There's an exception for batteries that "retain at least 80% of its original capacity after 1,000 charge cycles." Coincidentally, iPhones and probably other flagships already qualify for this exception.
Last time this was discussed, it was stated that the text exempting based on cycle counts was removed from the final, adopted version. Is that incorrect?
On the page linked to it mentions the two exceptions that exempt iPhone and other flagship phones - long lifespan (80% after 1000 charges) and waterproof (IP67).
The other exemption criteria is for specialized (medical) devices and devices where a removable battery would be unsafe.
It does, but, in the previous HN discussion, there was a link to the what was reportedly the adopted version of the bill, and those exemptions were gone from the text.
Unfortunately it is from 2022, meaning no OS upgrades.
I think the next mandatory laws EU should pass is that manufacturers should either allow people to upgrade/replace the OS by themselves or provide mandatory upgrades for the next decade (i don't care how the manufacturers handle it, that's up to them, but the easiest way out of such a law is to allow people upgrade/replace the OS by themselves).
Why only one decade? I’m still running a 2012 Mac mini. Apple stopped updating Mac OS some time ago, but there are plenty of alternatives that can run on the bare metal. Hardware makers should be required to provide support for the life of the device (defined by customers still using the device), or provide a reasonable way to install 3rd party OS.
So, they have an XCover 7 now - with similar specs.
Also, they committed to a rather long support cycle for the xcover6 (5 years I think?) - I have one and it is still going strong. I've replaced the battery twice - not because I desperately needed to, but... why not. They are cheap, and I use the older ones still as backup battery packs since they are fast to swap in.
I feel like the fact that the phone-with-removal-battery option already exists and is not popular in the market should be a signal to EU politicians about how much the public actually values this capability.
That's fine, but even among Android users, nobody buys these removable battery phones. It's possible there's a disproportionate reservoir of iPhone&removable battery-only consumers, but it would surprise me if the desire for a reusable battery were strongly correlated with being locked into the Apple ecosystem. If anything, I would expect the propensity to desire removable batteries is more strongly correlated with Android use.
It is also a rugged phone. So if you want to make a fair comparison with an iPhone, you have to put the iPhone in a case, resulting in a similar weight and thickness.
Oh yeah so it's utter trash and not worthy of our attention. Imagine carrying a whole 58 grams more, during a whole day, impossible for the average tech worker's atrophied muscles
The point is that people have different preferences, so the EU should not force people to buy phones with removable batteries. People who want such features can buy those phones, and people who want smaller, thinner phones can buy ones with integrated batteries.
At most the EU should tax externalities like electronic waste, though that would be a rounding error compared to the cost of the phone itself.
What do you mean by "rare"? You just click "order". It's not like you have to go on the quest for the lost arc or anything like that. They are uncommon in the sense that people don't actually get them, but that's not because of a lack of availability. People do not want them.
Phones with removable batteries are rare because only a small fraction of people want phones with removable batteries. Phone manufacturers also dislike removable batteries because customers buy cheap 3rd party batteries and complain when these batteries perform poorly or malfunction, sometimes by exploding. And then the headline is, “Phone made by company X explodes.” not, “Cheap battery explodes.” Removable batteries also introduce new failure modes like contacts degrading, causing phones to power off unexpectedly when jostled or flexed in certain ways. That increases the risk of a recall and bad PR.
I and millions of others want a phone that is smaller than the current offerings. Heck, my 13 mini is too big for my tastes. But I don’t think that means the government should force phone manufacturers to make smaller phones. So too for features like removable batteries, physical keyboards, or headphone jacks.
> The point is that people have different preferences, so the EU should not force people to buy phones with removable batteries.
There are many food additives with very useful properties, but health effects. There are many perfumes too where the original formulation had a particular compound layer found to be carcinogenic.
Regardless of whether an individual prefers to use such compounds at their own risk or not, large companies will use whatever is the cheapest ingredient for their product.
In some cases, that's better for the consumer - who, often, has almost zero choice.
(And if you think you truly have choice as a consumer, I challenge you to use a phone that isn't running either Apple or Google's code.)
That assumes that the market itself is actually "free" and consistent and that there are no bad actors in the mix, and upstarts are allowed to freely start and compete. Given the regulations in the space that is emphatically not so.
Incumbents will remove and enshitify a number of features in order to maximize returns... Your new drying has a 10 year mechanical waranty.. but the control board isn't covered, will die in 12-24 months and won't be produced again. Oh and there's some clunky DRM in the mix on top. Guess you get to buy a new dryer, but this time you'll go with $OtherShittyBrandThatDoesTheSameThing.
This has been repeated so so many times... How can you be sure that throwaway glued-together phones are thinner and lighter than repairable phones.. If there is any source of this information, it's vendors who have interest in phones being non-repairable so they can ship more units...
How about vendors get on their asses and design thinner and lighter phones that are not e-waste from the moment they leave the factory?
I bet you when forced to make the right decision they can go even thinner and lighter than the current flagships...
For that matter, I put a chonky case on my phone anyway... would rather have a sturdier phone that doesn't need an additional case that has the features I'd like, including an easily replaced/swapped battery.
Beyond this, hell, make the "internal" battery solid-state with minimal capacity and have an external power pack from the get-go as part of case designs. Get the size of battery you want... if you want a big booty phone with battery for days, you can get it.
Earth's resources are finite, both in terms of raw materials and ability to absorb pollution. Stewardship of our resources entails the regulation of the things we create with those resources such that our collective consumption is conserved. Such oversight is both prudent, and as history and global outcomes teach, quite necessary.
The comment is not meant to give you something to buy, it's just proof that it can technically be done, they just don't want to do it for modern flagships.
At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs.
I like it when different producers select a different subset of priorities for their offer. Competition at work. One of the reasons we witnessed such an awesome evolution in the smartphone market.
I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition.
> At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs.
My $200 Moto G3 in 2016 had a removable back cover (admittedly not battery). It was also waterproof (and had a headphone jack.)
The engineering of making things waterproof is in the realm of "A bit more annoying but easily doable if anyone's interested in doing it", not "Doable at the cost of everything else".
> I like it when different producers select a different subset of priorities for their offer. Competition at work. One of the reasons we witnessed such an awesome evolution in the smartphone market.
>
> I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition.
I generally agree with that sentiment, except we don't have a vibrant market of many options with many different trade offs. Finding headphone jack, solid reparability, user swappable battery, easily replaceable USB port, and all the other things that one might want is basically impossible. The vast majority of phones are highly unrepairable, have no headphone jack, have everything soldered to a tiny number of internal boards, and are full of anti repair dark patterns.
It really depends on the model, manufacturer, & luck. I’ve never had a phone lose its water resistance. The phone I use today (a 13 mini) is almost five years old and I clean it by running it under the faucet.
I'm kinda surprised with esim, wireless charging and Bluetooth noones just made a phone with a solid layer of glass completely surrounding it for 100% waterproofing
A lack of physical port makes troubleshooting more difficult. Apple didn’t remove the diagnostic port from their watches until the series 7. Also I think certain governments require that phones have a USB-C port.
My low-cost plastic Casio watch based on a very old design is waterproof and battery can be swapped out by undoing 4 philips screws, no glue. Its buttons can also be operated under water while staying waterproof.
I normally much prefer screws over glue but Apple has at least been using repair-friendly glue like the electrically debonding adhesive in use for iPhone 16e/17e.
Yes. Dont assume that everybody is technically minded such as yourself.
I know plenty of people that would never even consider jump starting thei car. However are also quite happy with poppping open a battery cover and doing a simple swap like any other battery powered device.
You don't have to be "technically minded" to figure this out. It's not spinning up a Kubernetes cluster, it's a picture with an arrow that says "Clip red wire here". Simply driving a car is a thousand times more complicated, and we expect most everybody to be capable of that.
There's also a difference between not wanting to do something, and not being capable of it.
Well yeah any glue is worse than screws: this I agree with you. But attaching a 9V battery to the glue is around the same difficulty as applying torque with a screwdriver.
At first it looks like a normal torx head, but then you realize it has 5 lobes instead of 6. Apple used these on early iPhone models when you actually could open them with this proprietary screwdriver.
I get it for watches, but I've never understood the mass-market need for a waterproof phone, outside of a few niche hobbies. Are people showering and swimming with their phones or something? Or dropping them in their toilets? The wettest my phone has ever been in 8 years is in my pocket while it's raining.
People in humid climates and cold climates were regularly having their phones get denied warranty service because the water ingress stickers turned red due to condensation, without ever exposing their phone to water immersion. This was understandably upsetting for a lot of people who just wanted their phone to be fixed under warranty.
Thus, companies put in a big effort to seal their phones against dust and water, which ought to have dramatically reduced these service issues and led to a better customer experience overall!
There is waterproof specification levels. I haven't met one consumer product which doesn't let moisture in. I live in a hot country (not over 40ºC mind you)
If I not being precise, keeping your phone in your jeans deep tight pocket when you are sweating or raining will cause you problems. It might seem too many coincidences for you, but it is common enough that some of us avoid keeping the phone in the pocket.
I like to wash my phone under the tap, not getting paranoid of having it in a table close to the pool while drinking a few beers with my wife and friends, it is a really nice to have feature if you live in a warmer climate.
Kayaking, fishing, river floating, surfing, diving, snorkeling, etc. "No one I know takes their phone snorkeling" <- that's because they're not presently waterproof, but I imagine a lot of people would like to take a high quality camera under water.
Tens of millions of people have outdoor hobbies that puts them in direct or incidental contact with water. Hundreds of millions live in places where rain happens. Billions live in situations where a spill of drinking water (or water based liquids) are a real risk for thier phones.
I don't want to take extra care and caution just to have a life and a fone. Theoretically this thing makes my life easier and I want it to act like it damnit.
I think it's mostly marketing. When all phones are identical glass rectangles, the only meaningful way to distinguish your product is by being the biggest, thinnest, highest IP-rating.
Most of these metrics are entirely orthogonal to what any real person wants from a phone, but that's an irrelevant detail to marketing types
I actually never did. I think you're only supposed to replace it on those scuba-style watches with screw-on casebacks that shred the gasket when fully tightened to ensure a tight seal.
But on those watches with 4 screws on the case, the gasket seemed fine to me to keep reusing.
I think a lot of sealing rings / gaskets are meant to be single use. I had to swap the heater on my hot tub a while back and the store told me to change the o-rings on the inlet and outlet as it was unlikely the prior ones would re-seal after being loosened.
Timex has been making iron-man watches held together with Philips-head screws that can withstand 100 meters of water pressure since the mid-1980s. Waterproofing is no excuse for this nonsense.
