it on) haven't cared about phone specs for years. Hell, I love tech and could buy a new phone every year and even I haven't cared about phone specs since the original Google Pixel.
If you brick your phone every year because that's just who you are, no judging.
If you want a new phone every year and can afford one, its your money. Just remember that you are fortunate enough to be able to do so. And someone will surely buy your used phone and likely (try to) replace the battery in it.
Overall, it's like claiming that nobody drives cars that are 10+ years old because they needed a new clutch. Or that a 50 year old house needs to be torn down because fixing the roof economically is clearly beyond our engineering prowess. Are there people that swap cars every 5 years? Absolutely. But that does not mean those cars go to a scrapyard.
I will not comment on the technical aspects of this proposal, since the actual outcome might very well need to be settled in the court still. But dismissing the general point of legislature which demands better longevity for devices that basically everybody needs to partake in modern society is rather shortsighted.
My phones have been destroyed not by ageing batteries but by bloating software. You need to update software for security reasons, but those updates also take up more space and run slower (because developers work only as hard as is necessary to make apps run acceptably on their phones, which are typically new models). Space bloat, more than time bloat, has been the biggest issue.
Open bootloaders and drivers (after a certain number of years at least?) would help with that. Make available enough to let open source developers help themselves. Even if Google stops supporting Android on my hardware, or Apple stops supporting iOS, there should at least be a stripped down Linux?
I'm not sure how useful even that would be though, because that surely won't be able to run the latest apps used by society.
Sigh. Maybe everything is just an arms race. Phones won't stop going obsolete until it is physically impossible to make faster phones.
Since space bloat has been a bigger problem than time bloat, I could maybe have gotten more life out of my phones if the OS had supported the installation of apps to the SD card. Maybe that could be a cheap partial fix.
I find that to be much more of a problem with Android phones than iOS. I had to scrap two Samsung Galaxy phones after less than three years of use because they became so slow as to be unusable.
I am currently using a five-year-old iPhone Xs, and it seems to be just as fast as ever. The only issue I have with the device is decreasing battery life. If the battery was replaceable, I could easily use it for another 2–3 years at least.
If you look at the charge cycles on a typical iphone battery, it is some where around 500-600. If you look at common usage, most people use the phone enough to have to charge it once a day.
That only gives you maybe 1.5 to 2 years of time before the battery is gone.
While we are on the topic on replacing things, it would be nice if we could change out the internal flash memory. I would keep my iphone for 5 to 7 years if I could change out both the battery and flash memory.
>most people use the phone enough to have to charge it once a day. That only gives you maybe 1.5 to 2 years of time before the battery is gone.
A cycle is equivalent to a full discharge/charge. Using the phone to x% battery is roughly equivalent to x% of a cycle (it’s not a perfectly 1:1 relationship, but close enough).
Most people do not use a phone to 0% battery every single day. That’s equivalent to ~8 hours of screentime on a modern phone.
The average person uses their phone for about 3 hours a day [0]. Assuming that the vast majority of people's usage is within an hour of the average, 2-4 hours of daily phone usage would translate to 25-50% of a cycle, or 1000-2000 days of a usable battery, assuming a 500 cycle battery lifespan. (In reality it would be somewhat less, since as the battery degrades over time those 2-4 hours of usage would constitute more than 25-50% of a cycle.)
This is... sort of correct. Yes, most people don't use their phone 8 hours a day.
But this is a pretty cursory reading of those stats. If you actually dig into them, the majority of countries being surveyed are using their phones for more than 4 hours a day. The average person in the US uses their phone for 3 hours and 30 minutes.
A couple of takeaways:
- heavy smartphone usage inversely correlates with the wealth of the nation being talked about (this kind of intuitively makes sense, because countries like the Philippines are probably more likely to have people using their phone as their primary computer). Being able to use your phone a small amount of time each day has a small component of privilege to it, it probably means you have access to other computers.
- Even in the US, these are averages. There are people in the US who use their phones as their primary computer. There are people who travel a lot, or for whatever reason, end up using their phone more, and their batteries are very much going to be the first part of their phone that fails. The average usage in the US being 3.5 hours does not mean that the vast majority of people's usage is within an hour of the usage.
- Like you yourself said: "in reality it would be somewhat less, since as the battery degrades over time those 2-4 hours of usage would constitute more than 25-50% of a cycle." If we assume that heavy smartphone users in the US are using their phone for at least 4-4.5 hours a day (a very easy assumption if not conservative, since the average is already 3 and half hours) you're still going to be in a position where after about 2 years you're no longer going to get a full 8 hours out of a charge. Once you get to a point where a phone can't last a full 8 hour day on a single charge, you might start thinking about buying a new phone even if that's not your typical usage, because the first couple of times you forget to plug in your phone you'll stop trusting it to hold a charge.
GP is definitely wrong about how heavily people use their smartphones, but I suspect you're underestimating how heavily smartphones do get used and how big of an issue battery degrading is. I'd love to find more solid stats basically just asking people why they upgrade, but my experience matches GP's (minus the exact numbers). Battery lifespan and the cost of battery replacement is a huge component in smartphone churn. People buy new smartphones because their batteries die.
They absolutely should include replaceable flash memory. Flash is both cheap, plentiful and a consumable, it wears out. It has the same qualities as battery replacement. Hell, why not combine them.
Most people would buy a new phone anyway, but these devices get obsoleted and turned into garbage, forcing people to both generate ewaste and buy things they don't really need.
Between eMMC and SD Express, there are at least two existing great options. I am not asking for doors, all this stuff can be internal by removing the back.
The issue when people discuss this, they get into weeds talking about how this or that mechanism isn't feasible, which is entirely orthogonal. You dictate the outcome, let engineers solve the problem.
I don't have any scientific data for this, but my anecdotal experience is that the actual damage comes from the way the phones are used, not necessarily the absolute charge count. Here me out...
- A phone that is used a lot in the car as GPS is often charged/discharged continuously, often for hours.
- Furthermore, this often happens in very hot or cold conditions which are bad for battery charging.
- A lot of people seem to live with the perpetual 5% of battery, or generally don't care about properly charging the device. This is also terrible for longevity.
- There are other reasons why you may want to constantly charge/discharge your phone (e.g. you are making Android apps, or it's the phone where people call your place of business, etc.).
So, just to make myself clear: I completely agree that on average, batteries should last for a long time. But in practice, people often have irregular activities which appear negligible on average ("it's just a few charge cycles"), but end up damaging the battery more than regular prolonged use. But again: I'd very much like more hard data on this :)
Churn on budget smartphones is even worse than on premium phones and battery life is even more likely to be an issue on those budget phones. It's good for the budget market as well if batteries are replaceable.
It would be great if people could buy an old secondhand iPhone and replace the batteries themselves for $30-40 bucks instead of buying a $60-70 garbage phone with who-knows-what spyware and out-of-date software every 1-2 years. That companies are able to put out this kind of garbage and people are buying them is (if anything) evidence that the secondhand/repair market on smartphones isn't nearly as strong as it should be.
