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Comment by throwaway81523 | Hacker News Reader

Hey EU: do universal replaceable batteries while you're at it please. That matters more than the chargers, as long as the chargers can be interchanged using the right cables or adapters.

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Gonna have to agree here.

If a cable fails, its easily swapped. Not great if it's proprietary, but it doesn't break the device itself.

If a non-replaceable battery fails, you're likely looking at a cumbersome repair/replacement, or (if the manufacturer gets their way) replacing the whole device. It's arguably the progenitor of planned obsolescence of modern electronics. Additionally, "Failure" here doesn't just mean 'no longer holds any charge at all', but also applies to a significantly reduced battery life/amperage that can result in your device no longer functioning as it once did - be it just not lasting the target usecase, or throttling or worse.

Non-replaceable batteries induce orders of magnitude more cost, inconvenience and waste than a lack of one charger cable to rule them all.

Interestingly enough, the Chinese were the first to use de-facto standards for replaceable batteries; the BL5C is one that's still relatively common in (non-phone) devices today, although it started out as a Nokia-featurephone-specific size. I believe many of the varous generic multi-branded Android phones use a battery size that was originally from a popular Samsung model.

As long as most phones stop receiving security patches after 2-3 years the battery is not the limiting factor.

A device should not be unusable even if is not blessed with some security fix, also regular users don't update the phones or CPUs because there is a theoretical security issue(even the Apple fanboys did not exploded now that they know Pegasus exits), probably security issues is a good news since you could maybe get control or your property.

Also an interesting question in context of the regulation discussion: whoever sold you the phone is responsible for addressing significant product defects according to consumer protection rules in most (?) countries in EU. So it could become a problem if the irreplaceable phone batteries didn't die about the same time as the security updates end.

That is stupid, old computers don't die when the OS gets out of date, I still have an XP laptop around and it works, also old Apple computers still work and nobody demanded Apple to provide security updates for old stuff.

It's tricky, because most phones can't be flashed with an alternative aftermarket OS. I know that LineageOS etc. exist, but most phones don't have a stable build and a lot of SoCs will never work reliably with an aftermarket OS.

In that case whoever will exploit your phone first is the one who owns it, not you.

Maybe I have an old laptop that still works and still has Windows XP on it, I fucking own it more then an iOS user owns his device. iOS can be at any moment "owned" by NSO, or by some infected app or malware in the Apple blessed store.

It is a shame that security is a popular fetish now, not all bugs are exploitable and there are mitigation, you don't need to kill my device unless it was 100% exploited and it causes problems.

One of my relatives still has a Trimble GPS he used to measure fields, bundled with perfectly working Internet disconnected software. However, I can't find the Li-ion battery replacement for it so I gave him my >10y old Garmin eTrex device which uses AA batteries and still works fine. I was surprised that the old GPS layer was kept running.

Regarding phones, there'salso third party firmware like LineageOS.

I also have an old etrex with AA batteries. It's a wonderful device. It supports OSM map data, so it's easy to update, the batteries last a week and you can buy replacements literally everywhere.

Find a battery of the same size or a little smaller and put it in. batteryjunction.com has a big selection. You might have to solder some wires on or similar. Adafruit.com has some with JST connectors which have a good chance of being what your GPS uses inside, but they don't have that wide a selection of cell sizes, so it's iffy. Anyway the first thing to do is open up your GPS and look at the cell. In the old days you could usually find a phone battery the right size on places like dx.com, but replacement phone batteries aren't that common any more.

Are you just saying that all batteries should be replaceable, or also that they should be standardized somehow? Because I agree with the former but not the latter.

Batteries are already standardized. AA, AAA, C, etc.

Those are all the wrong voltage to be lithium-ion, and their form factors also aren't good for a lot of devices.

What I mean to say is that there's no fundamental reason a similar approach couldn't be employed.

It would make it difficult to cram as much battery in as they do currently. The iPhone has L shaped batteries so they fit around the pcb.

I’m not convinced standardised batteries are required. The vast majority of people are using only a small number of phones. A battery store could easily stock the batteries for every iPhone model. The real problem is how hard it is for the average person to replace them.

A phone could be designed to handle other voltages. A phone that ran off NiMH AA batteries would actually be quite feasible.

It would be quite a bit thicker than most phones today, but not outrageously so--about as thick as my last pre-iPhone phone (a Palm Treo). We had no trouble carrying such thick phones around back then, and those were the days when we were also carrying our iPods or portable CD players around too.

Here are the battery capacities of various iPhones.

iPhone SE: 6.7 W h

iPhone X: 10.3 W h

iPhone 11: 11.5 W h

iPhone 11 Pro Max: 14.7 W h

Low self-discharge rechargeable AA MiMH batteries are available with capacities of 2.7 W h.

You'd need 3 of them to match an iPhone SE, 4 for an iPhone X, 5 for an 11, and 6 for an 11 Pro Max.

An AA battery is between 14 mm and 15 mm in diameter. That should be an upper limit on how much thicker you would need to make the phone.

Would there be enough people who would like the convenience of using off the shelve rechargeable NiMH AA batteries for such a phone to sell despite 14 mm more thickness?

I have no idea.

But in odder to carry all this, we needed JNCOs

In my area of the US, standard form factor lithium batteries are readily available such as in the grocery store, including the rectangular 9V, AA, and AAA types.

