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.
This is a serious suggestion, as I think it’s actually net beneficial for the consumer.
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.
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
What is this whicraft?
Do you also consider yourself incapable of jump starting a car because you might have to look up instructions first?
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.
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.
But on those watches with 4 screws on the case, the gasket seemed fine to me to keep reusing.
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!
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.
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
That.
It’s also nice to be able to wash them under the tap
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.
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.
maybe just a little less margin for apple...
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.
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".
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.
If a truly well made phone was common and made by many people, then there'd be much less argument for this regulation.
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.)
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).
My 2014 Kyocera Duraforce Pro is STILL waterproof and I use it for underwater photography incessantly.
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.
This will only impact bottom barrel phones.
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.
And what consequences will there be for whoever lies.
What is the share of the smartphone market that this applies to?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Id like my user replaceable 100% full batteries back if its ok with you?
https://www.anker.com/products/a1665-5k-ultra-slim-qi2-power...
I would still prefer replaceable batteries back though, and you really dont need to convince me otherwise!
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.
Imagine the lasting havoc the Nazis could have wrought if they adopted a + instead of a swastika
> 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.
> (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.)
If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't.
Samsung was the last major brand in the US to have one, and they made the choice to remove it.
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?
People generally like small, thin phones, as evidenced by the billions sold. It really isn't much more complicated than that.
Most of the Kyocera Duraforce line has this ability.
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.
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.
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)?
It turns out market consolidation is usually the biggest innovation killer.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I guess the law won't say that though.
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.
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.
for example my iphone 15 pro is at 83% with 654 cycles. clearly it will drop below 80% in less than 1000 cycles
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.
> That is significantly more than many batteries on the market today can achieve (often around 500–800 cycles).
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 don’t have any idiosyncratic product preferences?
washingupliquid•1h ago
close04•1h ago
xp84•38m ago
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.
micromacrofoot•25m ago
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
micromacrofoot•1h ago
the choice for budget devices is now
1. better battery
2. removability (likely more expensive and complicates water-tightness )
alt227•23m ago
vlovich123•1h ago
mx7zysuj4xew•1h ago
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
0xffff2•31m ago
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?