This can't come soon enough. In my house we a drawer full of electronics, from tablets and game consoles to phones and laptops that have been made obsolete by their glued in batteries. It doesn't help that a lot of those devices also came with their own proprietary cable connector for charging so we can't even use most of them even with a dead battery as we don't have the chargers anymore.
Also, I really don't care about devices becoming thicker because that's a non-issue these days. They are too slim for their own good. My iPhone SE 2 bends in my pocket.
Agree, they have been getting away with this for way too long. I would love to see another law saying that if they do not support the hardware anymore they need to release, open source the drivers so that it can still be used.
You can control a long list of dslr from a computer. So for example you can use an old dslr as a webcam. Or you can have a rasperrypi triggering photos remotely or anything you want to program. I used my old D600 as webcam during corona. Worked like a charm.
My nikon has replaceable batteries and the connectors are standard. as far as I knew, dslrs and even new mirrorless cameras all have user replaceable batteries
This was not uncommon in the early smartphone days. I rember buying a battery with twice the capacity for my HTC Touch HD, it came with a larger back cover.
Then why don't you sell them on eBay? There are many people buying older, broken stuff but if you put it for 10 years to a drawer, it will become too old to be useful even for them...
Yes and I’m sure the obsolescence of the phones don’t have anything to do with the fact that Android manufacturers including Google have a piss poor track record of supporting older devices.
But of course the EU with it’s usual cluelessness won’t address that issue first
Huh? What usual cluelessness? They recently started discussing a proposal that will force all phone manufacturers to support devices for at least 5 years.
> GDPR .. All they did was made the web experience worse with cookie pop up banners.
That's bullshit. I have been in the room when tech teams have had a good hard look at their databases, and set expiry polices on old tracking data. Why? GDPR compliance.
The knock-on effects in data leaks that never happened is large.
Characterising GDPR as merely bureaucracy and cookie banners is shallow and wrong.
I don't think that you know anything about the subject. Please do not repeat this nonsensical claim.
You see one effect, and confidently claim "all they did was effect one". So you have sufficient breadth of domain expertise to know that nothing else happened as consequence? Or just a very myopic self-centred world-view?
The thing is, if you're not a EU citizen or resident then the benefits are not for you, that's how legal jurisdiction works. So then, do you argue from meanness: it doesn't benefit me, so we should get rid if and the way that it benefit's others, or from inclusion: Why can't my legal jurisdiction have something similar?
You also have to ask yourself, if all you know is some reaction involving sites putting up cookie banners, from way outside; why you would consider yourself well informed enough to reach a conclusion that "that's all they did", and share it.
It's the websites themselves that make the experience worse. Nobody forced them to have cookie pop up banners. GDPR simply forced them to be upfront about what they're doing and get permission - and they chose to be in your face and dark-pattern about it.
The "web experience" was infinitely better before ads and tracking infested everything.
> When was this mythical time the web wasn’t ad ridden?
Seems like ages ago. Webrings and link directories. Every page was hand-made by a passionate human, for other passionate humans, about subjects they cared about.
Now it's 99.99% ads, tracking, engagement, spam, link farms, generated garbage, outrage, and now AI nonsense.
There's so little to bookmark (i.e. care about) that browsers dropped support for bookmarks. Just think about that. No place worth remembering nor revisiting anymore.
I can't say exactly when I first noticed how pervasive and intrusive web advertising was getting but it was at least 10 years after I started using the web regularly (~1994).
I have some issues with GDPR implementation but this is just straight-up disconnected from reality; GDPR is relatively popular in Europe. If anything, most stats that I've seen suggest that Europeans generally want privacy laws to go further.
>All they did was made the web experience worse with cookie pop up banners.
That was not the GDPR. The GDPR does not talk about cookies anywhere.
It's the ePrivacy Directive (from 2002, amended in 2009) that deals with cookies (or any type of storage on an end user's device). It's the ePD that says if you set cookies and it's not strictly necessary to provide the service then you must get consent.
The only change the GDPR made in this area was tightening up the definition of "consent" to actually mean consent and not merely lack of disapproval.
It seems like you're trying to apply an analogy, but I can't make out what it is. What, specifically, will happen if the EU mandates device support that is like cookie pop up banners? (As an aside, GDPR did a lot of privacy-related things that have nothing to do with cookies.)
Copying my comment from the other post from AppleInsider:
"No it doesn't. This is appleinsider, and obviously they think everything is about Apple.
But if you read the proposal, it never mentions smartphones. It is fairly clear that this aims to target other types of electronics such as hand tools.
I'm pretty sure EU is satisfied with at cost smartphone battery replacement policy they introduced while back. The whole point is to not scrap electronics just because the battery is old, not that average Joe should be able to do it himself for the cost of making phones more expensive to produce or lose IP ratings."
* not that average Joe should be able to do it himself *
From the article: "This new law states, specifically, that users should be able to replace a battery in their phone without any special expertise or tools."
Wouldn't that mean that Average Joe should be able to do it? I would assume that I'd be able to buy a battery and replace it at home instead of shipping it off to some factory and being without a phone - or not actually have to take it to the nearest shop if I don't want to be without a phone for a while.
And from what I can find about Apple's battery replacement: They'll only do it IF you have apple care AND your battery has 80% capacity and your phone doesn't have issues such as a cracked screen. [1] This certainly doesn't sound like an easily replaceable battery.
I recently got the battery in my 6-year-old iPhone replaced by Apple for, as I recall, €55. Just brought it in and they did it, no applecare. Made the phone as good as new, I hope to use it until OS security updates stop, which should be at least another couple years.
And the "no cracked screens" provision is because access to the battery on most iPhones is from the top side, by lifting the display with a suction cup. If the glass is already cracked, lifting it is likely to cause further damage, and it may not go back in afterwards.
iPhones are the best value phone on the market today bar-none, people just tend to be short sighted with their understanding of "expensive".
You can buy a €400 used iPhone and get updates for longer than most brand new Android phones. And by the time that used iPhone stops getting updates, you'll still be able to sell it for some non-zero value, while that budget phone will be worthless and destined to be e-waste.
My phone was $150 brand new and still works acceptably over 3.5 years later. Software updates weekly thanks to LineageOS (firmware updates are another story).
Yeah, I'm probably one of the most uniquely qualified people to plug LineageOS as an engineer who's launched multiple AOSP based hardware products.
Comparing LineageOS to actual first party support when the SoC manufacturer has long forgotten your device exists isn't really realistic: you're getting updates in name only. The blobs that run the most important things are frozen in time.
-
Not to mention, if you're willing to put up with that level of limitation, you can get a brand new iPhone SE for $150 too. It'll be locked to a carrier, but that's a lot less limiting than "literally never going to have a meaningful update again"
I'm not going to argue that "use LineageOS" is viable advice for most users (it's not), but what do you mean "The blobs that run the most important things are frozen in time"? I suppose they're "the most important things" in that they're required for a usable device, but I wouldn't call them the most important things when it comes to updates.
If I'm running an outdated Android version, my threat model basically can't include any internet or cell connectivity, since an outdated media parser means a bad web page or media message and my phone is the attacker's playground. But an outdated baseband firmware means what, I have to watch out for ne'er-do-wells dodging the FCC with high powered SDRs in my neighborhood who know what model of phone I'm using? In a better world, Lineage could feasibly ship updates for every component, but as far as I can see, one of these is a lot more important than the other, and it's the one LineageOS does take care of.