I once had a cheap Timex watch die from water ingress after running a track workout during a torrential downpour. At the time I joked that it only failed because we ran farther than the 100m rating
Watch cases are relatively huge for what needs to be inside them. You can see the difference between an entire smartphone and a simple time keeping device, right?
They also don’t have the long aspect ratio of phones (bending moment).
This doesn’t compare to phones at all. It’s like trying to compare your TI-83 calculator to a MacBook Pro
Now go look up why they stopped riveting ships in the 40's and went to welding, there are no modern riveted ships.
Cheap aluminum boats are still riveted, welding preferred of obvious reasons. I have an old riveted aluminum John boat and is leaks through the rivets and seams...
I think the USB & speaker are the weak links for water ingress. Also, a removable battery would (probably?) significantly weaken the phone. So, if you dropped it, it'd be more likely to sustain real damage.
I don't see them as very big weak points. USB doesn't have enough voltage to do jack in water even if you don't detect the water and turn it off. And the speaker can be made entirely out of waterproof materials, there are literally waterproof floating pool speakers you can buy for dirt cheap. The weak link is the main oring/glue as always.
"Remember the time Apple fixed iOS so the iPhone would run instead of crashing under low voltage conditions" remains, to me, the most inexplicable of HN's mass psychoses.
Remember that they did it secretly and denied it for ages, only to backtrack and use this excuse when it was actually proven they were slowing the devices.
Dont let the marketing spin white-wash your long term memory of an event.
Watch apple secretly defining 1000 charge cycles as 1500 10%-80% "normal use" days.
(Remember the "full charge in 8 minutes fiasco? Well, I searched a reference but I didn't find any :/)
Doesn't seem like a problem. Assuming the phone needs recharging every 3 days, that's 80% capacity remaining after ~8.2 years; longer than the OS is likely to be supported. Assuming a recharge every 2 days, that's 80% capacity remaining after ~5.5 years.
I'm guessing they use very conservative usage in their math. I'm on my pixel all day long but I barely use my iPhone 13 more than maybe an hour a day. I can leave it unplugged all weekend and come back Monday with enough charge to get me through the day.
Reminds me when I tried to warranty a macbook air battery a couple years ago. I was already under 80% within the warranty period per System Profiler. They hook up their diagnostics and turns out, System Profiler is wrong, I was at 81% capacity after 1 year. No repair for me.
Yeah, and it's BS because in real usage iPhone batteries almost never reach this lifespan. Apple's lobby made this law ineffective, I hope customers start suing.
That had me thinking as well. What if the manufacturer says that to get to that number you are only allowed to charge it to 80% ever? My iPhone pro battery is at 92% at 417 cycles over 20 months.
The problem is that consumers want to buy a phone with 24 hours of runtime and an EV with 200 miles of range, and they want the phone to be thin and light and the car to be fast and light, and manufacturers want to achieve those capacities with as little electrochemistry as possible. The number of charge cycles at full capacity will be a big deal a year or two in, but on the sales floor it's a secondary concern for typical buyers and sellers.
Playing fast and loose with the numbers, I'm sure that if 100% on the display was 80% in the battery and 0% was 20%, you'd have an amazing number of charge cycles. You could program that 40% of unused capacity to be reduced as the battery ages very slowly, and by the time the used capacity is only at 80% of its original revealed capacity you're at many thousands of cycles. But you'd have a phone or car that weighed 40% more and cost 40% more than one that had no buffer and ran at the bleeding edge on day 1.
Absent breakthroughs in battery chemistry, this basically regulates the amount of buffer capacity that manufacturers are required to include in their ~~lies~~ marketing materials.
As others have mentioned this is for phones with batteries that can’t survive a reasonable number of cycles.
That’s a reasonable exemption, in my opinion. I don’t want to pay the extra penalties of reduced structural rigidity and water tightness for a battery that I don’t need to replace for 3-4 years anyway.
I do wish one manufacturer would make a flagship phone with replaceable battery so all of the uncompromising replaceable battery fans could have a phone that fits their niche demands rather than trying to force everyone else to pay the extra costs (price, size, water intrusion, structural rigidity) that would come with laws forcing all phones to have removable batteries.
> I don’t want to pay the extra penalties of reduced structural rigidity and water tightness for a battery that I don’t need to replace for 3-4 years anyway.
What are you doing to your phone that needs all that? Using it as a hammer? Temporary support while building a tunnel?
> a battery that I don’t need to replace for 3-4 years anyway.
This is not just about battery replacement. I used to keep several fully charged batteries stocked in my rucksack whenever I went hiking or anywhere else that was remote. After a day of taking photos in the wild its nice to be able to just chuck in a fresh batttery and off you go.
I feel like this feature of phones was not only lost, but pretty much forgotten about after smartphones stopped including user replaceable batteries.
External battery banks are a far superior solution now that almost everything has standardized on USB and we have power banks supporting high speed charging.
They can be charged with the same power adapter you use to charge your phone, without the need of an extra docking thing.
They can be used to charge any USB-chargeable device.
They are not tied to your specific model, and thus you're not vendor locked with them, making them cheaper and easier to find anywhere in the world.
They come in multiple capacities, allowing you to plan in advance your energy needs and choose the right size bank for your situation.
They are far more sturdier than any modern battery, which makes them more resistant to puncture and bending.
They don't have external contacts that could potentially short in contact with conductive surfaces.
I use a lot of rechargeable AAA and AA batteries. They have lower voltage than alkaline batteries (by design apparently), which is not normally an issue, but sometimes is a deal breaker. E.g. my thermostat did not like lower voltage AA batteries and shut down prematurely a number of times.
There's challenges adopting standardized rechargeable batteries, e.g. trying to recharge alkaline batteries risks fire/explosion (and you know that will happen far too often given the number of people out there), but if we have had standard battery sizes, voltages, and capacities for rechargeable batteries, things would be so much better.
Replaceable batteries are one thing, but truly hot swappable batteries like you're asking for will absolutely effect the waterproofing and add a lot of weight/size. Is there a reason you can't just bring a battery pack in your rucksack? They make magnetic ones you can slap on the back and be on your way.
Continuing to take photos with a battery pack hanging off a device is no where near as simple as popping in a fresh 100% battery and coninuing as normal.
yes exactly my point, I dont want to wait to charge up my device with another device. I just want to pop in a fresh 100% battery. It used to be so simple.
There's tons of MagSafe battery packs for iPhones. They charge the phone continuously. There's no need to let the phone drop to zero before attaching the battery pack. There's also cases with integral batteries. I assume there's Android equivalents for various phones.
I'd say these are more convenient than extra swappable batteries. They have integral charge controllers and charge via USB. There's no need to charge them in the phone or have to buy some extra external battery charger.
My powerbrick connects to the back of my phone. Form factor wise it's pretty close to my extra large StarTac removable battery that I would carry around.
Apologies, my coment came off a bit unecessarily aggressive.
It is my preference to have user replaceable batteries, and my belief is that they were only removed to make phones become obselete quicker and cause higher turnover of purchased phones.
Many flagship phones promise 7 years of security updates now. 3-4 years means the battery will only last for half that time, and heavy users (1 cycle per day) will hit that quota in under 2.75 years.
Then the law should just make sure that there's a second source at least for the batteries, that technicians have free access to disassembly instructions, and that it can be done without undue effort or risk.
Requiring common tools or technical skills for replacing something that last 4 years is not a hassle to justify enshitiffying phones design as long as you're not vendor locked for such replacement, and a technician can do it in a reasonable amount of time, with reasonable tool and without the risk of degrading the functionality of the device doing so.
Should we not expect phones to last more than 3-4 years? We aren't in the exponential performance growth and requirements part of the smartphone world anymore, a 5-7 year old phone can be a perfectly functional device. Isn't it unfortunate that a perfectly good phone gets turned to e-waste years before it has to, just because a consumable part of it happens to be non-replaceable?
This regulation isn't primarily for fans of replaceable batteries, it's driven by general concerns about e-waste. It's unclear how much it might actually reduce e-waste in practice but it will certainly increase compliance costs.
> Lots and lots of gadgets with removable batteries and waterproof design as evidence.
And this is a BS rebuttal. None of them achieve the same miniaturization and water tightness as iPhone.
This law is basically government being co-opted by a tiny vocal minority to force their unpopular opinions onto the rest of the public.
If any modest percentage of the market cared about replaceable batteries above all else in their phones, the market would already be packed with removable battery phone options.
Unless you have giant hands, with modern screen sizes, thinner devices are not merely a luxury. For people that have active outdoor lives, water resistance is also non-negotiable.
The only thing that you should care about if you are being pratical and not just an annoying nagging geek, is that you are not forced to use an authorized reseller to buy a replacement battery, and that batteries can be bought from third party suppliers.
Having to have a corner-shop cheap technician doing it once every 3 years is an acceptable trade-off in exchange to get thinner and water-resistant devices.
I just called the shop to replace the perfectly fine e-Call battery in my soon four year old Hyundai car. 250€ to change a battery that has a ten year lifespan. I am not allowed to replace it on my own as it would invalidate the five year long guarantee provided by the manufacturer (not the one by law). Why is this stuff not considered as well?
Also curious whether the "specialized devices" exemptions are AND requirements. Even if those are AND, wouldn’t smartphone manufacturers try to satisfy all three of them?
> I am not allowed to replace it on my own as it would invalidate the five year long guarantee provided by the manufacturer. Why is this stuff not considered as well?
They're the ones paying for repairs, so it doesn't seem that unreasonable? That said: If you can prove the car is being maintained according to the manufacturer's specifications they can't require you to go to a brand dealership. That's just not necessarily easy to prove.
The number of people worried about a slightly thicker phone are absolutely baffling to me. I honestly think there is no hope for us broadly. Normally I'd say that people cannot deal with minor inconveniences -- but this does not even register as an inconvenience.
From my view, this is a _perceived_ downgrade in luxury status. Not even a real downgrade in luxury status -- and not a downgrade in convenience whatsoever.
You can bet it will be measured in such a way that the major companies’ devices will qualify. And that it will have little bearing on the retained charge amount you’ll have in real life use. I’m at 82% and 714 cycles. But it’s a joke to suggest that all cycles are equal. Some people never go outside the 20-80 band, others charge to 100% and keep it there all day, then burn it down to 10%. Both of those generate “cycles” but are very far apart.
We have similar phones. I’m now at 82% at 714 cycles. In real life, our devices wouldn’t qualify but I’m sure Apple will be allowed to write the testing methodology in a way that’ll be nice and gentle.
Huh interesting datapoint. I just checked on mine, also August 2023 15PM, and 86% @ 707 cycles here. I’m pretty careless with charging it whenever is convenient/letting it drain to 0% while traveling/etc as well.
It’s more about the calendric aging than number of cycles these days. My own stayed at 99% until ~400 cycles, and then in a few days it dropped to 94%.