Those are non-rechargeable lithium metal primary batteries, not lithium-ion rechargeable batteries.

TIL. However, it seems like there are attempts at making lithium ion rechargeables to fit standard sizes. If not by well known manufacturers.

https://www.amazon.com/KENTLI-Rechargeable-Battery-Lithium-i...

There's also the standard 18650 size, which is quite common and a lot of Chinese electronics have user-replaceable cells, but the big manufacturers like LG and Sony are vehemently against that and think people can't be trusted with bare cells.

Apple's straw man argument could be that there is no battery standard to allow for a thin iPhone.

Which phone doesn’t have a replaceable battery? It’s not as easy as popping the cover out, but they’re generally replaceable.

Pixel 2 is notoriously hard (the phone is glued together) but anything that makes the end user likelier to buy a new phone instead of replacing a dead battery is a dark pattern. "Impossible" is not the issue.

I took my pixel 2 to a repair store and they just told me right away “there is a 30% chance that the screen will smash if we replace the battery”

Pixels have become so much worse than the iPhone ever was.

A lot of slim-factor smartphones have screens glued on, so replacing the battery involves melting the glue, then taking the screen off.

On that note, I hope something like this comes to the US: https://www.fairphone.com/en/

I'm pretty sure we would like to, but one battle at a time. It's not easy to mandate standards. We are trying to push back the greed, Margrethe Vestager for example, is doing a damn fine job of being annoying to the right people!

And universal car chargers for electric/hybrid cars

AFAIK it is already like that in the EU. It's only North America where everyone uses one standard and Tesla uses another one.

Except, historically, it was “Tesla had a nice slim cable and all the other manufacturers didn’t want to use it so they invented a monstrosity”: I’d be really unhappy having to use a CCS port with a Tesla, after the current plug.

Exactly this. The American CCS is terrible. The European Mennekes connector isn't so bad, supports pretty high 3 phase power (as well as split phase), and Tesla even figured out how to run like 120kW DC power through it. Something like that wouldn't be so bad. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_2_connector

Really, we ought to just standardize on the Tesla plug as it can handle 250kW (perhaps upgrading it to allow higher voltage... gets you to 500kW). It's simply better (as long as we're not going to do 3 phase power anyway). Probably cheaper, too, as it's much smaller.

Doesn't Tesla already ship cars with Type 2 connectors?

https://cdn.nettiauto.com/live/2021/03/10/9199ab21d7082c3d-l...

https://cdn.nettiauto.com/live/2021/08/06/66c771a8155706d1-l...

Yes, but the US Tesla plug is better.

How?

And in what way does it make sense to make the connector that one manufacturer uses the standard one when you could make the connector that everyone, including that one specific manufacturer, uses the standard?

Chademo feels like I’m about to try and charge a locomotive compared to plugging in a svelte Tesla connector/cable.

https://electrek.co/2020/04/28/chademo-and-china-release-new...

Tesla’s plug is smaller than the Level 2 J1772 plug (not to mention the fast charging standards) and is able to handle both Level 2 and Level 3 charging. I’ve used both types of plugs, and Tesla’s is just much more elegant and better designed.

It makes sense to standardize on Tesla’s plug because as far as I know Tesla built it before either of the other standards existed and Tesla was (and still is?) willing to let other manufacturers use the plug: I’ve never heard a good reason why the other manufacturers didn’t take up the Tesla plug and invest in the supercharger network when Elon invited them to.

In no world did the Tesla charger come first. CCS was proposed in 2011, in development much longer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combined_Charging_System

The Model S was announced in ‘08 and first prototype was displayed in ‘09 (per wiki). I’m fairly certain that Tesla’s plug was finalized before the CCS standard existed.

It’s really hard to find a good timeline of the plugs, but I know I’ve seen at least one article that claimed the CCS standard exists because the other manufacturers didn’t want to adopt the Tesla plug.

But, even if I’m wrong about the history, I find the Tesla plug much more user-friendly than the alternatives.

Doesn't CCS handle level 2 and level 3 charging as well? CCS can also do up to 350 kW charging.

Tesla's plug being the first one doesn't make any sense when it comes to standardization. That's like saying that we should standardise on the Lightning connector instead of USB-C because it was the first one.

The plug being smaller also doesn't really make sense. Are petrol cars superior since the nozzle is much smaller and more elegant than even the smallest EV plug?

>I’ve never heard a good reason why the other manufacturers didn’t take up the Tesla plug and invest in the supercharger network when Elon invited them to.

Why would the major car companies start investing into an unknown startup's supercharger network? It doesn't make business sense.

> Tesla had a nice slim cable and all the other manufacturers didn’t want to use it so they invented a monstrosity

Didn't or couldn't? Especially due to some sneaky Tesla clause preventing use.

I seem to remember Tesla opening up a bunch of patents. As a guess, that should be near the top of the list

The terms of license under which the patents were opened up were full of poison pills no sane automaker would agree to.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a35030461/why-other-car-co...

There are still chargers with various types. They are slowly converging onto Type2 / CCS, but it's still not a given.

Here in UK every single new station being built that I see is exclusively CCS. It really only affects Leaf owners as nothing else uses chademo standard.

I keep looking at battery powered equipment like lawn mowers and every single one uses a proprietary battery.

Is that the case in the EU?

Isn't this basically already the case (IEC type 2/CCS Combo 2)?

USB-C Power Delivery Plus

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