The SoC has a lot more binary blobs than a baseband firmware. It's one thing if the alternative was living like a hermit, but no, the alternative is not supporting an ecosystem predicated on SoC vendors abandoning your advice because it's in their best interest for you to buy a new one.
Android for personal use is a complete non-starter for me today, it's a terrible ecosystem driven on waste with fundamental flaws that will never get fixed because of a misalignment of interests.
Again, not defending the Android ecosystem, but what is the threat model here? Poking through those, they all seem only locally exploitable by malicious apps, which yeah not great, and under just the right circumstances maybe chainable from a sandbox, but hardly the most important thing to be concerned about for most users compared to "your device still has stagefright vulns".
At the point where you're writing off local arbitrary reads from unprivileged apps as "hardly the most important thing", I'm wondering what threat model you're pushing since to most people in security that's a pretty plain threat.
Even if you arbitrarily decide only RCEs matter, there's again a lot of binary blobs in a modern device and more importantly they do a lot more than you seem to think.
I'm not sure why Stagefright is your synecdoche for RCE when just a few months ago we got a set of CVEs that made it look like child's play. It turns out your device being exploited via baseband doesn't take SDRs, your baseband today is involved in MMS too:
Arbitrary local reads from unprivileged apps is a "pretty plain threat" in terms of recent developments in security as a result of improvements to what we can secure. In a typical desktop OS, it's just the norm, but for mobile OSs we've moved the goal posts because we can. If we were talking about deploying a new OS or shipping new devices, then yes, it would be absolutely unacceptable, but we're talking about keeping smartphones past their support alive, so I think it's fair to say at that point we expect the user to only install a small set of critical applications on the device. If what the user wants is a mobile game console to mess around with while also functioning as secure storage for sensitive documents, then yes, the user might need to rethink what's acceptable risk.
>they do a lot more than you seem to think.
I do mobile security research, I am well aware of what these devices do. The reason I cite stagefright vulnerabilities as an example is because stagefright is a library that has continued to have vulnerabilities well past the original set you're probably thinking I'm referring to, and vulnerabilities that we have seen exploited in practice. Are there any known worms exploiting the project zero bug you've linked? Because at least from what I've come across, an updated LineageOS install only running apps from F-Droid would not be vulnerable to any non-targeted attack in the wild I've heard of. (Not a rhetorical question, to be clear, it's entirely possible I missed something, and I would love to know more if my understanding it out of date.)
> The regulation provides that by 2027 portable batteries incorporated into appliances should be removable and replaceable by the end-user
And from the proposal[2]
> This Regulation should apply to all categories of batteries placed on the market or put into service within the Union, regardless of whether they were produced in the Union or imported. It should apply regardless of whether a battery is incorporated into appliances, light means of transport or other vehicles or otherwise added to products or whether a battery is placed on the market or put into service within the Union on its own.
What makes you think smartphone batteries are excluded?
Because this legislation did not come out of nowhere. There were investigations about batteries at home before they fianlized this, and none of it involved smartphones. For example, there was a lot of talk about Dewalt, B&D, Ryobi and others each having a different batteries and a different type of chargers.
Smartphone battery issue was addressed separately and the whole spin on user replacable smartphone battery seems to come from forums like this and not EU. In fact, this proposal specifically allows water proof devices to be handled by a professional (an "independent" professional to be exact, which is very much inline with the previous proposal on smartphone battery replacement).
I also don't see anything supporting this interpretation in the actual regulation - quite to the contrary. It repeatedly refers to all batteries, and says nothing of any class of devices that are exempt.
> new regulatory framework for batteries will consider rules on recycled content and
measures to improve the collection and recycling rates of all batteries
> It is necessary to create a harmonised regulatory framework for
dealing with the entire life cycle of batteries that are placed on the market in the Union.
> It is also necessary to update Union law on the management of waste batteries and to take
measures to protect the environment and human health by preventing or reducing the
adverse impacts of the generation and management of waste,
"Products placed on the market [...] in applications that the end-user is not intended to split up or open [...] should be subject to requirements applicable to batteries."
This sounds to me like as long as they have a recycling program for cellphones, the entire phone can be considered the "battery" and no user replaceablilty is necessary.
>Products placed on the market as battery packs, which are batteries or groups of cells that
are connected or encapsulated within an outer casing to form a complete unit ready for use
by end-users or in applications that the end-user is not intended to split up or open and
which conform to the definition of batteries, or battery cells that conform to the definition
of batteries, should be subject to requirements applicable to batteries.
I don't think phones can be considered being placed on the market as battery packs
You'd have to go further than that. The actual law says:
>specifically designed to operate primarily in an environment that is
regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion, and that are
intended to be washable or rinseable
An iPhone is specifically designed to cope with primarily outdoor use. It rains outdoors. Outdoors is "an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water".
Never mind phones, what about EVs or cars in general? Currently to replace a Tesla battery you need to lift the car, undo a 30 bolts, use another lift or do some lift juggling to drop the battery, etc. How on earth do you design an EV with the same battery capacity if the battery must be removable without tools or expertise? Hell, my petrol ford fiesta has a battery which fails this requirement (needs spanners to undo the connectors and the hold-down and needs the expertise of knowing which batteries are appropriate, how to safely disconnect it, how to remove it).
Assuming they are regular, not security, bolts, Teslas are in the clear. It's no specialty tools or expertise. Working on a car assumes you have the tools and expertise to put a car on a lift, rotate N standard bolts to remove them, and move heavy objects. And you can read the documentation to know how to do it.
It's specifically to prevent Tesla from saying "well, you need to have Tesla-bolt driver, the only way to remove our 30-bolts. And we only sell those to authorized Tesla-trained mechanics who took our course because if you mess up a secret process it won't work".
EV batteries are exempt, as are batteries which are "specifically designed to supply electric power for starting, lighting, or ignition and that can also be used for auxiliary or backup purposes in vehicles, other means of transport or machinery"
I believe Teslas have a lead acid battery specifically for the listed purposes. But I can't quite remember. Should watch some more Rich Rebuilds I guess.
I see no reason in principle that this is an intractable problem. A problem, sure, but one which is solvable given the right incentives, which is what this law is for.
I think phone batteries are included, but I don't think that there is an appetite for aggressive behaviour in that manner.
This is an ewaste policy, look at the objectives. Collection of waste, recovery of lithium, new batteries need to be made from recycled batteries.
Home replacement of batteries won't accomplish any of those goals. I would say that it would encourage more batteries to go in the bin. Apple and Samsung already provide fairly cheap services to replace those batteries and once removed the batteries can be recycled, this is going to impact other phone providers who don't offer anything, EV manufacturers who don't recycle or provide simple replacement programs, electric bikes that have batteries built into the frame so cant be replaced at all.
Compared to all that Apple is a fairly good citizen.
eWaste also includes all the stuff not including the battery. Making batteries replaceable increases the lifespan of all that other stuff.
