Hacker News Reader

Comment by qwertyuiop_ | Hacker News Reader

Why not pass EU phone specs on

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

View on HN

Lol,EU fighting unnecessary waste and here we have people butthurt? Lol spud we literally regulate people for building shit products that are harmful in every other sector, health, food, you name it. Why should tech be any different? And yes your e-waste that's completely unnecessary just because your company wants to make shit decisions isn't acceptable. It's harmful and there's no reason why it should be allowed. Stoked the EU are doing this finally. Get wrecked crappy designers (looking at you apple).

You’re cool with designers, e.g. Apple, shipping EU models that are less waterproof, bulkier, less reliable, and cost more? In the name of reducing e-waste?

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.

Well folks seem to keep pushing the boundaries and pumping out crap that's wasteful, unrepairable and just shit designed to appease to some kids fishcher price kids toy aesthetic. Then yes. We need these laws. If your so thick we have to spell it out one by one a law at a time then so be it. I have no problem with this.

Thanks for showing true colors with the ad hom!

> You’re cool with designers, e.g. Apple, shipping EU models that are less waterproof, bulkier, less reliable, and cost more? In the name of reducing e-waste?

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.

> https://amzn.eu/d/1CVHPKd

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?

That's easy: they don't have >30% profit margins in hardware plus service upsells resulting in billions of USD in profit each quarter.

Less waterproof? Oh no, how will we all be able to continue diving with our iPhones? This is such a common trans-European tradition, I fail to see how we will ever adapt to this change.

There have been sufficiently waterproof devices with removable batteries. It's more of a pain to engineer but it can be done.

I think this is unnecessary criticism. Battery replacement is about sustainability. Especially when corps tend to enable throttling.

Phones have been getting better every year, and with it, new features and utilities enabled, throttling or not. No one (few outside HN) wants an old phone. People want the new features that are enabled by new hardware. The effective life of a phone is not limited by a battery but the remaining hardware.

Lot of iPhone users seem mention longevity as main feature. I personally know both Android and iPhone users, who like to have phone longer than 2 years. Having user changeable battery doesn't take away your freedom to change phone more often, but now you have phone with aftermarket value.

Phones are good enough that they feature sets last 6 years, while the batteries don’t. Plenty of people don’t want to drop $800 on a new iPhone every few years when their old one works fine. And those who do move their old iPhone to the secondary market. The secondary market exists because contrary to your statement, plenty of people are fine with old phones.

Next thing you know after this passes they’ll be regulating the size and interface to the the battery such that a standard sized battery must be supported on all mobile phones or else you’ll be fined 30% of global profits.

This would be awesome. Proprietary batteries are truly terrible design.

Proprietary batteries are useful for getting the best trade off of capacity, weight, cost, and form factor for a product. Standardized batteries will result in products that are worse in 1 or more of those categories.

The benefit standardized batteries have over those trade offs just by increasing longevity of items and in turn reducing waste I will argue day in day out make it worth it. Those metrics are worth zip in the grand scheme of things given what we are ruining in order to achieve them. Stop breaking the world just so you can have trinkets.

Consumers prioritize capacity, weight, and cost over longevity. We are simply making the best devices we can for consumers. Phones make up a tiny percent of the waste humans produce. There are much more high impact areas that should be focused on if you want to reduce the waste output of humanity. The bias against waste of phones in due to their cost instead of the amount of waste it is.

This thread has hyper-focused on smartphones, but the proposed legislation would cover all consumer appliances, not just phones.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com