Non-replaceable battery? Not if this proposed EU law passes
hackaday.com
hackaday.com
Non-replaceable batteries contribute to lowering the price. If the producer can expect to sell more copies of the same product, the price of a single item can be lower.
It's not entirely true, if you don't buy a new phone and simply live with a battery not holding power for more than a day, you get both cheaper price of the phone and a technically working phone.
Of course someone with higher expectations for battery time will have to buy a new phone sooner, but if you can't afford it, it's valuable to you personally regardless.
I now have an ASUS phone, and fully expect the same to happen in several years.
Why did you buy the ASUS phone if you don’t expect to get support for it?
The sad reality is that the experience of running an off-brand phone with an easily-replaceable battery would, long-term, be much worse than running a locked-in flagship that LineageOS builds for.
Device manufacturers see that as a bug, not a feature. They are starting to pair genuine parts to a specific device, which will completely lock us out of 3rd party repair options if we accept and normalize this behavior.
See for example:
- "The iPhone 14 Continues Apple’s Digital Repair Lockdown" by iFixit - https://www.ifixit.com/News/66879/iphone-14-parts-pairing-re...
- "iPhone 14 Pro Programmed To Reject Repair" by Hugh Jeffreys - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2WhU77ihw8
- The long list of Louis Rossmann's rants on the topic
See for example: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/04/apples-self-service-r...
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/21/23079058/apple-self-servi...
The 79-pound repair kit is what Apple uses in its stores to avoid damaging phones that remain under warranty.
If people want to buy a bunch of cheap tools and risk damaging a delicate phone, they shouldn’t expect Apple’s help.
Really though I think what's important is that we should expect help from Apple. It might take EU regulations to force that, but what that really says to me is that as consumer in the US, my bar for what to expect from corporations is set way too low.
My interests as a consumer and those of "people who make money out of repair" are almost completely aligned -- I want them to (be able to) work on my device in the event that I don't have the tools, skills or patience to do the repair myself.
I don’t see how. The less reliable the device is, the more business they get. The more reliable the device is, the less you spend on repairs. Sure seems like opposing interests.
All that repair shops can do is provide commentary and inform consumers about whether the OEM is serious about repair or whether they're just greenwashing their image and by all accounts, Apple's self-service repair program is about as anemic as their Apple authorized service provider program.
This is clearly not true when we’re discussing user replaceable batteries or the like. It’s a trade off, like most things in engineering.
There are many extra ways things can go wrong by making components such as batteries easy to replace. Poor contacts, oxidation, mechanical breakage, battery compartment doors popping off, ingress of dust and fluids, looser tolerances for the batteries etc.
Nobody discussing this in good faith can deny that these issues exist.
Yeah that definitely sounds more convenient than a removable battery.
You must be strongly opposed to right to repair, since repair shops are incompetent to even replace a battery in your view.
User-replaceable batteries are just the first step. What we should all be pushing towards to reduce waste and emissions is a no-compromise right to repair, with easily accessible parts, tools and schematics.
One commenter said this legislation doesn’t make sense because they get a new phone every three years.
Even if they do, it would reduce demand if the phone continued to have parts and software for someone else to use.
Regardless, it matters what your pricing power is.
For a luxury finished product - you price on what your consumers will bear (with some maximization curve).
For a commodity battery - then maybe.
Though, I'm not sure I follow your logic why this means more batteries will be sold.
Same faulty logic for injket printers. They're extremely cheap so sure, you're "saving money" for a period, but the scales tip after one or two refill ink cartridges
Replaceable batteries will increase e-waste because there will be a lot more broken phones.
That should be up to the user to choose, as it is now.
Contrary to what most phone manufacturers would like you to think, no, devices do not suddenly stop working if they go a week without an update.
For example, my old sony xz3 is a 2018/08 phone with software update discontinued since 2020(?). But there are actually 3party roms that can update it android 12.
Indeed, but the issue is that the phone manufacturer no longer supports the phone and release OS updates. And on Android, you could install unofficial mods to upgrade to a more recent version of the OS, but then some apps (banking apps for example) refuse to work because of... reasons, again making the phone unusable. And in a majority of cases, this has nothing to do with the hardware no longer being capable.
- Waterproofing. Fewer seals means more resistance to water ingress.