Of course they may not be supported by software in the case of phones and tablets, but (a) that's a separate issue and (b) not all tech with non-replaceable batteries are phones and tablets. It's an increasingly common pattern in wireless headphones, powered toothbrushes, hair clippers, etc.
That was really my point, there are clauses but the main point of the entire thing appears to be to stop things having non-replaceable batteries.
Phones are a bit annoying, but they can have their batteries replaced. There are much lower hanging fruit, such as all the phones that can't have the batteries replaced at all, or the toothbrushes, etc.
But EU mandates that toothbrushes need to have replaceable batteries isn't click-bate enough compared to Apple conspiracies.
The cyber resilience act which is worked on in parallel would require software updates (not necessarily new features) for a "reasonable" amount of time (I recall about 5 years for phones).
Are you suggesting that Apple & Samsung might sell phones in Europe that are technically in violation of this law? Or are you just saying that it was unnecessary for them to be included, but acknowledging that they will design their devices to be compliant?
Man can you imagine if the EU got all the tool manufactuers standardise on battery type. They'd get one last hurrah with a battery shape then the worst problem in owning cordless tools would be solved.
Personally, I suggest they adopt the ryobi battery as the standard.
Doing construction landscaping work and having batteries and drills fall into mud. I prefer the larger battery stem as there's less tiny grooves to get dirty etc.
This completely makes sense. The battery replacement program is straightforward enough, and Samsung have a similar battery replacement program here in the UK.
This is an ewaste prevention policy not a "right to repair". Right to repair comes next, we just want any sort of repair to be considered for these electronics.
Except this isn't happening with phones now. Apple offers affordable battery replacement options without any idiot regulators forcing them to compromise their designs to add a "feature" most users don't need or want.
It’s unbelievable how people on here are defending manufacturers and designers when we have GoPro which is much more water resistant than most phones out there and has a replaceable battery.
I'm not sure that people are defending the manufacturers so much as taking a cynical view in which they believe that the manufacturers will find a way to not have user-replaceable batteries.
No doubt those batteries will be proprietary, with a chip in it so you can only use new batteries supplied by your phone producer. Better start working on a law against that too.
mildly overpriced batteries of varying reliability will be ubiquitous. you will be able to get rid of that warning message with a stop at a gas station, or perhaps…
a low monthly fee.
perhaps rather like toothbrush head, you could get a new one periodically. on subscription. just throw the old one in the trash, and it will magically disappear to somewhere else.
if you've been paying attention, batteries already report percentage and serial number over too few connectors. There wasn't, or weren't successful lawsuits stopping innovation when printers died, what's to stop innovation again LLMs?
Question: Is this defeatism, is it faith based (laws are bad,period), or are you expecting to be profiteering from planned obsolescence yourself in the future?
I think that's just cynicism. Which is just another name for realism. It's not that the law about mandating replaceble battery is bad. But manufacturers will predictably squeeze every single cent they can. You can expect batteries to be chipped and cost nearly as much as new phones. So the fact that this law was past will be a huge additional profit for manufacturers unless there are some other laws about batteries.
I have replaced my iPhone X's battery after 4 years for %12 of its sale price. I had to wait longer than expected because my phone was a first generation device of its model number (Apple does silent internal revisions of the same model over time), so they had to upgrade a power managenent firmware normally not covered by iOS updates. Also, they have changed my speaker free of charge because apparently it was defective or broken in a way I didn't know.
After three years, my phone is out of support, with battery health at 90%. Considering my phone is out of support starting this year, this is neither expensive, nor planned obsolescence.
I'll save and buy another iPhone (the latest and greatest) in a couple of years, and will use that one for a decade, too.
How this is gouging the customer?
I support replaceable batteries, that will be great, but current practice is not to make batteries so expensive that people prefer newer phones, on the contrary.
They're not wrong, you see similar patterns all the time. It's a step in a good direction but the manufacturers should be required to provide those batteries for sufficient time too or make them easily compatible with third party ones. Ideally there would be standardized formats for every brand to limit inflation of parts number. (that manufacturers love to do, making one serial incompatible with another moving unnecessary bits as a middle finger to repairers)
Being removable does not resolve everything. For example, it's very common for laptop removables, especially from a certain ex-IBM division company, to have a self-destructive fuse in case the voltage drops as you replace the cells (making it all the more difficult and unsafe) because there's no original ones sold anywhere, and your alternatives are shady housefires from China that have the lowest quality ones in them no matter how much you pay, and it's very annoying.
And this is why the regulation does oblige manufacturers to supply replacement batteries for at least 5 years after the product that uses them was last sold.
That doesn't completely solve the problem, but it's not a glaring loophole any more.
I think not, because batteries need to have their voltage controlled along their lifetime so they don't degrade and maybe burst, and that must be done at a low level.
It's a compromise between safety, performance and durability. Replaceable batteries might be more difficult to use and have their performance reduced for safety.
Although it doesn't warrant planned obsolescence, of course, but those security/performance things might be another excuse to reduce consumer choices.
Third-party/counterfeit batteries are near universally Shit with a capital S, they won't need any lock-ins to get my money for new or spare genuine batteries.
I beg to differ. I have two LG V20s and I've tried multiple batteries over the years and they all worked fine. The battery by third party vendors actually got better over time. OEM had 3200mah while you can get a 4200mah since 2020.
While you're not bound to a specific charger, most modern phones(outside of Apple phones) can only reach maximum charging speeds if you (indirectly) pay money to Qualcomm. That will probably change going forward with the new rules on standardized charging.
This isn't really true anymore, USB-C PD (which is technically just USB PD but there's no standard for using it on anything but USB-C) is displacing QC for most applications. It is however something where most chargers and devices will likely try to support it for the forseeable future, though, in the name of compatibility (nowadays you can get chips from TI and the like which will basically try all the standards that they can, to find the fastest charging rate). Also, AFAIK there's no licensing fee required to be compatible with QC.
https://www.usb.org/usb-charger-pd says "The USB Power Delivery (USB PD) Specification enables the maximum functionality of USB by providing more flexible power delivery along with data over a single cable."
The interesting bits of the spec use extra pins from Type-C, so for the most part it's Type-C's charging norm.
...and even aside of USB PD, USB-C The Connector does have a standard way to signalize maximum charging current (0.5/0.9A, 1.5A or 3A at 5V) without using PD.
Well we're in luck, because the regulation does touch on this.
Batteries must be "available as spare parts of the equipment that they power for a minimum of five years after placing the last unit of the equipment model on the market, with a reasonable and non-discriminatory price for independent professionals and end-users"
And there's a ban on software-locking too: "Software shall not be used to impede the replacement of a portable battery or LMT battery, or of their key components, with another compatible battery or key components."
There is a link to this document [1], which has article 11:
> Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those batteries are readily removable and replaceable by the end-user at any time during the lifetime of the product. That obligation shall only apply to entire batteries and not to individual cells or other parts included in such batteries.
> A portable battery shall be considered readily removable by the end-user where it can be removed from a product with the use of commercially available tools, without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless provided free of charge with the product, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product.