Wait, that’s not true: In true regulatory capture fashion, I’ll bet the exemption requires some sort of testing/certification that makes it significantly more expensive for smaller firms to bring devices to market.
> I’ll bet the exemption requires some sort of testing/certification that makes it significantly more expensive for smaller firms to bring devices to market.
Maybe that would be the case in the US but since that is the EU it will likely be some kind of self-certification where the manufacturer swears that they're not lying, and if enough people complain then maybe one of the national regulators will look into it and ask the manufacturer to do better.
Recently my 2021 macBook gave me an alert that its battery was not charging past 80%. I took it to the Apple Store and because it had only been through 971 charge cycles, the battery was replaced for free.
All new phones sold in the EU already include information on declared battery life and the number of charge cycles before reaching 80% battery health. The vast majority of phones will meet this requirement.
Looks like saner minds prevailed. Almost nobody needs or wants that. Having to pay a street corner repair shop to replace a battery only after 3 or 4 years of usage is completely worth a price to pay for having thinner batteries.
Smartwatches should also be on the list. My Apple Watch 8 is at 76% maximum capacity. Apparently it costs $99 to have Apple replace the battery, which is probably not worth it.
My initial reaction as an EU citizen is “oh hell no” because it gave me flashbacks to removable covers with clips that broke my nails. But after reading the article where it mentions that the battery is also considered removable if standard tools should be used, I’m quite okay with it. I welcome getting more rugged and durable devices.
Serious question: how are you worse off with a cover that breaks your nails vs. the status quo: a cover that’s glued on and a battery that’s glued in? If they did bring that back, couldn’t you just not open the cover and be just as happy?
Unless you have giant hands, with modern screen sizes, thinner devices are not merely a luxury. For people that have active outdoor lives, water resistance is also non-negotiable.
The only thing that you should care about if you are being pratical and not just an annoying nagging geek, is that you are not forced to use an authorized reseller to buy a replacement battery, and that batteries can be bought from third party suppliers.
Having to have a corner-shop cheap technician doing it once every 3 years is an acceptable trade-off in exchange to get thinner and water-resistant devices.
The covers were typically flimsy and used flimsy hooks in addition to the flimsy push pin. Actually most of my annoyance stems from the hooks breaking easily and the covers not closing flush. I would not want to return to that time where dropping a phone leads to covers flying around.
It is my assumption that any cover that still requires screws that it will be both more sturdy and easier to close flush.
The current status quo of having sleek devices while having batteries relatively easily replaced yourself or even quite cheaply in every phone shop. I’m not so bothered by the status quo.
The size and shape of the battery depends on the size and shape of the phone, as well as the internal structure (which is highly variable). At that point you might as well just legislate that everyone must build iPhone 17's.
> 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 […] 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.
"Special tool" is not used in the actual regulation; the requirement is that replacement must be possible with basic tools, defined:
> (50) 'basic tools' means a screwdriver for slotted heads, a screwdriver for cross recess screws, a screwdriver for hexalobular recess heads [Torx], a hexagon socket key, a combination wrench, combination pliers, combination pliers for wire stripping and terminal crimping, half round nose pliers, diagonal cutters, multigrip pliers, locking pliers, a prying lever, tweezers, magnifying glass, a spudger and a pick;
(Excepted devices can require "commercially available tools" which is defined exactly as you'd expect.)
This is a waste of money. All flagship phones have hit the requirements so do not need to make them removable. It might impact some of the budget garbage but not yet clear. All this will do is increase compliance costs.
Which is really my issue with this type of legislation. If they had it clearly estimated it would be incredible because you can measure the impact but as it stands it could go either way.
Lots of non-flagship phones making e-waste. This is a sensibly-tailored regulation, targeting the problem instead of specifying a solution because some bureaucrat likes replaceable batteries.
What makes it not accurate? With the 15, apple was already making claims about 80% at 1000 cycles. Battery degradation has too many variables for you to make your claim and even in perfect situation, it’s not a linear degradation by cycle. My 17 is at 100 cycles with 100% health.
Back to my original claim. Most manufacturers already meet the exception. Some of the low end garbage phones may not but it’s unclear how meaningful of the market share that will be.
> If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't.
This argument gets thrown about every time companies make anti-consumer changes, and it completely ignores the information asymmetry and other dynamics at play. When I go to the store to buy a new phone, where does it list on the box how repairable the device is? Where does it show how expensive the repair will be? If I'm locked in the apple ecosystem, where do I buy an iPhone with a replaceable battery?
Your assumption that the market is driven by informed consumer choices presupposes that every buyer is an expert.
So you're suggesting we all just need to buy exclusively flip phones for a few years to send the market a signal that it wants replaceable batteries. Then the free market will do its thing and keep the engine of innovation running
Speaking of which, does anyone want to do a list of "features added to smartphones over the last 10 years" vs "features removed from smartphones over the last 10 years" so we can see just what innovations are at risk?
I'm not suggesting anything, I'm simply offering the reality of the smartphone market. What you are suggesting is a contrived, exaggerated take of how markets function.
People generally like small, thin phones, as evidenced by the billions sold. It really isn't much more complicated than that.
To steelman your response some, there's also the Samsung XCover 7. It has a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor (from 2024, two years newer than the latest Kyocera Duraforce) and up to 8GB RAM. But it's still not exactly a flagship device, and the American telcos I checked only offer the 6GB RAM variant.
I want removeable batteries in my phone, largely because it means I don't have to buy them a lot!
I ran my LG G5 with replaceable batteries from 2016 through 2021, at which point there were no affordable replaceable-battery phones left. I bought quite a few replacement batteries, even trying aftermarket batteries with varying levels of success after the OEM LG ones were discontinued.
That is, of course, a problem for manufacturers that want to sell a lot of phones.
> "If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't."
For that to happen there obviously needs to be a supply worth writing home about. Furthermore, speaking purely for myself, a removable battery is not a must but a nice-to-have. A lot of slabs that have removable batteries are out of the game for entirely different reasons.
> For that to happen there obviously needs to be a supply worth writing home about.
Not really. If there’s no supply, it’s probably because the manufacturers did a market analysis and decided it’s not even worth it to offer that. So either their analysis is extremely wrong and it actually would sell, or the consumers don’t want to buy it that bad.
> "If there’s no supply, it’s probably because the manufacturers [...] decided it’s not even worth it to offer that."
You got it surrounded. Why offer devices that you have to support for a longer time (e. g. enterprise models) when there's more money to be made when you enshittify (which obviously goes beyond just batteries)?
Because you’ll be the only manufacturer making the desired product and have 100% of this market? If there are multiple manufacturers competing, surely one of them would do it if it’s profitable?
Yeah, sure, some of them already do. Their market share is practically negligible, enterprise players (e. g. Samsung with their Galaxy Xcover line) notwithstanding. That, on a strictly personal level, still doesn't mean they offer a desirable product.
So really it's not about phones having a removable battery, but a whole host of other features plus a removable battery. Which is just untenable from a regulatory POV.
That's not the point. It being done in a local shop for a few bucks with no small letter text saying that "we may break your screen in half because this thing can't be repaired properly". It mentions that it should not use glue, not need solvent and only commercially available tools may be usable (or they have to be provided next to the phone).
Nonsense. It just mandates easier repairability and spare parts availability, not ad-hoc replacement. Also this does not apply if the battery is able to retain 80% of its original capacity after 1,000 charge cycles so "innovative" manufacturers just need to use high quality batteries.
that isnt how markets really work. you could say that if apple had two otherwise identical iphones except one has removable battery and one doesn't. but the enshittification cycle works via a ratcheting effect. once you achieve a certain level of dominance and lock-in, you can start getting away with all kinds of anti-consumer strategies to make more money and not get punished for it, and your competitors will follow suit. as long as you can ratchet above whatever detrimental thing you want to get away with is you'll probably be fine.
you can look at the lightning connector as an example. if you said "if people wanted usb connectivity they wouldn't buy iphones", nobody would take you seriously. and when apple was forced to switch, it absolutely didnt tank their sales because people just loved the lightning connector so much. the bad thing went away and it was great.
If Apple could make money from removable batteries, meaning there was a market for it and people wanted it over some other alternative, are you suggesting they are not smart enough to do the research and work necessary to accomplish that?
The reality is people don't want it, at all. At least not enough to warrant action. So the story ends there.
Also, the lighting connector is better than USB in every way. Mandating an inferior technology is an odd choice.
False dichotomy. The question isn't whether you can make money with a replaceable battery, but whether you can make more money by selling specialized service (or an entirely new phone) than a battery. What else are people going to do, not buy a phone? Switch operating systems entirely?
This whole thing becomes more obvious in the Android world, where models with various features do exist, but only in certain markets
Even then, this whole line of argument seems moot because if the battery still holds enough charge over time the regulations don't even require it to be replaceable
The link is not working for me, but I hope they have defined what "removable" means (removable without special tools)
If not, a lot of companies are going to argue that they already make removable batteries
IIRC, screwdrivers and prying tools are not considered special. Removal cannot require solvents or heat, but I believe those pull tab glue pads are allowed.
I wish those prying tools were considered "special". I have a very low success rate at opening up any device that's held together with "clips" without snapping any plastic. It inevitably means "force it just hard-enough to break stuff if you don't do it absolutely perfectly".
Also, removeable by who? Its all very well saying its removeable, but thats useless if only possible by a skilled techinician with tools. I dont see the term 'user-removable' anywhere.
I want a phone with li-ion 18650! Because having a replaceable batteries won’t prevent the manufacturer from increasing those batteries prices so it’s equal to non replaceable ones. It would be great to have 18650 as a standard in all electronics, so you just carry dozens of them when you go out and you are set up for the weekend, no recharging, maybe even add hot swap too.
I'm not a fan of regulation in general but over the last decade it has been extremely frustrating with the removal of replaceable SD cards and batteries from Androids.
I never put my phones in my back pocket nor do I wear butt hugging leggings, so having a thick phone stick out my ass and make it look bad isn't on my list of worries. I end up purchasing thick waterproof cases for these slim phones anyways.
What's most confusing is the premium phones lack replaceable SD cards and batteries - it's like they are trying to take the worst ideas from the Apple ecosystem and simply don't understand why some people use Androids.
Surprisingly, it's the cheaper models that carry replaceable SD cards and batteries - I would have imagined the opposite!
I often go on trips and hikes with poor cellular coverage and having some SD cards with useful information or being able to swap them out as the camera gets full is really helpful. Attaching drives over the USB port isn't really practical.
When I do have cellular coverage, I might have to rapidly download a LOT of data, which overheats the phone and discharges the battery. With a replaceable battery, this isn't even an issue.