- Compact size. Standard battery sizes rarely fit thin or irregular designs.
- Better battery life. An integrated battery can be designed to fill all available spare space in a device.
- Cost. Integrated batteries involve fewer connectors and parts.
- User satisfaction. Users often blame original manufacturers when the problem is actually poor quality 3rd party batteries. This was extremely common back when most laptops had removable batteries.
And why do arguments in favor of removable batteries apply to phones and laptops, but not headphones, vehicles, cameras, etc? Just let people buy the devices they want. There’s no need to have the government force people to use things they dislike.
Both my car and my DSLR have user replaceable batteries. My headphones don't because they are wired.
My point is that users freely choose different types of batteries for different applications. It makes no sense to coerce everyone else into choosing your favorite type of battery.
Where is the choice when all manufacturers arrive at the same conclusion: it's better for profits not to offer replaceable batteries?
The key thing the EU are ruling on here are phones. I replace my phone or laptop battery every 3 years at average! Does it need to be removable for that? Hell no. Sticky tape, glued in I don't care. I will pay apple or whoever to replace it. 30 minutes of labour is fine for this interval!
What pisses me off are the people who are too fucking cheap to pay for a phone battery from the manufacturer but will throw 10x the cost on trivial repairs on a premium car while whining about it.
As far as I can tell, the manufacturers are doing a pretty good job at occassionally setting your phone on fire and exposing your data themselves.
EU should really f**k them hard about this behavior. It's 100% planned obsolescence.
Log the producer of parts is okay but intentionally make them non functional is not.
Most laptops just whine about third party batteries and you can just nuke the vendor battery junk to get rid of it.
As far as I can tell this is not accurate. I want user-serviceable batteries in all devices. Phones might get the most attention because they're the most ubiquitous, but I wish that all LiON batteries were standardized and user serviceable.
History has countless examples of how the market is very bad at accounting for externalities.
People may very well want just a "brick of glass", but regulation comes in and drives innovation when it turns out that selling people what they want in the short term actually needlessly harms society in the long run.
"What the people want" actually has a lot of nuance and variability over different timeframes.
"What harms society" actually has a lot of nuance and variability over different timeframes. I don’t think anybody can define it, actually.
Regulators making nuclear power hugely expensive and activists making it wildly unpopular thus condemning us to burn coal in 2022 quickly come to mind. Or the idiocy of banning plastic straws in the west while the ocean drowns in fishing nets from Asia.
On the other hand a smartphone has pages long list if specs. And users have divergent preferences for those specs.
The market is only able to find a common denominator that makes everyone equally unhappy. In doing so it transfers power to the few manufacturers who now make choices for the users. Even worse, manufacturers copy each other and follow fashion trends.
It is almost impossible to find a phone that has a replaceable battery. It is very hard to find small phones. It is very hard to find phones with headphone jacks. It is very hard to find phones without a punchhole or notch for the camera.
These are all things people desire, but either not strong enough or not enough people or both.
I like the iPhone mini but not enough to sacrifice the flexibility of Android.
I like displays without cutouts, but not enough to sacrifice the 4 years of updates Samsung offers.
Etc. Etc. Etc.
> I like […] but not enough
> I like […] but not enough
Sounds like the market has managed to understand perfectly the things people actually want in a phone versus the ones they are just paying lip service to.
Taking such a long list of specs with wildly contradictory requirements and create compromise products that satisfiy the most is an extremely complex issue and something the market is uniquely suited to do - I am not aware of another mechanism that can do that, maybe a future AI.
Headphone jack is a minuscule cost (you still need the DAC for the speakers).
There are now magnetically attached Bluetooth devices that provide a headphone jack to an iPhone and make twice as thick.
This showcases perfectly that there is a market for an iPhone with a jack, but Apple has the power to decide for everyone.
A user has the options:
- use an old phone(for how long?)
- sacrifice the jack and stay on iOS (give up)
- sacrifice iOS, repurchase all apps (are they available? alternatives?) and other purchases, and find some phone that still has it (gradually all flagships other than Sony dropped it)
This is not a free market, it is a market with plenty of obstacles to entry (some natural some imposed).
And the following of fashion trends (mostly follow Apple) make the situation doubly toxic.
In a captive market it is sufficient for one player to demonstrate the market will accept a worse offer and other players will follow through.