There are exceptions:
> By way of derogation from paragraph 1, the following products incorporating portable batteries may be designed in such a way as to make the battery removable and replaceable only by independent professionals:
(a) appliances specifically designed to operate primarily in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion, and that are intended to be washable or rinseable;
(b) professional medical imaging and radiotherapy devices, as defined in Article 2, point (1), of Regulation (EU) 2017/745, and in vitro diagnostic medical devices, as defined in Article 2, point (2), of Regulation (EU) 2017/746.
Does a smartphone qualify under the section (a) exemption? What if Apple starts to say that we can rinse off our iPhones any time they get dirty? They already show advertisements in which iPhones get dunked in water.
> The obligations laid down in paragraph 1 shall not apply where continuity of power supply is necessary and a permanent connection between the product and the respective portable battery is required to ensure the safety of the user and the appliance or, for products that collect and supply data as their main function, for data integrity reasons.
I am not a lawyer, but I suspect the key phrase is "specifically designed to operate primarily in an environment..." That is, a phone designed to be used underwater would be exempt, but a phone that can get wet occasionally - or even be immersed - is not specifically designed to operate underwater.
Hopefully the regulating body would take a dim view of "one weird trick" type attempts at circumventing the intent of the rule.
> Hopefully the regulating body would take a dim view of "one weird trick" type attempts at circumventing the intent of the rule.
Generally the law always does, but nerds love to think that they can find bounds checking violations in the law. In reality some administrative law judge or similar will not actually be impressed.
Recently I read that in France (where I live) there is this rule that all online sellers selling to customers must pay VAT even if abroad.
Someone pulled a trick along the lines of: taking orders from customers then ordering stuff on behalf of the customer, then claim "we don't sell stuff, we just order things on behalf of the customer", and then the other seller is not ordered from by the customer so by the book they are also not concerned by VAT (so in the end no VAT is paid)
Where did you read that? In my experience, when ordering from outside the EU (I only have experience with the US, but I don't think it matters) I'm usually on the hook for import duties and VAT when I receive the package. I have to pay those separately, and not to the retailer but to the delivery company.
The point is that, it's technically the end customer who pays the VAT. The seller collects it, on behalf of the state.
Do you have some links ? For me you can't sell without VAT if the person doesn't have a VAT number. In your exemple they don't seel a good but a service to order the good, VAT still need to be paid.
I don't have a subscription to Le Monde, so can't read the whole article.
IANAL, but the linked EU directive doesn't seem to say that the seller has to charge VAT at the moment of sale, only that VAT is due, even in the case of an intermediary.
I've just done a quick check on the site of B&H, an US-based reputable electronics store. If you try to send something somewhat expensive to France, they have the option of handling import duties and taxes or to handle it yourself.
Either they are the customer and must pay it, or if they are legally not, they can be asked for the list of customers so that they can all be fined, which will lead to customers suing them.
In defence of us nerds, loopholes are very much a real thing. And I bet lawyers from manufacturers are also looking for a breach through this law, and they may have lobbyists try to insert some. I don't think it is unreasonable for us to try to look for one.
And even if the judge ultimately decides against the manufacturer, it will take willingness to enforce the regulation for that to happen, during which the manufacturer can take cover under the "loophole".
i find the key phrase to be portable battery. what makes one battery portable and another not? electric cars’ batteries are portable aren’t they? just because a battery is light that doesn’t mean it’s portable. the design criteria of many batteries are intentionally permanent, soldered and otherwise permanently affixed, requiring electronic support from the device itself (ie not integrated into the battery) for charge control. are these portable?
"portable battery’ means a battery that is sealed, weighs 5 kg or less, is not designed specifically for industrial use and is neither an electric vehicle battery, an LMT battery, nor an SLI battery;"
What's an LMT or SLI battery? Well:
"light means of transport battery’ or ‘LMT battery’ means a battery that is sealed, weighs 25 kg or less and is specifically designed to provide electric power for the traction of wheeled vehicles that can be powered by an electric motor alone or by a combination of motor and human power, including type-approved vehicles of category L within the meaning of Regulation (EU) No 168/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council1, and that is not an electric vehicle battery;"
and
"‘starting, lighting and ignition battery’ or ‘SLI battery’ means a battery that is
specifically designed to supply electric power for starting, lighting, or ignition and
that can also be used for auxiliary or backup purposes in vehicles, other means of
transport or machinery;"
Unfortunately devs already one-weird-tricked the GDPR with the cookie banner malicious compliance. The relevant courts are reacting, but not fast enough and not across the board.
> > The obligations laid down in paragraph 1 shall not apply where continuity of power supply is necessary and a permanent connection between the product and the respective portable battery is required to ensure the safety of the user and the appliance or, for products that collect and supply data as their main function, for data integrity reasons.
> Another potential loophole?
Safety of user is not a concern for cell phone. Because it is possible to make a cell phone where a battery can be swapped a "safety of the appliance" would not apply.
The "collect and supply data as their main function" is intended as a carve out for devices like credit card readers, some of which have anti-tamper circuits will wipe critical data from the device if opened. These work by storing the data in SRAM, and using a battery backup for it (so that a power outage or unplugging it won't wipe it). They have contacts that detect if the case is opened, and that trigger wiping the data.
This was especially important for older mag-stripe readers where one could hypothetically install a skimmer inside the main reader if it continued to work after opening it. Hence, while they can often be disassembled with just commercially available tools, a normal user replacing the battery is not possible, as the factory needs to reprogram it afterwards, and they will insist on inspecting the unit for tampering before they do so. Requiring reprogramming by the manufacturer after battery replacement does not qualify as a replaceable battery under this regulation, so these devices need a carveout.
>What if Apple starts to say that we can rinse off our iPhones any time they get dirty? They already show advertisements in which iPhones get dunked in water.
Semi-related: If they somehow use that loophole then they should be obliged to honour warranty claims for water damage.
I'll admit that I don't know about iPhones, but my Pixel 6 was described as being waterproof but experienced water damage after being dropped in a swimming pool (1 metre depth) for a few seconds and Google refused to repair it under warranty.
There was a guy in Australia who bought the iPhone XS after Phil Schiller stood on stage at the announcement and said "you can drop it in a pool and be fine". After he accidentally dropped it in a pool and it broke, Apple refused warranty repair. He filed a claim with the New South Wales Fair Trading bureau and they convinced Apple to reimburse him...
My (<2 yr old) series 6 watch now has water damage to the face and digitizer, after doing a swimming workout. It's nominally 50m water resistant, and I went a max of 1.5m. It's had a handful of water experiences, but nothing deeper than a pool and no high speed/pressure type stuff.
It's effectively dead.
Apple wants 359 eur to repair it. The new cost, with charger (39eur) and the braided sport band (100eur) ((which was nice, but stretched and became useless) was 509 eur. So there's effectively a 10 eur difference between the original sale price and the repair price.
There are refurb series 6 gps + cell on the amazon.de for 299 eur, and those include a strap and charger, as well as the cell functionality that I didn't have.
This is within the EU (and Ireland) 2 year limit on defective products, and I originally bought this from Apple directly. So I might have a claim there. On the other hand, I don't want them deleting my apple account in retaliation.
