Many people get a phone case partly to add some heft to ultrathin phones, it makes sense to mandate this, and possibly an SD slot alongside the (good) USB regulation:
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.
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".
Externalities are equally ignored, and government fines are simply another cost (which is, ironically, why significant fines drive changes).
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.
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.