This may sound like blasphemy, but capitalism is actually not compatible with the free market.
The simple fact is, unrestrained capitalism is ugly.
A company that has become wildly successful will equally hold a lot of financial power. The same company is often likely to engage in lobbying .. exchanging that fiscal power for actual political power.
Without regulations we end up living in world driven by the singular need to make more and more money.
These corporations are not able to factor the good of human kind into their plan because that's got nothing to do with their very reason for existence.
Regulation is the only way we can address this.
The most successful and influential companies of today did not even exist 50 years ago.
> the good of human kind
Please define “the good of human kind”. Be specific.
Soviets did most of their crimes “for the betterment of all mankind”. It’s a wonderful cover.
I've been clear enough in my initial comment. The fact you're asking this second question makes me feel you understand I have a point.
That's been a solved problem for a very, very long time. Even older battery-operated dive watches have user-serviceable batteries. My Tekmagic is user-replaceable. The gaskets and tolerance ranges are well-understood for this sort of thing.
We have IP6X-rated USB connectors. Charge port is a solved problem.
Gaskets and seal plates are gaskets and seal plates, nothing really special about them. Solved problem.
The battery probably won't need to be replaced for a few years, we aren't talking a coin cell, we're talking a mini-pouch like what already exists in these watches.
I do work in this industry. It's a solved problem, has been for several decades.
But that's not what will happen. Instead people will have to buy the devices manufacturers force on them.
The problem is that making a modern phone is ridiculously expensive, and not enough customers want removable batteries to make the investment worthwhile. Samsung made phones with removable batteries. Not enough people bought them, so the product line was discontinued.
Apple can’t force you to buy any of their products. Tim Cook can’t send men with guns to your home and put you in a cage. The government can. Anyone who uses that power to force people to make phones with removable batteries is absurdly authoritarian.
>>Anyone who uses that power to force people to make phones with removable batteries is absurdly authoritarian.
Do you think any and all regulations are authoritarian? Governments everywhere, not just in EU, try to legislate based on what's best for the society. As the simplest example, they force manufacturers to limit transmission power to protect users from too much RF exposure - is that authoritarian? Or just a good idea that protects people? What if customers would prefer phones that have a stronger signal, at the potential expense of health consequences?
Similarly, we can decide that it's better for the society if phones have removable batteries, because in theory it will lead to less electronic waste(which affects us all). I don't personally think that's true, I think even with removable batteries people will just buy new phones every 2 years anyway, but I wouldn't describe this move as authoritarian - just misguided.
Could you point me to AAA-battery powered noise cancelling headphones? No bluetooth necessary.
I have a pair from 2014, and I love that as long as I have some spare batteries, I'm never stuck with headphones which I can't use because of low charge, and that I don't have to charge yet another device. That pair has no bluetooth, so power usage is low: one AAA battery for 30-40 hours of use.
When these are dead, I won't find a replacement, because manufacturer does not want me to use the same device for eight years. They want me to have the integrated battery dead in a couple of years and buy a new pair.
You’re demanding that the government force people to make things that they no longer want to make, usually because the product is no longer profitable. Someone has to pay for the workers and factories needed to produce these products. Better it be you than the >99% of taxpayers who don’t want battery-powered wired headphones.
If you're laying up your own prismatic cells from a reel of battery film, why not? If you need a whole separate distribution chain, fuck it, we use the same battery as last year.
So while I am 100% in favor of right of repair, I wonder if the law of unintended consequences will lead to more difficult warranty claims.
Plenty of other devices such as outdoor cameras have replaceable batteries with no warnings.
Shavers have a water proofed interior shelled battery that although usually not replaceable, technically can be since all but 2 flat contacts are sealed.
Designing batteries for said water protection incurs extra cost, and is cheaper to just seal in, ensuring the financial burden of the design failure is on the consumer, this law helps end that practice.
This is some insane ramblings.
I am sure talented engineers will fix any of the purported drawbacks of replaceable batteries if thats what they get instructed to do.
As for the EU, what can I say. Derided, badmouthed and undermined continuously both from within and from outside, its the only major entity that consistently provides a sense that there is hope.