>I don't want them deleting my apple account in retaliation.
This is by far the biggest crime being committed here.
That they have you by the balls for access to essential services as well as your data needed to make the hardware purchase complete.
If they don't want to do the account hosting for some of their customers (because they don't like them for some reason) then they should offer an option to self host alongside a heavily discounted device which is compatible with self hosting. If you've already bought a device and they remove access to services they should be legally obligated to refund the difference. Otherwise they should make the services an explicit part of the purchase contract and be legally obliged to continue providing them.
Part of the apple tax is precisely to cover costs of maintaining the whole integrated ecosystem.
Nobody should feel the need to keep silent over a hardware issue because they may be cut off from essential software and services required to make good use of the hardware.
This is one of the core reasons for why I refuse to buy devices which are forcibly integrated into an ecosystem like this. But anyone who so chooses should not be fucked over by their choice at the whim of a large company.
i'm also in the EU with my main apple id being US based. have you had any other major issues unique to our scenario? aside from having to create a new german account for country-specific apps it's been pretty smooth sailing for me.
Quoted depths are usually for Static Pressure, when the item is not moving against the water.
My Citizen wrist watch is marked as WR 100, i.e. 100m Static Pressure. That can be used for swimming, and I regularly do so. It is now around 25 years old.
A watch marked as water resistant to 50m is only really splash proof, or can be rinsed under a running tap. So it is safe to keep on while washing your hands.
One of my dive computers, intended to be used to around 40m, happens to be marked on the back as water resistant to 80m - but the casing is generally much more robust than in a watch.
I’ve had several 50m water resist watches as a kid, and I always cracked the face, broke the band, or lost them. They never died from water, and I was in water a lot more back then.
50m is approx 5 atm of pressure — essentially waterproof unless you’re doing serious diving.
It's Apple. Expect that. Their USB-C already has been designed to be DIFFERENT than others even thoigh defeating the EU directive intention. Unless EU rewrite a more stringent USB-C requirement, we will get that new USB-C feature "for first time in computing" by Apple for iphone 15 ultra.
> It's Apple. Expect that. Their USB-C already has been designed to be DIFFERENT than others even thoigh defeating the EU directive intention. Unless EU rewrite a more stringent USB-C requirement, we will get that new USB-C feature "for first time in computing" by Apple for iphone 15 ultra.
How do you know that? There is no iPhone from Apple with an USB-C port. You are just speculating based on some rumors.
You mean even though Apple already ships iPads with USB C that aren’t “different”? Do you think Apple is going to turn around and make the iPhone USB C port “different” and incompatible with their shipping iPads?
> Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those batteries are readily removable and replaceable by the end-user at any time during the lifetime of the product. That obligation shall only apply to entire batteries and not to individual cells or other parts included in such batteries.
So would this apply to something like the Nintendo Switch, and/or Steam Deck?
I'll be interested to know if it applies to things like AirPods, those would be more challenging to redesign with replaceable batteries (though obviously not impossible).
Interesting. The wording makes it sound like it would apply to controllers as well. So for a system like the Switch, they'd have to make sure that not only the battery of the console is replaceable, but also those of both Joy-Cons.
The document it refers to is about "in vitro diagnostic devices" and this includes things like those pregnancy tests with an LCD readout. 2017/746 is about point of care diagnostic devices generally.
I think in vivo devices would fall under 2017/745 medical devices.
> By 2027, all phones released in the EU must have a battery the user can easily replace with no tools or expertise.
The article is wrong. The rule is that obscure tools must not be required:
> A portable battery shall be considered readily removable by the end-user where it can be removed from a product with the use of commercially available tools, without requiring the use of specialised tools [...]
The 'obscure' tools are like $5 on amazon/temu/alibaba and include exactly what you need to make the job easy for that specific model. Seems like this law is once again a step backwards.
No consideration at all of tradeoffs, IE how much dust/water proofing do we lose and how much bulk/weight it will add.
> The 'obscure' tools are like $5 on amazon/temu/alibaba and include exactly what you need to make the job easy for that specific model.
There are not enough reasons for every model to need a different specific set of tools. There's one common reason: to make service difficult.
> No consideration at all of tradeoffs, IE how much dust/water proofing do we lose and how much bulk/weight it will add.
Seems like it's all about tradeoffs. They're trading whatever hypothetical advances you're referring to here for less tech waste and lower consumer costs. They're deciding that it's an area in which manufacturers aren't allowed to innovate, because the innovations are trivial compared to the externalities that they impose.
> There are not enough reasons for every model to need a different specific set of tools. There's one common reason: to make service difficult.
Looking at the iPhone 14 iFixit kit, the tools are not particularly exotic... pentalobe/tripoint screwdrivers (kinda mandatory for super small screws) and just a bunch of things needed to work with small devices, spudger, tweezers, suction cup, clamp. Stuff that for the most part has been part of fixit kits going back many generations.
A generic toolkit for working w/ most Apple devices shouldn't have a particular high number of parts.
IME pentalobe is superior as far as wear to tooling without the sharp points.
I've stripped a handful of smaller torx heads due to worn bits over the years. Can't recall ever stripping a pentalobe.
I won't argue Apple came up with a new design for security purposes, at least initially. But that doesn't mean they didn't come up with a superior design for tiny bits at the same time.
- Consumers optimize for what looks nicest in the store, and it's easy for the store to bury the nonreplacability of the battery under a thick layer of tech mumbojumbo.
- Most consumers (at least here in Germany) get their phones from their phone plans, so they are limited by what the phone companies offer with their contracts.
You could turn the argument around: clearly consumers do want this tradeoff, because they have decided to vote in governments to legislate for it to be a requirement.
If you think that's an overly simplistic argument, then I invite you to re-evaluate yours.
Yeah, I always wondered why Apple didn't achieve this at the time and had to remove headphone port and home button to make it water resistant.
But that nomenclature is void if you ask me. I got water on the upper front part of my iPhone XS which is IP whatever and Face ID died. Apple said they wouldn't give me a new one because water resistant doesn't mean they have to replace your phone when something happens.
> I always wondered why Apple didn't achieve this at the time and had to remove headphone port and home button to make it water resistant.
They didn't do this for water proof iPhones - that were lame excuses. They removed e.g. the headphone jack early to increase incentives to adopot (the then future) Airpods.
>had to remove headphone port and home button to make it water resistant.
This was an outright lie; some Android manufacturers (I believe it was Samsung and Sony, but maybe others as well) had waterproof phones with headphone jacks and it didn't seem to negatively affect the phone in other ways.
I feel you - I had actually the same issue with my iphone XS few months ago - I was hiking for few hours inside humid cave. Even though I had phone in waterproof bag my TrueDepth sensor stopped working.
And you conveniently skip the little part about “only if you had the little rubber flap closed covering the jacks and only if you put the battery back in just right”.
And my galaxy s8 has usb-c and is waterproof, so a robust waterproof connector is a solved problem, they even have moisture detection by measuring resistance between a few pins.
