Do you miss phones with replaceable batteries? By 2027, you won’t anymore because, by law, almost every smartphone will have them again.
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I don’t have a problem with this. Anything to make phones less disposable.
I do have problem with it. Why 2027 and not sooner?
TL;DR
- The European Council has ended its adoption procedure for rules related to phones with replaceable batteries.
- By 2027, all phones released in the EU must have a battery the user can easily replace with no tools or expertise.
- The regulation intends to introduce a circular economy for batteries.
Am I missing something? I read the European report like 8 times and no where does it mention replaced without tools. Most of it talks about controlling the lifecycle of the battery.
Assuming that ends up being the case then it sounds like a good idea. I do wonder if it will lead to a generation or two of phones with utterly crap battery life though.
I’m all for it but how will this effect the way they waterproof devices?
Samsung Galaxy S5 had both waterproofing (IP67) and replaceable battery. Details: https://www.anandtech.com/show/7942/galaxy-s5-followup
There are devices like Samsung’s Xcover products that have the back cover snap into place in a way that creates a water-proof seal around the battery and components inside. It’s incredibly tight and has a rubber ring.
Just waterproof everything that isn’t removable and add a short failsafe for when water is around the battery.
good, but i am afraid they will just find another way to artificially shorten the length of a phone life.
They do that already. From my experience with Samsung phones is that after 2 years they start reboot or off sudden, HTC (RIP) sometimes misses some incoming calls.
After we moved from vacuum tubes to transistors, electronics got more robust, but apparently that doesn’t apply to smart phones.
Alright hear me out. Apple will comply to the letter of the law, but now suddenly iPhone batteries are disposable. Of course only Apple can charge them, and you must buy them in packs.
Great news. But given the long timeline I wonder if that will give corporations a chance to make lawsuits and reverse course. Though the EU seems to legislate pretty well in the arena of consumer protection
Timeline is to allow comapnies to make the transition. Still needs the parliament to sign. Only way of getting a regulation struck is by proving it’s against existing EU regulations and thus unlawful. EU doesn’t fuck around with these things, doubt it’ll see any credible resistence beyond posturing by Apple and Co. that they’ll leave the EU and whatnot.
I have a Pinephone and a Librem 5 and they both have removable batteries. They might be anemic and featureless, but they are ahead of the pack on this. :)
Good
Great
I’ve never owned a smartphone with a removable battery and I don’t feel like I ever needed one.
As a mostly iPhone user, will this mean we go back to phones with plastic bodies?
of course not. It might mean a slightly thicker phone, but with a bit of smart engineering and a regulatory incentive, I’d expect something quite elegant. Think about how your SIM tray pops out.
I absolutely love how LG G5 handled it: https://youtu.be/8l4QHBMpXLo
That is, until they also jumped on the non removable battery bandwagon.
Replaceable batteries were great. I could keep phones going for years until Samsung started pumping out bloated software updates that slowed them down.
When we had replaceable batteries you could just buy a new one and performance issues would be corrected almost immediately. Apple was sneaky AF about this back in the day, throttling performance in an attempt to increase battery life, something that wouldn’t be needed if you could easily swap out the battery every few years
That wouldn’t be necessary. I had a metal phone with a replaceable battery (Motorola SLVR L7). It was more common for a cellphone to be made of plastic in the replaceable battery days because most phones were still far more utilitarian and thought of for talking, text messages, email if you had a data plan and of course Snake.
Lightweight and small was popular before large screens and smart features came along. One exception was the push-to-talk phones geared towards construction workers. Those suckers were chunky.
Counterpoint: I’ve never owned a smartphone without a removable battery as I see it as a requirement.
This is encouraging news for me.
I remember using the Samsung Galaxy S2 which is ancient by today’s standards, but one thing I remember distinctly was how super convenient it was to be able to pull the back off and switch out the battery, it reminded me of the simplicity of swapping batteries on a DSLR camera.
Some people mentioned that you’ll drop your phone and the battery will just fly out. I don’t remember ever having that happen and my S2 had a rough life.
The one part I feel is valid criticism is water resistance, manufacturers will have to actually work on their designs to get IP resistance now. As much as I love waterproof phones, I’d much rather be able to have a spare battery than think about what happens if I drop it in water