This scenario is no more likely that the legislation of safety belts preventing the invention of EV's
In fact robust and reasonable regulation that makes societal expectations clear can save inventors and designers a lot of heartburn and channel their energies towards more sustainable pursuits
I wanted to give my son my older iPhone I haven’t used in 5 years and it’s not able to hold a charge at all any more. That wasn’t the case when I stopped using it.
Source- https://apps.cce.csus.edu/sites/CalRecycle/usedoil18/speaker...
To replace a iPhone 14 Max battery Apple charges $99. I'm pretty confident 3rd parties could do that for much cheaper. Especially if 3rd parties were allowed to make the battery or if batteries sizes were standardized.
That's not in question — we know that 3rd parties will sell cheap and unsafe replacement batteries. We know that consumers who don't understand the risks will buy them. We know that lots of people will get ripped off, and that some will be hurt.
I use my "Guinness Scale": how many Guinnesses can I purchase using this money? I have three local pubs and each sells a Guinness for €6.50, therefore, to me a $7 coffee is expensive. My latest keyboard cost me 4.5G - bargain, as it's backlit, and I've had it for two weeks now - I also factor in use/ per annum/ per day - my bicycle cost has cost me 1.06G since I bought it in 2019, but I have added/ replaced parts and bought clothing which has taken the price to around 3G (and 2020 was a washout for sports). I also kniow how many Guinnesses I earn a month, and that helps with budgeting. The Guinness scale is adaptable: I sometimes use 'a pair of jeans', whatever gives me a perspective i can relate to.
Phone are essentially a finished product nowadays. Apple think the same and shipped iphone 14 with the same CPU as their previous generation. There is also rumors of them skipping the next GPU upgrade for iphot15 because of mower demands than expected. My partner still use an iphone se (2016)
We're currently using a 12 years old iMac with upgraded ram and SSD for basic browsing. It's absolutely usable. The current generation of high end smartphones could easily last 10 years for basic usage.
Make the SoC upgradable next and we would have iphone SE that would last as long as cars.
Well, one stopped charging and wasn't popular enough for local shops to have parts for it. But that was likely wiring/port, not the battery itself.
There's only so much a cell phone needs to do. I think a Note 4, which is 8 years old at this point is still a perfectly functional phone, with only software related issues. And the battery is replaceable.
Every form factor since has been a pain in comparison.
This can be somewhat mitigated if you have a popular device that is supported by 3rd party ROMs.
Plus, there's an insidious combination of changes to the underlying hardware and changes to the APIs. When old hardware is no longer supported by the app maker, and their APIs have changed enough that you need a new(er) version of the app (or they just force you to be on the latest version), you're often SOL.
This can also be because of degraded batteries. It will also be much less of reason over time as phone processors mature.
The result is I only buy cheap phones now (~200$), with the expectation that they'll last about a year. I have no idea how people can justify spending the price of iPhones and other flagships when they are apparently so expendable.
I had 3 high-end HTC smartphones and one Huawei, which all lasted at least 4 years of use. And the reason for retiring them was wanting better hardware, camera, etc., not really that they stopped working or became slow (there only was a "physical" reason in in the case of the Huawei: the screen broke in a fall and it was expensive to replace, otherwise it worked just fine).
I don't have experience with Motorola, but from friends/family who have or had Samsung, it tends to be just... not good. Even if the hardware survives, which it not always does, after 1-2 updates they tend to lag like hell. I don't really get why they are so successful while e.g. HTC's smartphone business basically went under.
My iPhone6 still works. I’ve moved on for other reasons (more space, better camera) but the product still works better than most Androids. I even had Apple replace the battery!
IMO when it comes to electronics with little to no moving parts it's almost always better to buy used quality than cheap new crap. An iPhone that has lasted two years without failing will probably last 5 more without anything else than battery needing replacement. Mid-range Android phones often aren't bad either except for lack of long-term updates.
Something like the switch for example has no waterproofing and isn't ultra compact, it's really just not acceptable that the battery isn't a screw in panel like previous consoles.
Using POS software that is never optimized does not help, indeed.
> or weren't updated by the manufacturer.
That is a real problem, and there is no good solution - apart from having eventual Linux phones but we are a very long way from there.
This depends on your use case. Sent from my Pinephone.
This is exactly why we need GNU/Linux phones, which will have lifetime updates (Librem 5 and Pinephone).