I had to use special tools to remove the batter from the iPhone 6 I owned, but that was back before they started gluing the battery to the screen. It only took 15-20 minutes. The phones since then have chipsets that will mark as fraudulent batteries any OEM battery. If only I could go back to 2015
I had to use special tools to remove the batter from the iPhone 6 I owned, but that was back before they started gluing the battery to the screen. It only took 15-20 minutes.
Looking at the ifixit guide for iphone 6s[1], it doesn't look like you need any special tools (as defined by the regulation). Sure, they're not exactly tools that a typical person has in their toolbox, but they're all "commercially available". ifixit even offers them for sale in their guide.
Didn't they redesign the interior of the iPhone 14 (normal) to be more easily repairable? Not end user repairable yet, but more than previous designs? I guess they make first steps in that direction.
Probably will be up to the courts to decide, in which case companies can choose to gamble fines and rectification costs should they choose to define 'specialized tools' more strictly than the court they end up facing does.
The comma placement makes the glue answer a bit strange, but I'm interpreting it to mean glues are no-go unless the manufacturer provides a solvent and re-gluing kit as well. Full text from [1] (emphasis mine):
> A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy or solvents to disassemble it.
Commercially available tools are considered to be tools available on the market to all end-users without the need for them to provide evidence of any proprietary rights and that can be used with no restriction, except health and safety-related restrictions.
Also answers the above question regarding "specialised" - that would be anything not fitting the "commercially available" definition.
1. tools must be commercially available.
2. Tools must not be specialized, unless provided free of charge. (Reminder, part of the idea that the idea is that throwing away batteries is gradually getting outlawed, so end users need to be able to extract the battery before they throw away/recycle/or provide to eWaste facilities the rest of the device.).
3. Tools must not be proprietary.
4. Use of thermal energy cannot be required.
5. Use of solvents cannot be required.
And finally a clarification about the definition of commercially available.
Number 2 seems like it is independent of commercially available. Otherwise the "free of charge" part would make no sense. Furthermore, replacement is actually a secondary motivation of this law. A slightly more primary motivation is to ensure users can remove the batteries before throwing away the device or handing the rest to an eWaste facicity as applicable. I'd assume anything that the average consumer cannot expect to find at a local tool shop would be considered specialized.
Glue is not a tool, since a tool is an object that serves a function and that is not consumed in its operation. Other things that are not tools: lubricants, (some) abrasives, pigments, reagents, solvents.
This cannot come soon enough - I have a 4 year old Huawei P20 Pro - the phone still more than meets my needs in terms of gaming, photos/videos and day to day use - I've not had a single issue with the phone - other than that finally the battery has started to go, and if I use it heavily (watch video or game for the 2 hours of my return commute) there is no way the battery will last the day.
The cost to replace it is not worth it to me, and DIY seems needlessly complex. For now I'll just carry a charger/powerbank - but I'd far rather swap out the battery.
Years ago I had a Dell Streak which I loved - that battery was swappable for that, I'd carry a couple of spare batteries in my bag for it - so I could do 2 or 3 days heavy use, without the need to recharge (the batteries were smaller and lighter than carrying a charger and the weird proprietary cable).
Does it still get upgrades to newer Android versions? Personally the reason I need to get a new phone is usually that the OS no longer receives upgrades (which means that apps drop support for it) or even security patches.
I was brilliant! The only pain was the first account I got it with only had half a gig of data a month, but I soon sorted that out. I used it with a little Bluetooth keyboard and did loads of coffee shop/pub writing in it.
Huh interesting. What caused that? I can see the concerns about teens vaping but an outright ban seems pretty authoritarian. Admittedly I don't know much about Australia so maybe they're more authoritarian than the stereotypes might imply.
The Australian government has been phasing out smoking entirely for a while now. Vapes came in and undid most of that effort as well as getting a new generation of kids on it. So now they are regulated to only be allowed as an aide to get off cigarettes.
Mostly due to imports of disposable "nicotine free" vapes that of course contained nicotine. Banning them outright makes customs easy as otherwise you would have to test every import for nicotine levels.
There's zero benefit to society to import any disposable vape variant, so the ban is pretty well received.
The ban on replaceable flavored pod vapes caused that. Such a bizarre rule and so wasteful. You couldn’t replace the battery on the pod vapes but at least you could reuse the recharge and reuse the battery.
> The European Council only has jurisdiction over Europe, obviously. So this law will not, technically, have an effect in any other area of the world.
> However, that doesn’t really mean much in the grand scheme of things. Companies like Samsung, Google, Apple, etc., don’t design devices specific to Europe. Apple, for example, is not going to create a European iPhone with a replaceable battery and one for the United States without. In other words, this law will change all iPhones. It will also change all tablets, laptops, EVs, e-bikes, and anything else with a rechargeable battery.
IMO, this is not necessarily true.
Apple gave in over USB-C/lightning in large part because it's the right thing to do[1], but IMO, many consumers strongly prefer a thin phone over a replaceable battery.
I suspect that Apple will at least strongly consider making a European version of the iPhone and a version that is thinner and/or has better battery capacity.
I'd be happy if Apple does move their entire line to replaceable batteries - I'd prefer to be able to do a battery swap myself. But I don't think most consumers share my preferences.
---
1. I don't mean this in any sort of moral sense. Just in a technological one. Lightning is firewire reborn. It may have been compelling at one time, but the world has passed it up. And much like firewire, Apple would have eventually dropped it; which means that being forced to give it up a bit earlier than they'd like it's a particularly big blow.
Is this really the case? Is there any kind of research on that? Anecdotally: I have never seen anyone having an iPhone without a cover case. The case makes the phone _bulky_ yet no one complains.
Before the iPhone 6 and its rounded displays, I never used a case on my iPhone (including models 3g, 4s, and 5). I occasionally dropped it, but never had more than minor scratches or minor dents on the metal edging.
Then I got an iPhone 6, and at some point dropped it & cracked the screen. Replaced the screen, and eventually cracked it again. Got an iPhone 8 and eventually cracked the screen. When I wanted to buy an iPhone X, my wife said, "Only if you get a case", and I didn't really have a good counter-argument.
Which makes it kind of an irony: if you push too far in some direction, you end up going way back. Jony Ive pushed for the iPhone 6 form factor: thinner, rounder. Which made it prettier without a case; but by sacrificing too much sturdiness, it meant everyone needed to have a case -- so the iPhone form factor became "a very pretty, fragile phone in a bulky case" rather than "a nice-looking moderately robust phone without a case".
I'd also like to see research on it, but ultimately, pretty much every large company went in that direction for a reason. The phone market is pretty competitive, if users preferred a replaceable battery to a thinner phone we'd see some company stealing market share by offering exactly that.
A thin phone with a phone cover is thinner than a bulky phone with a phone cover. Maybe the fact you're going to be putting a cover on it is why you want it to be thin in the first place.
I don't see how using cases is an argument against people wanting thin phones. A thin phone plus a case is thinner than a thick phone plus a case. More practically, a case is a necessary evil if you're worried about accidentally damaging your expensive device.
Put me in the camp of wanting thinner phones. I don't use a case. My 14 Pro is thicker than I like. I miss the thinness of the 6s. I end every day at 40% battery life; the extra capacity is wasted on me, since it's not good enough to last two days. My last phone was 5 years old, still had 81% capacity when I replaced it, and always lasted the full day.