The benefits of replaceable batteries cannot be overstated when you're not on the grid or take great care of the phone where they last more than a few years. I can have a few batteries charged, during the day using solar that I can then just swap them in as evening sets in, instead of having to plug the phone into a powerbank and pray it doesn't shut off as I keep using it.
I keep hearing this over and over, but it's neglected to add that it sets a minimum durability requirement which applies only for a very small niche of ruggedized waterproof devices
Unless your device complies to MIL-STD-810G CN1 and has the certification to back it up your product will be required to add user replaceable batteries
>Unless your device complies to MIL-STD-810G CN1 and has the certification to back it up your product will be required to add user replaceable batteries
Can you provide your source for this? If nothing else, it's very surprising to me that an EU regulation uses a US standard as the baseline!
Edit: Having done a bit of reading on the standard, it also seems like the regulation needs quite a bit of detail if it really does rely on the MIL-STD, since the standard only defines test procedures, not pass/fail criteria?
This makes no sense but I still see it mindlessly repeated to exhaustion. That mention is in no way Apple specific, it’s a quality of the battery itself. Any manufacturer is in the same position, not like Apple has a monopoly on batteries that hold 80% charge after 1000 cycles.
I don’t understand how this could be measured fairly though. What kind of cycles? What temperatures was it exposed to? Charged fast or slow? This is an incomplete set of criteria, which seems designed specifically to be meaningless / gameable.
To me this seems like saying you can sell a car with a sealed gas tank as long as it “gets 40 miles per gallon.” And GM gets to decide the test course for measuring MPG, which will be a 2-mile slightly downhill coast with no stopping. Surprise! All our cars get 40-60MPG!
The unspoken implication here is that if your phone still retains 80% after 1000 cycles, then it’s probably so old and obsolete by then that battery replacement would be a silly waste of time, so why burden people with these “onerous rules” in that case.
But in reality, nothing about that metric, even if it’s true, means that customers don’t need to replace their batteries. My iPhone 15 Pro Max is in dire need of a battery replacement, at 82% after only 714 cycles. Aside from the battery, I have literally zero motivation to replace this phone. The phone manufacturers hate the idea that the battery might get replaced, because in this day and age it’s pretty much the only reason a 2 to 3-year-old phone (especially a flagship) isn’t extremely adequate for 99% of the population.
In the US the EPA gets to set the guidelines for mileage testing, which GM has to follow. We've already had a major case in penalties for not following the guidelines via VW and emissions.
It will likely boil down to "typical use" so in the event that someone wants to bring Apple to court over it and demonstrate the issue, it could solidify what's currently a little vague. Laws aren't required to get it perfect out of the gate.
> then it’s probably so old and obsolete by then that battery replacement would be a silly waste of time
obsolescence is a spectrum, if a swappable battery mandate gives a small % of devices a few extra years it would be worth it... I already give old devices to family members and kids on the "free is better than nothing" spectrum and a swappable battery would have extended the life at least a few of said devices, in my personal experience
The supposed aim of this is to reduce e-waste. But when 90% of smartphones sold are iPhones and Samsung Galaxies which are exempt it makes this bill completely pointless, as the ewaste it will save is a small fraction of a percentage of the total.
The introduction of glue into the assembly of consumer electronics is a crime against humanity and the Earth. If Timex could make iron-man watches 100-meter waterproof with Phillips-head jeweler's screws back in the '80s, there's no good reason smartphones and laptops can't. And there's a whole host of bad reasons to eschew screws.
Of course you can build a waterproof smartphone with screws (except the screen has to be bonded to the glass for capacitive touch to work and the glass to the frame so there’s still some glueing involved), but it would probably have 1cm bezels around the screen.
I think this was discussed recently on HN. It’s not a bad idea. There’s nothing about this that “ruins” anything else. This is not specific for phones even if everyone focuses on them. The usual arguments are waterproofing and thinness but we can still have them with removable batteries.
There's an exception for batteries that "retain at least 80% of its original capacity after 1,000 charge cycles." Coincidentally, iPhones and probably other flagships already qualify for this exception.
Last time this was discussed, it was stated that the text exempting based on cycle counts was removed from the final, adopted version. Is that incorrect?
On the page linked to it mentions the two exceptions that exempt iPhone and other flagship phones - long lifespan (80% after 1000 charges) and waterproof (IP67).
The other exemption criteria is for specialized (medical) devices and devices where a removable battery would be unsafe.
It does, but, in the previous HN discussion, there was a link to the what was reportedly the adopted version of the bill, and those exemptions were gone from the text.
[delayed]
i’m ok with this and an $80 battery replacement in exchange for better waterproofing
IP68, replaceable battery, phone jack, 5G: https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover6_pro-11600.php
Unfortunately it is from 2022, meaning no OS upgrades.
I think the next mandatory laws EU should pass is that manufacturers should either allow people to upgrade/replace the OS by themselves or provide mandatory upgrades for the next decade (i don't care how the manufacturers handle it, that's up to them, but the easiest way out of such a law is to allow people upgrade/replace the OS by themselves).
Why only one decade? I’m still running a 2012 Mac mini. Apple stopped updating Mac OS some time ago, but there are plenty of alternatives that can run on the bare metal. Hardware makers should be required to provide support for the life of the device (defined by customers still using the device), or provide a reasonable way to install 3rd party OS.
So, they have an XCover 7 now - with similar specs.
Also, they committed to a rather long support cycle for the xcover6 (5 years I think?) - I have one and it is still going strong. I've replaced the battery twice - not because I desperately needed to, but... why not. They are cheap, and I use the older ones still as backup battery packs since they are fast to swap in.
It's receiving monthly updates: https://security.samsungmobile.com/workScope.smsb
Would be really nice. Seems like even android is getting more and more locked down
It's not going to happen, because government need backdoors to the devices. That's why ability to flash own os is severely limited.
I feel like the fact that the phone-with-removal-battery option already exists and is not popular in the market should be a signal to EU politicians about how much the public actually values this capability.
You can't buy an iphone with this functionality, and many people are locked into that walled garden for a lot of different reasons.
That's fine, but even among Android users, nobody buys these removable battery phones. It's possible there's a disproportionate reservoir of iPhone&removable battery-only consumers, but it would surprise me if the desire for a reusable battery were strongly correlated with being locked into the Apple ecosystem. If anything, I would expect the propensity to desire removable batteries is more strongly correlated with Android use.
2 mm thicker and 58 grams heavier than the latest iPhone.
The horror.
It is also a rugged phone. So if you want to make a fair comparison with an iPhone, you have to put the iPhone in a case, resulting in a similar weight and thickness.
Oh yeah so it's utter trash and not worthy of our attention. Imagine carrying a whole 58 grams more, during a whole day, impossible for the average tech worker's atrophied muscles
The point is that people have different preferences, so the EU should not force people to buy phones with removable batteries. People who want such features can buy those phones, and people who want smaller, thinner phones can buy ones with integrated batteries.
At most the EU should tax externalities like electronic waste, though that would be a rounding error compared to the cost of the phone itself.
Such phones with removable batteries are incredibly rare, such that finding one is quite likely to fail if you have any other concerns at all.
If a truly well made phone was common and made by many people, then there'd be much less argument for this regulation.
What do you mean by "rare"? You just click "order". It's not like you have to go on the quest for the lost arc or anything like that. They are uncommon in the sense that people don't actually get them, but that's not because of a lack of availability. People do not want them.
Phones with removable batteries are rare because only a small fraction of people want phones with removable batteries. Phone manufacturers also dislike removable batteries because customers buy cheap 3rd party batteries and complain when these batteries perform poorly or malfunction, sometimes by exploding. And then the headline is, “Phone made by company X explodes.” not, “Cheap battery explodes.” Removable batteries also introduce new failure modes like contacts degrading, causing phones to power off unexpectedly when jostled or flexed in certain ways. That increases the risk of a recall and bad PR.
I and millions of others want a phone that is smaller than the current offerings. Heck, my 13 mini is too big for my tastes. But I don’t think that means the government should force phone manufacturers to make smaller phones. So too for features like removable batteries, physical keyboards, or headphone jacks.
> The point is that people have different preferences, so the EU should not force people to buy phones with removable batteries.
There are many food additives with very useful properties, but health effects. There are many perfumes too where the original formulation had a particular compound layer found to be carcinogenic.
Regardless of whether an individual prefers to use such compounds at their own risk or not, large companies will use whatever is the cheapest ingredient for their product.
In some cases, that's better for the consumer - who, often, has almost zero choice.
(And if you think you truly have choice as a consumer, I challenge you to use a phone that isn't running either Apple or Google's code.)
We weren't given a choice in the first place.
That assumes that the market itself is actually "free" and consistent and that there are no bad actors in the mix, and upstarts are allowed to freely start and compete. Given the regulations in the space that is emphatically not so.
Incumbents will remove and enshitify a number of features in order to maximize returns... Your new drying has a 10 year mechanical waranty.. but the control board isn't covered, will die in 12-24 months and won't be produced again. Oh and there's some clunky DRM in the mix on top. Guess you get to buy a new dryer, but this time you'll go with $OtherShittyBrandThatDoesTheSameThing.
This has been repeated so so many times... How can you be sure that throwaway glued-together phones are thinner and lighter than repairable phones.. If there is any source of this information, it's vendors who have interest in phones being non-repairable so they can ship more units...
How about vendors get on their asses and design thinner and lighter phones that are not e-waste from the moment they leave the factory?
I bet you when forced to make the right decision they can go even thinner and lighter than the current flagships...
For that matter, I put a chonky case on my phone anyway... would rather have a sturdier phone that doesn't need an additional case that has the features I'd like, including an easily replaced/swapped battery.
Beyond this, hell, make the "internal" battery solid-state with minimal capacity and have an external power pack from the get-go as part of case designs. Get the size of battery you want... if you want a big booty phone with battery for days, you can get it.
I get what you're saying but please be friendly here.
FFS. Everything is a compromise. People who want smaller and lighter are not more wrong than those who want battery and physical protection.
Erm, I mean they kind of are given the massive externalities non user serviceable parts causes.
Earth's resources are finite, both in terms of raw materials and ability to absorb pollution. Stewardship of our resources entails the regulation of the things we create with those resources such that our collective consumption is conserved. Such oversight is both prudent, and as history and global outcomes teach, quite necessary.
And 4 years old... I wouldn't buy this new
There's a new model the 7 pro https://m.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_xcover7_pro-13780.php
No 3.5mm jack though :-/
The comment is not meant to give you something to buy, it's just proof that it can technically be done, they just don't want to do it for modern flagships.
> it can technically be done
At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs.
I like it when different producers select a different subset of priorities for their offer. Competition at work. One of the reasons we witnessed such an awesome evolution in the smartphone market.