As an iPhone user for more than 10 years, that just isn't true in my case. When I upgrade after 3-4 years, battery has never been the reason. The battery of the upgraded phone that I'm using for some other purpose does tend to give out after another few years but that's hardly 1-2 years total.
- There has been a proliferation of battery powered devices (cordless vacuums, drills, home cameras etc., scooters) built usually by Chinese companies, using proprietary batteries with no replacement parts and no easy way to replace them.
- The requirement of 'user replaceability' isn't clarified as to what level of expertise can be expected from the user - the hackaday article shows an easily replaceable battery, but for example Ikea expects users to assembly complex pieces of furniture by hand, so I don't think this is going to be a huge constraint on manufacturers.
I feel like what the EP is going for is the creation of standardized and regulated drop-in batteries ensuring that if the pouch cell battery in your ASUS laptop dies, you can get an OEM-equivalent, regulated, third-party replacement for it which you can install with the same difficulty as replacing a RAM stick.
> Portable batteries incorporated in appliances shall be readily removable and replaceable by the end-user or by independent operators during the lifetime of the appliance, if the batteries have a shorter lifetime than the appliance, or at the latest at the end of the lifetime of the appliance.
> A battery is readily replaceable where, after its removal from an appliance, it can be substituted by a similar battery, without affecting the functioning or the performance of that appliance.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/docs_autres_instituti...
It will also subtly shift the incentives to either support things for longer or creating a long-term 3rd party ecosystem
you used to be able to remove it, and deal with it safely.
now , when glued in, if it starts to go thermal, you cant remove it, bare minimum your phone goes mission impossible, large chance of injury or starting a fire.
all batteries should be removable, for basic product safety.
im pretty sure a federaly mandated recall of all such nonremoveable battery items is legally possible here in US, but how is the will to do it going to be born.
it shouldnt just be ~possible~ to remove a battery, it should be expedient, as in, push a thumbnail into the slot and pry lightly, or similar to FRS radio batteries [push on a catch, lift battery out]
Lithium Ion going bad is an excellent time to have proper respect for chemical burns.
Replaceable batteries and SD Cards are prototypical for features that extend a phones useful life, but whose absence doesn't get punished because our purchase decisions don't factor in things we might wish to have in two years time.
And manufacturers have no incentive to extend useful life.
If long term consumer preferences really would drive phone design then why does everyone use cases, but there are no options to buy a phone that is less sleak but robust enough not to need a case?
I don’t use a case, and I resent you supporting the use of government power to force me to make a tradeoff that I have chosen against.
Cases as an option mean the same phone can serve everyone, and people can choose to use a case or not. You are literally asking why phone manufacturers choose to serve a bigger market rather than a smaller one.
As someone else asked, what other purchasing decisions that I make should be illegal in the name of forcing every product to conform to your personal preferences rather than letting consumers like me decide what we want?
As for other decisions you don't get to make: One obvious example is the safety requirements for all your electronic devices. You can not decide to sell/buy unsafe devices.
Externalities are equally ignored, and government fines are simply another cost (which is, ironically, why significant fines drive changes).
Let’s try this another way.
Pretend your a phone company, and pretend that 70% of people use cases. And pretend 50% of those are zealots about cases and are offended at even the suggestion that they might ever go caseless. I think it’s less than that, but whatever.
So you’ve got three choices!
1. Build totally different phones for case and caseless. Everything from development to tooling to distribution is totally separate.
2. Focus on one market or the other, but not both
3. Ship a phone that works great caseless, and cases that can be attached for people who want bulkier phones.
Now, even if you personally hate the idea of a caseless phone, I hope you can work through why it is more economically and environmentally efficient to make cases an add-on.
I’m sorry the market isn’t serving your needs. I’m less sympathetic with anyone who insists their particular niche is actually the silent majority that would obviously be the correct group for companies to center every product decision on.
Yet there are ~ 0 caseless phones out there. Your argument does not explain this _at all_. How you can look at this situation and pretend it's not an obvious market failure is beyond me. The only question is what the origin of the market failure is, and whether regulation could help. I don't think for cases regulation is an appropriate tool, for USB and replaceable batteries I think it is, for SD Cards I am not convinced either way.
But to have a meaningful discussion on this, it's first necessary to acknowledge how irrational the phone market actually is, which seems to be something that some people are (ideologically?) opposed to in this thread.