Am I everyone? Obviously not, but I expect market research has led Apple and others to the conclusion people do want thin phones, else they would make thicker phones.
I guarantee there will be people upset that their phones are thicker for reasons that don't benefit them.
There might be a difference in battery capacities, but if you can swap out batteries, I’m going to guess there is going to be an aftermarket battery that will be much better than what Apple ships the phone with.
Maybe those batteries will be bulkier or something but I don’t think people care about better battery that much with current performance.
Alternatively thicker phones can be designed to be more robust and not need cases you know. Slim phones break easily because they have no affordance for robustness
That would be nice, but part of the benefit of cases is they're easily replaceable. I seem to drop my phone a lot; I've gone through two cases on my current phone already. The phone itself is totally unharmed.
Having it optional for people who want it, trading off design and durability? Sure.
I'm perfectly happy with the iPhone's battery life, never intend to (nor wanted to) change the battery, and use it around or even under sea/pool. This "improvement" would either change the IP rating or lose a lot of inner space to keep the waterproof rating while still supporting battery changing.
Why would I, as a user, want a totally backwards rule for something I'm never planning to do in my entire life? If someone wants that functionality, they can get a cheap Android phone with swappable battery and 100 spare batteries. Making such a thing mandatory is beyond ridiculous.
[...]Having it optional for people who want it[...]
But then it doesn't exist, right? Like today, which phones do have replaceable batteries? So the free market doesn't work and the government needs to step in. Blame the manufacturers (or the customers if you want).
In addition, the notion of "just switch from your lived-in ecosystem and flagship phone to some new ecosystem and cheap-o Android phone" just so the battery can be replaced without jumping through hoops seems like a bad take.
Where are the phones with extendable antennas for better reception in areas with bad coverage? Government should step in and mandate that.
The demand simply isn't there for replaceable batteries. I know there's a loud minority on HN and other tech focused sites, but it's simply not something most people care about. How well did extra batteries sell when they were common?
I think you mistake this for "everyone should have 2 batteries in their backpack and be able to flip them out on the fly", when in fact it is "manufacturers shouldn't be glueing in batteries in so that they can be replaced reasonably easily as the battery degrades, so that the lifespan of a phone can be increased".
Considering how phones have pleateaued, I bet you'd get a lot more buy in if you frame it like that.
This is about avoiding electronic waste, not being able to plop out a battery every day. People may not care about that, but some people don't care about pollution in general.
I suspect the EU is trying to "enforce demand" for a few reasons. Individually I feel people have a bias towards checking the features and price of the phone they are buying right now and not so much resale value or if it will last 4+ years.
But the EU thinks society will benefit from less electronic waste and more durable devices. Or at least EUropean society, which AFAIK leans towards importing smartphones rather than making or design them. And this is far from the first time governments enforce features on products that the market doesn't seem to be demanding.
But is the EU thinking of something about enforcing longer software updates timelines? I suspect this law won't be so effective without it.
If there was truly a critical mass of users clamoring for this particular feature, surely a phone manufacturer would have already jumped at the opportunity to grab that market share?
I’m pretty sure Apple will handle the battery they replaced for me better than most consumers will. And if the old battery does find its way to a recycling service and the not the landfill I hope the service is not run by a local council like mine.
The demand wasn’t there for electric cars either. That’s why we have incentives. This is an environmental policy designed to reduce externalities: manufacturer makes a phone without an easily replaceable battery => everybody else pays for the environmental damage that causes.
But the net policy effect of electric cars is to reduce the number of cars on the road. Those things are expensive and quite rare. They require a lot o Obviously. Because there is no need for a policy to force people to use things that are cheaper and plentiful.
If you want to argue there will be less smartphones -> less waste that seems reasonable. Some person on a tight budget drops it in water and it fizzles because water gets in the the battery maybe. Can't afford to replace it. They learn to live without a phone.
But it isn't going to cause less waste with the same utility. The market is much better than the EU at sniffing out the maximum benefit for minimum resources. Less waste is almost always moire profitable.
If you ban pesticides and the oil industry, Europe would be depopulated through famine. Almost everyone would starve.
If enough food to make it to the end of the year is on the list of non-essential items then yeah I suppose there is a lot of waste out there.
> factory pollution
Where does the stuff some from without factories? Are you proposing a world where people do without whitegoods? Nobody knows how to run a factory that makes affordable goods in bulk with little pollution. The market is optimising for the most people being able to afford to live comfortably. The equilibrium that minimises waste at all costs is a world with no humans.
The smartphone industry right now is more comparable to fast fashion, the more they sell the better and if you can't fix their products nor do they receive updates after a year you need to buy a new one.
So fast fashion but you can't even patch your pants if they have a hole.
> factory pollution
If companies had to pay for the pollution they produce they would have to raise prices and/or find a way to produce the same while polluting less. Enforcement in a globalized world is the issue.
That's like saying "nobody wants lights in the car boot because if they wanted it the demand was there and market would provide"
I hate that dumbass argument. Every fucking time someone brings it.
Nobody fucking buys thing like a smartphone or a car based on a single feature while ignoring every other feature.
You buy a thing. There is like half a dozen to a dozen different factors. Battery life, screen size, CPU, RAM, storage etc.
If there is no phone with the "niche" option like replaceable battery that ALSO have all of the other features in acceptable range, people will not buy it.
It's NOT because they don't want <niche feature>
It's because picking <niche feature> means bigger compromises in other areas that are also important
Exactly. The free market is perfect. Consumers are always aware of every detail about what they purchase. That's why we don't need food safety laws at all. Consumers will simply buy products from bakeries which don't cut their bread with sawdust to save a bit of money.
If you want a plastic phone with microSD, 3.5mm, IP68 and somewhat current specs, the Sony Xperia lineup is actually offering that. I recently bought an Xperia 10 IV and I'm really happy with it.
Out of the 10+ phones in our family over the last 5-10 years, one was water damage and one was failure of the internal flash memory. Every other phone was replaced because the battery died. Every single one.
Official replacement was no longer available and DIY was either impossible (lack of parts) or eventually ended up damaging the device beyond economical repairability.
Regular people that don't have thousands of dollars in disposable income (and nothing useful to spend it on) haven't cared about phone specs for years. Hell, I love tech and could buy a new phone every year and even I haven't cared about phone specs since the original Google Pixel.
If you brick your phone every year because that's just who you are, no judging.
If you want a new phone every year and can afford one, its your money. Just remember that you are fortunate enough to be able to do so. And someone will surely buy your used phone and likely (try to) replace the battery in it.
Overall, it's like claiming that nobody drives cars that are 10+ years old because they needed a new clutch. Or that a 50 year old house needs to be torn down because fixing the roof economically is clearly beyond our engineering prowess. Are there people that swap cars every 5 years? Absolutely. But that does not mean those cars go to a scrapyard.
I will not comment on the technical aspects of this proposal, since the actual outcome might very well need to be settled in the court still. But dismissing the general point of legislature which demands better longevity for devices that basically everybody needs to partake in modern society is rather shortsighted.