I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition.
> At what cost though?! And no, I am not talking about money. Any device (and any product really) is a set of tradeoffs.
My $200 Moto G3 in 2016 had a removable back cover (admittedly not battery). It was also waterproof (and had a headphone jack.)
The engineering of making things waterproof is in the realm of "A bit more annoying but easily doable if anyone's interested in doing it", not "Doable at the cost of everything else".
The tradeoff was discussed in a sibling thread: it's heavier by 58 grams and thicker by 2mm. That's it. That's the tradeoff. Why go crazy on the guy?
That's with the latest iphone, not the equivalent iphone from when this was released.
So the fun plateau will be less pronounced and fun?
I hate when a technocrat at a multi-billion dollar company makes those decisions, maximizing profit and not giving a fuck about any other criteria.
> At what cost though?!
maybe just a little less margin for apple...
> I like it when different producers select a different subset of priorities for their offer. Competition at work. One of the reasons we witnessed such an awesome evolution in the smartphone market. > > I hate it when a bureaucrat dictates a set of demands with absolutely zero regard to the cost or the tradeoffs involved in product decisions and market competition.
I generally agree with that sentiment, except we don't have a vibrant market of many options with many different trade offs. Finding headphone jack, solid reparability, user swappable battery, easily replaceable USB port, and all the other things that one might want is basically impossible. The vast majority of phones are highly unrepairable, have no headphone jack, have everything soldered to a tiny number of internal boards, and are full of anti repair dark patterns.
Ugly as hell
The two don't have to be mutually exclusive.
Also, it's water - resistance.
There is not waterproofing, on any phone. Yes, when you buy it, no after 3 years when the glue that waterproofs no longer sticks due to ageing.
It really depends on the model, manufacturer, & luck. I’ve never had a phone lose its water resistance. The phone I use today (a 13 mini) is almost five years old and I clean it by running it under the faucet.
I cleaned a Samsung A53 under the faucet about 2 years after purchase brand new, using only a little water.
It failed soon after from water damage. I had to get it dried out and a new screen fitted, and some functions never worked properly since then.
I expected better as the specs claim IP67 ("Submersible in up to 1 meter of fresh water for up to 30 minutes"), and I used only a little water.
"Yes, when you buy it, no after 3 years when the glue that waterproofs no longer sticks due to ageing."
My 2014 Kyocera Duraforce Pro is STILL waterproof and I use it for underwater photography incessantly.
all that water is keeping the glue moist
I'm kinda surprised with esim, wireless charging and Bluetooth noones just made a phone with a solid layer of glass completely surrounding it for 100% waterproofing
A lack of physical port makes troubleshooting more difficult. Apple didn’t remove the diagnostic port from their watches until the series 7. Also I think certain governments require that phones have a USB-C port.
My low-cost plastic Casio watch based on a very old design is waterproof and battery can be swapped out by undoing 4 philips screws, no glue. Its buttons can also be operated under water while staying waterproof.
What is this whicraft?
I normally much prefer screws over glue but Apple has at least been using repair-friendly glue like the electrically debonding adhesive in use for iPhone 16e/17e.
Friendly for who? I certainly cant electrically debond chemical compounds, but I sure do know how to undo a screw.
And you can't follow a guide either? All you have to do is clip a 9v battery on.
Do you also consider yourself incapable of jump starting a car because you might have to look up instructions first?
Yes. Dont assume that everybody is technically minded such as yourself.
I know plenty of people that would never even consider jump starting thei car. However are also quite happy with poppping open a battery cover and doing a simple swap like any other battery powered device.
You don't have to be "technically minded" to figure this out. It's not spinning up a Kubernetes cluster, it's a picture with an arrow that says "Clip red wire here". Simply driving a car is a thousand times more complicated, and we expect most everybody to be capable of that.
There's also a difference between not wanting to do something, and not being capable of it.
Well yeah any glue is worse than screws: this I agree with you. But attaching a 9V battery to the glue is around the same difficulty as applying torque with a screwdriver.
The buttons can’t be operated underwater. You’ve been lucky thus far. Casio asks you not to use the buttons underwater.
https://www.casio-intl.com/asia/en/wat/water_resistance/
> Even if a watch is water-resistant, do not operate its buttons or crown while it is submersed in water or wet.
An Apple product manager just fainted at the thought of a user taking a screwdriver to an iPhone.
not if they manage to find a screw head that can only be opened by a clean, minimalist, proprietary, expensive Apple screwdriver
You joke but...
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Lukyamzn-P2-P5-P6-Pentalobe-Scre...
At first it looks like a normal torx head, but then you realize it has 5 lobes instead of 6. Apple used these on early iPhone models when you actually could open them with this proprietary screwdriver.
I get it for watches, but I've never understood the mass-market need for a waterproof phone, outside of a few niche hobbies. Are people showering and swimming with their phones or something? Or dropping them in their toilets? The wettest my phone has ever been in 8 years is in my pocket while it's raining.
People in humid climates and cold climates were regularly having their phones get denied warranty service because the water ingress stickers turned red due to condensation, without ever exposing their phone to water immersion. This was understandably upsetting for a lot of people who just wanted their phone to be fixed under warranty.
Thus, companies put in a big effort to seal their phones against dust and water, which ought to have dramatically reduced these service issues and led to a better customer experience overall!
There is waterproof specification levels. I haven't met one consumer product which doesn't let moisture in. I live in a hot country (not over 40ºC mind you)
If I not being precise, keeping your phone in your jeans deep tight pocket when you are sweating or raining will cause you problems. It might seem too many coincidences for you, but it is common enough that some of us avoid keeping the phone in the pocket.
Life happens, people want the assurance that their phone isn’t necessarily e-garbage after an accidental dunk.
I like to wash my phone under the tap, not getting paranoid of having it in a table close to the pool while drinking a few beers with my wife and friends, it is a really nice to have feature if you live in a warmer climate.
> Or dropping them in their toilets?
That.
It’s also nice to be able to wash them under the tap
Notably a bigger problem for women who must put their phones in their back pockets due to having no/small pockets in front.
I like to wash my phones every now and then. Even submerging them in water.
I'd rather have an 3.5mm audio jack
Kayaking, fishing, river floating, surfing, diving, snorkeling, etc. "No one I know takes their phone snorkeling" <- that's because they're not presently waterproof, but I imagine a lot of people would like to take a high quality camera under water.
Tens of millions of people have outdoor hobbies that puts them in direct or incidental contact with water. Hundreds of millions live in places where rain happens. Billions live in situations where a spill of drinking water (or water based liquids) are a real risk for thier phones.
I don't want to take extra care and caution just to have a life and a fone. Theoretically this thing makes my life easier and I want it to act like it damnit.
What, you stop refreshing HN while you're showing?
Yes, people are so addicted to scrolling their idiotic looping videos that they take their phones in public pools. Saw it myself.
I think it's mostly marketing. When all phones are identical glass rectangles, the only meaningful way to distinguish your product is by being the biggest, thinnest, highest IP-rating.
Most of these metrics are entirely orthogonal to what any real person wants from a phone, but that's an irrelevant detail to marketing types
How do they waterproof around the screws?
They don't. The screws are outside of the gasket: https://rmdd.net/writing/2023/sensor-watch/2.jpeg
Usually there is a gasket, which ages just like glue (it gets stiff and brittle) and should be replaced every decade or so.
technically you're meant to replace the rubber ring around it, but yes, not hard to do.
I actually never did. I think you're only supposed to replace it on those scuba-style watches with screw-on casebacks that shred the gasket when fully tightened to ensure a tight seal.
But on those watches with 4 screws on the case, the gasket seemed fine to me to keep reusing.
I think a lot of sealing rings / gaskets are meant to be single use. I had to swap the heater on my hot tub a while back and the store told me to change the o-rings on the inlet and outlet as it was unlikely the prior ones would re-seal after being loosened.
That's common on high-pressure systems. It's not very common on diving-depth water-proof equipment.
A gasket.
Timex has been making iron-man watches held together with Philips-head screws that can withstand 100 meters of water pressure since the mid-1980s. Waterproofing is no excuse for this nonsense.
I once had a cheap Timex watch die from water ingress after running a track workout during a torrential downpour. At the time I joked that it only failed because we ran farther than the 100m rating
Is there any chance it was counterfeit (Timexx or so)
Watch cases are relatively huge for what needs to be inside them. You can see the difference between an entire smartphone and a simple time keeping device, right?
They also don’t have the long aspect ratio of phones (bending moment).
This doesn’t compare to phones at all. It’s like trying to compare your TI-83 calculator to a MacBook Pro
Then use more screws. Stud them all the way down the perimeter of the back 1cm apart for all I care. Still better than heat-guns and prying.
Adding more holes to a surface isn't going to make it more waterproof
Tell that to boat hull riveters
Now go look up why they stopped riveting ships in the 40's and went to welding, there are no modern riveted ships.
Cheap aluminum boats are still riveted, welding preferred of obvious reasons. I have an old riveted aluminum John boat and is leaks through the rivets and seams...
You'd be really interested to learn the difference between a rivet and a screw.
Rivets use holes, exactly the thing the parent mentioned about not being waterproof.
They also don't have speakers, microphones, and charging ports.
My Galaxy Watch disagrees.
I think the USB & speaker are the weak links for water ingress. Also, a removable battery would (probably?) significantly weaken the phone. So, if you dropped it, it'd be more likely to sustain real damage.
I don't see them as very big weak points. USB doesn't have enough voltage to do jack in water even if you don't detect the water and turn it off. And the speaker can be made entirely out of waterproof materials, there are literally waterproof floating pool speakers you can buy for dirt cheap. The weak link is the main oring/glue as always.
displayedBatteryHealthPercent = max(80, actualBatteryHealthPercent);
(I suspect the health figures displayed are already somewhat fudged to try and downplay the reality of battery degradation?)
Still, the majority of the population would get a phone with replaceable battery.
All the top smartphone manufacturers hit that bar, at least for their mid and high end phones. The focus on apple is misleading and weird.
This will only impact bottom barrel phones.
Exactly. Apple and Samsung phones account for 90% of the market and are exempt fro mthis bill. So just how much ewaste will it prevent?
Remember ios 10.2.1? Batterygate?
That was 10 years ago. Are there any other instances similar that are more recent?
"Remember the time Apple fixed iOS so the iPhone would run instead of crashing under low voltage conditions" remains, to me, the most inexplicable of HN's mass psychoses.
Remember that they did it secretly and denied it for ages, only to backtrack and use this excuse when it was actually proven they were slowing the devices.
Dont let the marketing spin white-wash your long term memory of an event.
In my bubble, some. In the general population? Very very few.
Huh, my iPhones have never come close to this. They are always under 80% capacity before 1000 charge cycles.