Maybe in your social circles, but I can only think of a few friends that use cases. Screen protectors are more common I think, but you can’t see that at a glance.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/368627/us-protective-cas...
Cases are also fashion statements for some people. Mandating bigger bulkier phones again forces trade offs on customers, making decisions for us you have no business making.
As for not knowing what I’ll need in future, I’ve been using smartphones for 14 years, I think I’ve got a pretty good idea by now what features I value.
As for SD card slots and replaceable batteries, phones with those features were common fur years and years, but the fact is the market simply didn’t care. If they were genuinely valued product differentiators those models would have been rewarded and the features would have survived. They didn’t because the fact is they offer marginal utility to most people.
Largely the products I want to use are being made, thank you very much. Please leave them alone.
Can't vote with your wallet for a product that nobody is offering.
But you're half right. When my mom buys a phone, she doesn't think about those things, but when she calls me and says "my phone is full what do I do?" I would previously have advised her to pop in an SD card, but that option no longer exists.
This thread is full of what one might call the efficient market fallacy "this is what manufacturers provide, thus it must be what people really want".
Probably just your peer group bud. Most of my mates would prefer to spend 10 seconds unscrewing a compartment than paying someone 10 bucks for nothing.
Pretty big chance that we are falling victim to a paradox here. If the majority of users think "I can't buy a phone with a replaceable battery because all high-end phones from any manufacturer lacks them" the battery issue never get cited on polls on why a person bought a particular phone.
This includes every iPhone for the last few years, most everything Samsung makes, and basically every phone which is just two slabs of glass glued together.
GPSers and FRS radios have done this for a long time. cell phones did this until later in the "slim is in " marketing campaign.
I'm guessing that most owners of waterproof handheld radios are more 'handy' than the general population.
they can vary from self destruct, to immortal service life depending on material, and use.
(With today's rubber being what it is, I guess I could safely at least double that interval - but it only takes a few minutes, and the vaseline is effectively free, so...
(Much as I love a good locking mechanism and a rubber seal, I can see it making the phone a little thicker than it would be was the battery non-removable.)
Why the dishonest weasel phrasing?
If EU bureaucrats can design a better phone, well... why don't they?
It's one of the easier things to fix. I could swap a phone battery easier than I could replace my door handle or repair clothing.
But that doesn't mean that repairs/replacements need to be limited to something a random user can do without tools or at least with tools they're likely to have laying around their house. I've replaced batteries and had batteries replaced in my MacBooks a few times and it hasn't been an unreasonably difficult or expensive process.
I've had laptops with batteries you could pop out but they were relatively heavy compared to today's norms.
The advertised water resistance is only for the original battery, case unopened.
My DSLR is water resistant, despite having multiple ports, moving parts, and a removable lens.
How tall and wide should the phone be. Max brightness Slipperiness Volume Whether it’s round at the corners How thin the phone should be Whether those that are sold in EU should have all the parts made in member countries just like Airbus
And does your legal philosophy of “anything not explicitly allowed is forbidden” apply to other aspects of life?
All these laws remind me of the apocryphal tale of a legislature mandating the pi = 3.
Regulations act as pressure. If this results in less waterproof devices and I as an user still want waterproof, I'll keep on looking for companies that do the best job under this constraint. That will further push the industry to figure out the replaceable battery + waterproof combo.
They seem to have no issues earning money offering a cheap smartphone (much cheaper than Apple), creating a waterproof smartphone with a user replaceable battery.
How can that be?
We don't need nany states, there are some examples of phones that provide this option and people don't want them.
Why not?
> We don't need nanny states
How do you define a nanny state? It feels like you're against any regulations at all, but plenty of countries have laws about how businesses operate and specifications that their products must meet to be allowed to be sold. I'm not sure how a law intended to reduce electronic waste is somehow indicative of a "nanny state", whatever that is, unless you just believe everything should be up to individual choice. Which doesn't make sense to me, because I don't know how individual choice would be able to solve things like protecting the environment from manufacturing waste processes or preventing the extinction of wildlife.
There is more money to be made if the corporate types herd together and institute such dark patterns. There is no incentive for any of them to break ranks.
Regulation is the only answer. Not perfect, not all that good, just better.