My iPhone 13 Mini is almost 5 years old and well over 1000 charges and the battery health app reports 81% which I believe.
unfortunately, it will be based on _design_ / _rated_ capacity, probably.
Watch apple secretly defining 1000 charge cycles as 1500 10%-80% "normal use" days. (Remember the "full charge in 8 minutes fiasco? Well, I searched a reference but I didn't find any :/)
Doesn't seem like a problem. Assuming the phone needs recharging every 3 days, that's 80% capacity remaining after ~8.2 years; longer than the OS is likely to be supported. Assuming a recharge every 2 days, that's 80% capacity remaining after ~5.5 years.
You have a very loose definition of recharge and charge cycle which seems to fit Apples marketing spin like a glove.
That's a pretty crazy assumption. I have to charge at least once a day on my flagship phone.
Granted, I hate big phones so it's a Samsung S25 smallest version but still. I don't know anyone who can get more than a day on a charge.
My iPhone is less than 1 year old and I have to charge it every day.
I'm guessing they use very conservative usage in their math. I'm on my pixel all day long but I barely use my iPhone 13 more than maybe an hour a day. I can leave it unplugged all weekend and come back Monday with enough charge to get me through the day.
I wonder who’s gonna verify the claims about holding or not holdings 80% charge after 1000 cycles.
And what consequences will there be for whoever lies.
Reminds me when I tried to warranty a macbook air battery a couple years ago. I was already under 80% within the warranty period per System Profiler. They hook up their diagnostics and turns out, System Profiler is wrong, I was at 81% capacity after 1 year. No repair for me.
I wonder how much did the phone manufacturers spend on lobbying for this.
Yeah, and it's BS because in real usage iPhone batteries almost never reach this lifespan. Apple's lobby made this law ineffective, I hope customers start suing.
Apple doesn't comply with regulations that weren't their idea with sincerity.
That had me thinking as well. What if the manufacturer says that to get to that number you are only allowed to charge it to 80% ever? My iPhone pro battery is at 92% at 417 cycles over 20 months.
Do what EVs do: make 100% on the display not 100.0% electro-chemically and 0% not be 0.0% chemically.
This is a serious suggestion, as I think it’s actually net beneficial for the consumer.
This is already the case and has been so for a long time. But it's a trade off between longevity and capacity
The problem is that consumers want to buy a phone with 24 hours of runtime and an EV with 200 miles of range, and they want the phone to be thin and light and the car to be fast and light, and manufacturers want to achieve those capacities with as little electrochemistry as possible. The number of charge cycles at full capacity will be a big deal a year or two in, but on the sales floor it's a secondary concern for typical buyers and sellers.
Playing fast and loose with the numbers, I'm sure that if 100% on the display was 80% in the battery and 0% was 20%, you'd have an amazing number of charge cycles. You could program that 40% of unused capacity to be reduced as the battery ages very slowly, and by the time the used capacity is only at 80% of its original revealed capacity you're at many thousands of cycles. But you'd have a phone or car that weighed 40% more and cost 40% more than one that had no buffer and ran at the bleeding edge on day 1.
Absent breakthroughs in battery chemistry, this basically regulates the amount of buffer capacity that manufacturers are required to include in their ~~lies~~ marketing materials.
There's no coming back from 0% chemically. Running li-ions that low results in physical damage.
In that hypothetical scenario they should advertise 80% as the full capacity. Competition generally prevents this kind of "underclocking".
So as far as I can tell, they can't do this as it's based on equivalent full-charge cycles - so that's nice at least.
As others have mentioned this is for phones with batteries that can’t survive a reasonable number of cycles.
That’s a reasonable exemption, in my opinion. I don’t want to pay the extra penalties of reduced structural rigidity and water tightness for a battery that I don’t need to replace for 3-4 years anyway.
I do wish one manufacturer would make a flagship phone with replaceable battery so all of the uncompromising replaceable battery fans could have a phone that fits their niche demands rather than trying to force everyone else to pay the extra costs (price, size, water intrusion, structural rigidity) that would come with laws forcing all phones to have removable batteries.
> I don’t want to pay the extra penalties of reduced structural rigidity and water tightness for a battery that I don’t need to replace for 3-4 years anyway.
What are you doing to your phone that needs all that? Using it as a hammer? Temporary support while building a tunnel?
> a battery that I don’t need to replace for 3-4 years anyway.
This is not just about battery replacement. I used to keep several fully charged batteries stocked in my rucksack whenever I went hiking or anywhere else that was remote. After a day of taking photos in the wild its nice to be able to just chuck in a fresh batttery and off you go.
I feel like this feature of phones was not only lost, but pretty much forgotten about after smartphones stopped including user replaceable batteries.
External battery banks are a far superior solution now that almost everything has standardized on USB and we have power banks supporting high speed charging.
They can be charged with the same power adapter you use to charge your phone, without the need of an extra docking thing.
They can be used to charge any USB-chargeable device.
They are not tied to your specific model, and thus you're not vendor locked with them, making them cheaper and easier to find anywhere in the world.
They come in multiple capacities, allowing you to plan in advance your energy needs and choose the right size bank for your situation.
They are far more sturdier than any modern battery, which makes them more resistant to puncture and bending.
They don't have external contacts that could potentially short in contact with conductive surfaces.
Lots of advantages, but one major downside: you can't pop the empty battery, put a new one and keep working.
There's a reason professional devices (e.g. cameras) still have replaceable batteries.
I use a lot of rechargeable AAA and AA batteries. They have lower voltage than alkaline batteries (by design apparently), which is not normally an issue, but sometimes is a deal breaker. E.g. my thermostat did not like lower voltage AA batteries and shut down prematurely a number of times.
There's challenges adopting standardized rechargeable batteries, e.g. trying to recharge alkaline batteries risks fire/explosion (and you know that will happen far too often given the number of people out there), but if we have had standard battery sizes, voltages, and capacities for rechargeable batteries, things would be so much better.
Replaceable batteries are one thing, but truly hot swappable batteries like you're asking for will absolutely effect the waterproofing and add a lot of weight/size. Is there a reason you can't just bring a battery pack in your rucksack? They make magnetic ones you can slap on the back and be on your way.
Continuing to take photos with a battery pack hanging off a device is no where near as simple as popping in a fresh 100% battery and coninuing as normal.
These don't dangle or impede your use:
https://www.anker.com/products/a1665-5k-ultra-slim-qi2-power...
Is that ... just a wall wart with a screen on it? Why is that relevant?
EDIT: Wait no it's a carousel of completely unrelated products because the page redirected (without my input) to https://ankernordics.com/.
Hmmm... I'm not sure what you're seeing to be honest. The link should be to a slim 5000mah magsafe battery that attaches to the back of iPhones.
The Anker Nano Power Bank (5K, MagGo, Slim). No screen, charges via USBC.
Thanks for the suggestion.
I would still prefer replaceable batteries back though, and you really dont need to convince me otherwise!
You can keep several power bricks that will charge any USB-C device now.
yes exactly my point, I dont want to wait to charge up my device with another device. I just want to pop in a fresh 100% battery. It used to be so simple.
There's tons of MagSafe battery packs for iPhones. They charge the phone continuously. There's no need to let the phone drop to zero before attaching the battery pack. There's also cases with integral batteries. I assume there's Android equivalents for various phones.
I'd say these are more convenient than extra swappable batteries. They have integral charge controllers and charge via USB. There's no need to charge them in the phone or have to buy some extra external battery charger.
My powerbrick connects to the back of my phone. Form factor wise it's pretty close to my extra large StarTac removable battery that I would carry around.
Bully for you!
Id like my user replaceable 100% full batteries back if its ok with you?
Fine with me purchase any phone with that feature you want.
Apologies, my coment came off a bit unecessarily aggressive.
It is my preference to have user replaceable batteries, and my belief is that they were only removed to make phones become obselete quicker and cause higher turnover of purchased phones.
No amount of battery packs can bring that back.
Many flagship phones promise 7 years of security updates now. 3-4 years means the battery will only last for half that time, and heavy users (1 cycle per day) will hit that quota in under 2.75 years.
Importantly “last” means that it will have at least 80% battery capacity left.
That must be somewhat significant, because after that percent, Apple will start showing "Your battery’s health is significantly degraded" warnings.
Degradation is usually nonlinear.
Then the law should just make sure that there's a second source at least for the batteries, that technicians have free access to disassembly instructions, and that it can be done without undue effort or risk.
Requiring common tools or technical skills for replacing something that last 4 years is not a hassle to justify enshitiffying phones design as long as you're not vendor locked for such replacement, and a technician can do it in a reasonable amount of time, with reasonable tool and without the risk of degrading the functionality of the device doing so.
Should we not expect phones to last more than 3-4 years? We aren't in the exponential performance growth and requirements part of the smartphone world anymore, a 5-7 year old phone can be a perfectly functional device. Isn't it unfortunate that a perfectly good phone gets turned to e-waste years before it has to, just because a consumable part of it happens to be non-replaceable?
This regulation isn't primarily for fans of replaceable batteries, it's driven by general concerns about e-waste. It's unclear how much it might actually reduce e-waste in practice but it will certainly increase compliance costs.
> I don’t want to pay the extra penalties of reduced structural rigidity and water tightness for a battery
This is a BS excuse. Lots and lots of gadgets with removable batteries and waterproof design as evidence.
> Lots and lots of gadgets with removable batteries and waterproof design as evidence.
And this is a BS rebuttal. None of them achieve the same miniaturization and water tightness as iPhone.
This law is basically government being co-opted by a tiny vocal minority to force their unpopular opinions onto the rest of the public.
If any modest percentage of the market cared about replaceable batteries above all else in their phones, the market would already be packed with removable battery phone options.
Downvote this all you want. But I'm right.
Unless you have giant hands, with modern screen sizes, thinner devices are not merely a luxury. For people that have active outdoor lives, water resistance is also non-negotiable.
The only thing that you should care about if you are being pratical and not just an annoying nagging geek, is that you are not forced to use an authorized reseller to buy a replacement battery, and that batteries can be bought from third party suppliers.
Having to have a corner-shop cheap technician doing it once every 3 years is an acceptable trade-off in exchange to get thinner and water-resistant devices.
Who wants thinner? I want more battery capacity and thickness. I actually want a smaller screen too.
I've a plan: 2027 I'm buying a Motorola with first-party support for GrapheneOS and a replaceable battery. Things are looking up!
Yes! Hope they deliver some decent enough device
I just called the shop to replace the perfectly fine e-Call battery in my soon four year old Hyundai car. 250€ to change a battery that has a ten year lifespan. I am not allowed to replace it on my own as it would invalidate the five year long guarantee provided by the manufacturer (not the one by law). Why is this stuff not considered as well?
Also curious whether the "specialized devices" exemptions are AND requirements. Even if those are AND, wouldn’t smartphone manufacturers try to satisfy all three of them?
> I am not allowed to replace it on my own as it would invalidate the five year long guarantee provided by the manufacturer. Why is this stuff not considered as well?
They're the ones paying for repairs, so it doesn't seem that unreasonable? That said: If you can prove the car is being maintained according to the manufacturer's specifications they can't require you to go to a brand dealership. That's just not necessarily easy to prove.
Recalls don’t require you to have had maintained the car at the dealership previousy
The number of people worried about a slightly thicker phone are absolutely baffling to me. I honestly think there is no hope for us broadly. Normally I'd say that people cannot deal with minor inconveniences -- but this does not even register as an inconvenience.
From my view, this is a _perceived_ downgrade in luxury status. Not even a real downgrade in luxury status -- and not a downgrade in convenience whatsoever.
> this does not even register as an inconvenience
You don’t have any idiosyncratic product preferences?
Not ones where design decisions reduce features for no other reason.
I would also consider having to swapping a battery out once every four years to be a minor inconvenience.
Was discussed recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834195
Rule does not apply to gadgets that already retain 80% charge capacity at 1k charge cycles.
What is the share of the smartphone market that this applies to?
You can bet it will be measured in such a way that the major companies’ devices will qualify. And that it will have little bearing on the retained charge amount you’ll have in real life use. I’m at 82% and 714 cycles. But it’s a joke to suggest that all cycles are equal. Some people never go outside the 20-80 band, others charge to 100% and keep it there all day, then burn it down to 10%. Both of those generate “cycles” but are very far apart.
Do we know if and how cycles are defined in the regulation?
My iphone 15 pro max. manufactured in Aug 2023. 536 cycles. is at 84%. I doubt it will make it to 1k at above 80%.
We have similar phones. I’m now at 82% at 714 cycles. In real life, our devices wouldn’t qualify but I’m sure Apple will be allowed to write the testing methodology in a way that’ll be nice and gentle.
My iPhone 14 Pro is at 88% but I have no charging cycle count.
Huh interesting datapoint. I just checked on mine, also August 2023 15PM, and 86% @ 707 cycles here. I’m pretty careless with charging it whenever is convenient/letting it drain to 0% while traveling/etc as well.
My 15 pro max is at 649 cycles and 91%
iPhone Air. 225 cycles, started use in October 2025, 99%
It’s more about the calendric aging than number of cycles these days. My own stayed at 99% until ~400 cycles, and then in a few days it dropped to 94%.
100% probably.
0%.
Wait, that’s not true: In true regulatory capture fashion, I’ll bet the exemption requires some sort of testing/certification that makes it significantly more expensive for smaller firms to bring devices to market.
> I’ll bet the exemption requires some sort of testing/certification that makes it significantly more expensive for smaller firms to bring devices to market.
Maybe that would be the case in the US but since that is the EU it will likely be some kind of self-certification where the manufacturer swears that they're not lying, and if enough people complain then maybe one of the national regulators will look into it and ask the manufacturer to do better.
Recently my 2021 macBook gave me an alert that its battery was not charging past 80%. I took it to the Apple Store and because it had only been through 971 charge cycles, the battery was replaced for free.
Might be a good idea to verify before sharing misinformation
Not perfect, but the “80% capacity after 1000 cycles” part at least creates some decent incentives imo.
EU is awesome!
All new phones sold in the EU already include information on declared battery life and the number of charge cycles before reaching 80% battery health. The vast majority of phones will meet this requirement.
Classic EU move, the last-minute 1000-cycle exemption undercuts the entire regulation.
The previous discussion of the bill on HN noted that the newest version of the bill is the one without the exemption. Is that incorrect?
Looks like saner minds prevailed. Almost nobody needs or wants that. Having to pay a street corner repair shop to replace a battery only after 3 or 4 years of usage is completely worth a price to pay for having thinner batteries.
Smartwatches should also be on the list. My Apple Watch 8 is at 76% maximum capacity. Apparently it costs $99 to have Apple replace the battery, which is probably not worth it.
Agreed. $100 to replace a battery that must cost them maybe $10 is criminal. Source: https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/bom-analysis-ap...
My initial reaction as an EU citizen is “oh hell no” because it gave me flashbacks to removable covers with clips that broke my nails. But after reading the article where it mentions that the battery is also considered removable if standard tools should be used, I’m quite okay with it. I welcome getting more rugged and durable devices.
Serious question: how are you worse off with a cover that breaks your nails vs. the status quo: a cover that’s glued on and a battery that’s glued in? If they did bring that back, couldn’t you just not open the cover and be just as happy?
Unless you have giant hands, with modern screen sizes, thinner devices are not merely a luxury. For people that have active outdoor lives, water resistance is also non-negotiable.
The only thing that you should care about if you are being pratical and not just an annoying nagging geek, is that you are not forced to use an authorized reseller to buy a replacement battery, and that batteries can be bought from third party suppliers.
Having to have a corner-shop cheap technician doing it once every 3 years is an acceptable trade-off in exchange to get thinner and water-resistant devices.
You already wrote this comment before
The covers were typically flimsy and used flimsy hooks in addition to the flimsy push pin. Actually most of my annoyance stems from the hooks breaking easily and the covers not closing flush. I would not want to return to that time where dropping a phone leads to covers flying around.
It is my assumption that any cover that still requires screws that it will be both more sturdy and easier to close flush.
The current status quo of having sleek devices while having batteries relatively easily replaced yourself or even quite cheaply in every phone shop. I’m not so bothered by the status quo.
So in order to save your nails you rather buy a new device? Makes total sense.
Headline is misleading as the loopholes written into the regulation will likely end up exempting many/most phones
Didn't they remove many of the exemptions in the final, adopted bill?
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834195
80% after 1000 cycles. I hope that doesn’t mean faking battery health instead.
Would be easy to say "if the software says "< 80%" after 1000 cycles, the warranty applies and the manufacturer has to replace it for free.
I guess the law won't say that though.
When has a legally mandated metric ever been gamed into a loophole? /s
Does this need a law? Most phones have replaceable battery.
And make all these batteries compatible among all smartphone brands
The size and shape of the battery depends on the size and shape of the phone, as well as the internal structure (which is highly variable). At that point you might as well just legislate that everyone must build iPhone 17's.
What is a “special tool”? A Philips screwdriver is pretty clearly not, but is a T-5 Torx? A security T-5? A Tri-wing? A Pentalobe?
> 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 […] 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.
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1542/oj
"Special tool" is not used in the actual regulation; the requirement is that replacement must be possible with basic tools, defined:
> (50) 'basic tools' means a screwdriver for slotted heads, a screwdriver for cross recess screws, a screwdriver for hexalobular recess heads [Torx], a hexagon socket key, a combination wrench, combination pliers, combination pliers for wire stripping and terminal crimping, half round nose pliers, diagonal cutters, multigrip pliers, locking pliers, a prying lever, tweezers, magnifying glass, a spudger and a pick;
(Excepted devices can require "commercially available tools" which is defined exactly as you'd expect.)
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1670/oj
Why does the Pentalobe exist in the first place?
in one product design i did, unironically because the customer thought that six-star screws were antisemitic
Antisemitic geometry. Now I've seen everything
Imagine the lasting havoc the Nazis could have wrought if they adopted a + instead of a swastika
Any tool you can’t get at a random local hardware store.
This is a waste of money. All flagship phones have hit the requirements so do not need to make them removable. It might impact some of the budget garbage but not yet clear. All this will do is increase compliance costs.
I'm not sure I have a way to fact-check this, but the link claims
> That is significantly more than many batteries on the market today can achieve (often around 500–800 cycles).
Which is really my issue with this type of legislation. If they had it clearly estimated it would be incredible because you can measure the impact but as it stands it could go either way.
> All flagship phones have hit the requirements
Lots of non-flagship phones making e-waste. This is a sensibly-tailored regulation, targeting the problem instead of specifying a solution because some bureaucrat likes replaceable batteries.
Nobody has quantified what lots means. Which is my issue. The article just says many. Lots and many do not make great legislation.
based on many comments in this thread your statement is not accurate.
for example my iphone 15 pro is at 83% with 654 cycles. clearly it will drop below 80% in less than 1000 cycles
What makes it not accurate? With the 15, apple was already making claims about 80% at 1000 cycles. Battery degradation has too many variables for you to make your claim and even in perfect situation, it’s not a linear degradation by cycle. My 17 is at 100 cycles with 100% health.
Back to my original claim. Most manufacturers already meet the exception. Some of the low end garbage phones may not but it’s unclear how meaningful of the market share that will be.
The bar clearly won't be "any random person's phone meeting this criteria", so what your specific phone does doesn't really matter.
While sounding nice in theory, these sorts of regulations will certainly curtail innovation while providing very, very little value elsewhere.
If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't.
> If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't.
This argument gets thrown about every time companies make anti-consumer changes, and it completely ignores the information asymmetry and other dynamics at play. When I go to the store to buy a new phone, where does it list on the box how repairable the device is? Where does it show how expensive the repair will be? If I'm locked in the apple ecosystem, where do I buy an iPhone with a replaceable battery?
Your assumption that the market is driven by informed consumer choices presupposes that every buyer is an expert.
Which flagship phones with replaceable batteries can customers buy?
Samsung was the last major brand in the US to have one, and they made the choice to remove it.
Not sure. But there are plenty of flip phones with removable batteries.
So you're suggesting we all just need to buy exclusively flip phones for a few years to send the market a signal that it wants replaceable batteries. Then the free market will do its thing and keep the engine of innovation running
Speaking of which, does anyone want to do a list of "features added to smartphones over the last 10 years" vs "features removed from smartphones over the last 10 years" so we can see just what innovations are at risk?
I'm not suggesting anything, I'm simply offering the reality of the smartphone market. What you are suggesting is a contrived, exaggerated take of how markets function.
People generally like small, thin phones, as evidenced by the billions sold. It really isn't much more complicated than that.
"Which flagship phones with replaceable batteries can customers buy?"
Most of the Kyocera Duraforce line has this ability.
Their latest and greatest PRO 3 runs a chip that was mid-range when it releases 4 years ago and only 6 GB of RAM. That is decidedly not a flagship.
To steelman your response some, there's also the Samsung XCover 7. It has a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 processor (from 2024, two years newer than the latest Kyocera Duraforce) and up to 8GB RAM. But it's still not exactly a flagship device, and the American telcos I checked only offer the 6GB RAM variant.
I want removeable batteries in my phone, largely because it means I don't have to buy them a lot!
I ran my LG G5 with replaceable batteries from 2016 through 2021, at which point there were no affordable replaceable-battery phones left. I bought quite a few replacement batteries, even trying aftermarket batteries with varying levels of success after the OEM LG ones were discontinued.
That is, of course, a problem for manufacturers that want to sell a lot of phones.
Innovation generally happens because of some kind of impediment to doing things the old way. So this is more likely drive innovation than curtail it.
> "If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't."
For that to happen there obviously needs to be a supply worth writing home about. Furthermore, speaking purely for myself, a removable battery is not a must but a nice-to-have. A lot of slabs that have removable batteries are out of the game for entirely different reasons.
> For that to happen there obviously needs to be a supply worth writing home about.
Not really. If there’s no supply, it’s probably because the manufacturers did a market analysis and decided it’s not even worth it to offer that. So either their analysis is extremely wrong and it actually would sell, or the consumers don’t want to buy it that bad.
> "If there’s no supply, it’s probably because the manufacturers [...] decided it’s not even worth it to offer that."
You got it surrounded. Why offer devices that you have to support for a longer time (e. g. enterprise models) when there's more money to be made when you enshittify (which obviously goes beyond just batteries)?
Because you’ll be the only manufacturer making the desired product and have 100% of this market? If there are multiple manufacturers competing, surely one of them would do it if it’s profitable?
Yeah, sure, some of them already do. Their market share is practically negligible, enterprise players (e. g. Samsung with their Galaxy Xcover line) notwithstanding. That, on a strictly personal level, still doesn't mean they offer a desirable product.
So really it's not about phones having a removable battery, but a whole host of other features plus a removable battery. Which is just untenable from a regulatory POV.
I absolutely would buy a Samsung Smartphone with replacable battery. The last one which had this was the S5 I think...
Even with a battery that can be replaced using a tiny screwdriver, this still doesn’t make it DIY for probably 80-90% of smartphone users.
That's not the point. It being done in a local shop for a few bucks with no small letter text saying that "we may break your screen in half because this thing can't be repaired properly". It mentions that it should not use glue, not need solvent and only commercially available tools may be usable (or they have to be provided next to the phone).
Also availability of original spare parts is important. Aftermarket batteries often tend to be shitty.
Nonsense. It just mandates easier repairability and spare parts availability, not ad-hoc replacement. Also this does not apply if the battery is able to retain 80% of its original capacity after 1,000 charge cycles so "innovative" manufacturers just need to use high quality batteries.
that isnt how markets really work. you could say that if apple had two otherwise identical iphones except one has removable battery and one doesn't. but the enshittification cycle works via a ratcheting effect. once you achieve a certain level of dominance and lock-in, you can start getting away with all kinds of anti-consumer strategies to make more money and not get punished for it, and your competitors will follow suit. as long as you can ratchet above whatever detrimental thing you want to get away with is you'll probably be fine.
you can look at the lightning connector as an example. if you said "if people wanted usb connectivity they wouldn't buy iphones", nobody would take you seriously. and when apple was forced to switch, it absolutely didnt tank their sales because people just loved the lightning connector so much. the bad thing went away and it was great.
If Apple could make money from removable batteries, meaning there was a market for it and people wanted it over some other alternative, are you suggesting they are not smart enough to do the research and work necessary to accomplish that?
The reality is people don't want it, at all. At least not enough to warrant action. So the story ends there.
Also, the lighting connector is better than USB in every way. Mandating an inferior technology is an odd choice.
False dichotomy. The question isn't whether you can make money with a replaceable battery, but whether you can make more money by selling specialized service (or an entirely new phone) than a battery. What else are people going to do, not buy a phone? Switch operating systems entirely?
This whole thing becomes more obvious in the Android world, where models with various features do exist, but only in certain markets
Even then, this whole line of argument seems moot because if the battery still holds enough charge over time the regulations don't even require it to be replaceable
...is what people said when they brought in the mandate for usb charging but it didnt.
It turns out market consolidation is usually the biggest innovation killer.
so more regulations to raise prices extract tax revenues by EU
It would be nice to have mandatory SD cards..
SD cards and phone jacks!
The link is not working for me, but I hope they have defined what "removable" means (removable without special tools) If not, a lot of companies are going to argue that they already make removable batteries
> If a special tool is required for replacement, the manufacturer must provide it free of charge.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/21/23079058/apple-self-servi...
79-pound hyper-elaborate repair kit. Expensive for them to send out, but since only two people will ever want them to, probably amortizes well.
IIRC, screwdrivers and prying tools are not considered special. Removal cannot require solvents or heat, but I believe those pull tab glue pads are allowed.
I wish those prying tools were considered "special". I have a very low success rate at opening up any device that's held together with "clips" without snapping any plastic. It inevitably means "force it just hard-enough to break stuff if you don't do it absolutely perfectly".
Also, removeable by who? Its all very well saying its removeable, but thats useless if only possible by a skilled techinician with tools. I dont see the term 'user-removable' anywhere.
I want a phone with li-ion 18650! Because having a replaceable batteries won’t prevent the manufacturer from increasing those batteries prices so it’s equal to non replaceable ones. It would be great to have 18650 as a standard in all electronics, so you just carry dozens of them when you go out and you are set up for the weekend, no recharging, maybe even add hot swap too.
Absolutely trash aftermarket batteries that are e-waste in 6 months here we come!
I'm not a fan of regulation in general but over the last decade it has been extremely frustrating with the removal of replaceable SD cards and batteries from Androids.
I never put my phones in my back pocket nor do I wear butt hugging leggings, so having a thick phone stick out my ass and make it look bad isn't on my list of worries. I end up purchasing thick waterproof cases for these slim phones anyways.
What's most confusing is the premium phones lack replaceable SD cards and batteries - it's like they are trying to take the worst ideas from the Apple ecosystem and simply don't understand why some people use Androids.
Surprisingly, it's the cheaper models that carry replaceable SD cards and batteries - I would have imagined the opposite!
I often go on trips and hikes with poor cellular coverage and having some SD cards with useful information or being able to swap them out as the camera gets full is really helpful. Attaching drives over the USB port isn't really practical.
When I do have cellular coverage, I might have to rapidly download a LOT of data, which overheats the phone and discharges the battery. With a replaceable battery, this isn't even an issue.
The benefits of replaceable batteries cannot be overstated when you're not on the grid or take great care of the phone where they last more than a few years. I can have a few batteries charged, during the day using solar that I can then just swap them in as evening sets in, instead of having to plug the phone into a powerbank and pray it doesn't shut off as I keep using it.
...and Apple will be exempt due to a loophole in the law (80% after 1k cycles) making the law utterly pointless.
I keep hearing this over and over, but it's neglected to add that it sets a minimum durability requirement which applies only for a very small niche of ruggedized waterproof devices
Unless your device complies to MIL-STD-810G CN1 and has the certification to back it up your product will be required to add user replaceable batteries
>Unless your device complies to MIL-STD-810G CN1 and has the certification to back it up your product will be required to add user replaceable batteries
Can you provide your source for this? If nothing else, it's very surprising to me that an EU regulation uses a US standard as the baseline!
Edit: Having done a bit of reading on the standard, it also seems like the regulation needs quite a bit of detail if it really does rely on the MIL-STD, since the standard only defines test procedures, not pass/fail criteria?
Yup, that’s a pretty wild loophole. I think they’re targeting the lower end of the market probably to reduce most of the ewaste.
This makes no sense but I still see it mindlessly repeated to exhaustion. That mention is in no way Apple specific, it’s a quality of the battery itself. Any manufacturer is in the same position, not like Apple has a monopoly on batteries that hold 80% charge after 1000 cycles.
I don’t understand how this could be measured fairly though. What kind of cycles? What temperatures was it exposed to? Charged fast or slow? This is an incomplete set of criteria, which seems designed specifically to be meaningless / gameable.
To me this seems like saying you can sell a car with a sealed gas tank as long as it “gets 40 miles per gallon.” And GM gets to decide the test course for measuring MPG, which will be a 2-mile slightly downhill coast with no stopping. Surprise! All our cars get 40-60MPG!
The unspoken implication here is that if your phone still retains 80% after 1000 cycles, then it’s probably so old and obsolete by then that battery replacement would be a silly waste of time, so why burden people with these “onerous rules” in that case.
But in reality, nothing about that metric, even if it’s true, means that customers don’t need to replace their batteries. My iPhone 15 Pro Max is in dire need of a battery replacement, at 82% after only 714 cycles. Aside from the battery, I have literally zero motivation to replace this phone. The phone manufacturers hate the idea that the battery might get replaced, because in this day and age it’s pretty much the only reason a 2 to 3-year-old phone (especially a flagship) isn’t extremely adequate for 99% of the population.
In the US the EPA gets to set the guidelines for mileage testing, which GM has to follow. We've already had a major case in penalties for not following the guidelines via VW and emissions.
It will likely boil down to "typical use" so in the event that someone wants to bring Apple to court over it and demonstrate the issue, it could solidify what's currently a little vague. Laws aren't required to get it perfect out of the gate.
> then it’s probably so old and obsolete by then that battery replacement would be a silly waste of time
obsolescence is a spectrum, if a swappable battery mandate gives a small % of devices a few extra years it would be worth it... I already give old devices to family members and kids on the "free is better than nothing" spectrum and a swappable battery would have extended the life at least a few of said devices, in my personal experience
not really! at the very least it requires more thought around battery quality
the choice for budget devices is now
1. better battery
2. removability (likely more expensive and complicates water-tightness )
The supposed aim of this is to reduce e-waste. But when 90% of smartphones sold are iPhones and Samsung Galaxies which are exempt it makes this bill completely pointless, as the ewaste it will save is a small fraction of a percentage of the total.
> the ewaste it will save
well we agree that it will work at least a little, which looks like a good start to me
We agree that it works a little, but not that it is a good start.
If this bill had just targetted all battery devices it would have made an incredible change. But as usual it was lobbied into near non existence.
Why do we have to be content with tiny chips away at a serious issue instead of insisting it is dealt with properly?
Another anti poor person law
Why not anything that has a battery? Why just cellphones?
The introduction of glue into the assembly of consumer electronics is a crime against humanity and the Earth. If Timex could make iron-man watches 100-meter waterproof with Phillips-head jeweler's screws back in the '80s, there's no good reason smartphones and laptops can't. And there's a whole host of bad reasons to eschew screws.
Of course you can build a waterproof smartphone with screws (except the screen has to be bonded to the glass for capacitive touch to work and the glass to the frame so there’s still some glueing involved), but it would probably have 1cm bezels around the screen.
I think this was discussed recently on HN. It’s not a bad idea. There’s nothing about this that “ruins” anything else. This is not specific for phones even if everyone focuses on them. The usual arguments are waterproofing and thinness but we can still have them with removable batteries.