Hacker News Reader

Comment by jklinger410 | Hacker News Reader

I think the policies are pretty well informed. I do think USB-C was a huge problem, and I don't think it was coming in a few years.

I'm not skeptical of replaceable batteries. I think the policy that forces them to be removable on top of working with 3rd party manufacturers is a good idea.

I don't think replaceable batteries or USB-C requirements restrict the industries ability to move forward.

Edit: You can continue to argue in this thread, but the point of this reply was simply to point out that the parent comment was all thinly veiled opinions with no substance.

View on HN

Parent commenter, and sure it was opinion, but based in good reasoning.

USB-C wasn't the problem, MFi was. The rumours are that Apple's USB-C implementation will be locked down in similar ways, accessory manufacturers will still need to pay Apple to create certified accessories, and data transfer speeds are going to be restricted to Lightning speeds. USB-C everything is nice, but no non-techies I know like it because it's the new cable that's not compatible with any of their stuff (as much as I advocate for it).

Removable batteries in smartphones just aren't workable. We have too high expectations for battery life, weight, durability, water resistance, and size. It negatively impacts all of these. There hasn't been a mass market smartphone with a replaceable battery in a long time, and if they were that great for customers there would have been. A much better option would be to focus on repairability, it would have almost all the benefits, and effectively none of the downsides.

> USB-C wasn't the problem, MFi was

I'm an Android user, but nearly everyone I know has an iPhone. And not even one of them has an iPhone accessory. So how important is this MFi thing, really? From my perspective, the main annoyance is that my partner (who has an iPhone) needs a special charging cable, and can't use the cables I use for my phone and we both use for our laptops.

And I suspect that's mainly what the EU cared about too: charging cables.

> USB-C everything is nice, but no non-techies I know like it because it's the new cable that's not compatible with any of their stuff

If you're talking about all their current stuff being Lightning, then that problem will work its way out in a few years. If their current stuff is all micro-USB or USB-A, then... what? How is that even possible these days? Even the cheap rechargeable motorized cat toys I've bought on Amazon use USB-C cables to charge.

And if it is micro-USB or USB-A that their other devices use, so what? They'd just be going from one charging cable that only works with iPhones (Lightning) to another that only works with iPhones (USB-C). And as their other non-USB-C devices wear out or become obsolete, and they replace them with new ones that charge using USB-C cables, this problem will also sort itself over time.

> ... if [removable batteries] were that great for customers there would have been [more mass market smartphones]...

Removable battery phones are more difficult to design.

Why would a company do something that's more difficult, absent a mandate to do so?

Modern smartphones are not the pinnacle of technical possibility -- they're an optimization between feature and price.

A feature could be beloved by customers but add another $1 to smartphone build costs, and still be cut by every remaining manufacturer in the market.

MFI may be THE problem. But we will never know because you can’t even plug in non Apple stuff in the phone because they use a proprietary connector.

Once Apple is required to use USB-C and then uses software to block non-MFI connections then the EU will (a) take them to court for trying to undermine the spirit of the legislation (b) if they lose in court pass a new law requiring them to prevent blocking non MFI connections (although they will probably allow them to display scary warning messages).

Yes, I’m sure Apple is going to block non certified devices in USB C phones just like they block non certified devices in USB C iPads and they don’t support stuff like standard USB devices, video over USB etc.

Oh wait, that’s entirely not the case today.

> I don't think replaceable batteries or USB-C requirements restrict the industries ability to move forward.

These ultra thin foldable phones probably couldn’t exist with removable batteries. The thinness required to make it comfortable to use would be hard and so would the structural integrity with a removable backplate.

It would absolutely restrict durability since it’d make waterproof and dustproofing way more challenging, if possible at all.

Removable backs would limit wireless charging hardware like apples MagSafe (which is great!).

As long as we are sharing random opinions - my Samsung s2 and s5 were smaller thinner lighter than modern phones, with 3.5mm and replaceable battery and microsd card. And also had gps and wifi and phone. And were ip67 rated.

Modern phones are going for sexy, that's all. They are large in every dimension but Impractically thin even though everybody adds another 3mm - 6mm of case anyway because they're sleek to the point of unusable. I particularly love when we buy a sexy sleek thin phone and then put an otterbox on it :-)

I agree with you. But also, to be fair, I'm pretty sure in that time phone bodies have transitioned from mostly plastic to mostly metal? I'm sure that has something to do with the weight, and I would guess that the metal shell is probably thicker too?

Why should they be thicker? Metals are resilient and strong. That's why we use them to build all sorts of stuff. I expect metal bodies to be thinner not thicker.

I would imagine that thin plastic is more resistant to permanent deformation than thin metal. Or, in other words, when then metal bends, it tends to stay bent. Thin plastic can more easily bend, but then restore to its original shape.

But I'm not a materials engineer. This is just in my lay experience of how thin materials I've encountered perform.

> And also had gps and wifi and phone. And were ip67 rated.

Only if the flap covered the ports…

> Removable backs would limit wireless charging hardware like apples MagSafe (which is great!).

I had a phone with a removable back and wireless charging back in 2012. This isn't rocket science.

Same. Was the Samsung Galaxy S3 (which in 2012 had wireless charging and a removable back) not sufficiently thin? It's less than a millimeter thicker than the current Galaxy S23, and I'm not sure that the <1mm of difference in the S23 comes from having a non-removable back (as opposed to the 11 years of advancements in other technologies.)

I had a Palm Pre in 2010 with a removable battery and wireless charging.

Wireless charging is stupid and inefficient. If someone tried to sell you a petrol pump which works by spraying a jet of petrol into your car from 5m away would you get it?

“Your customers won’t even have to plug anything into their car. FuelSafe just safely hoses down the car with fuel! Over 45% efficient!”

I had a Nexus one with wireless charging 10 years ago.

>"I don't think replaceable batteries or USB-C requirements restrict the industries ability to move forward. "

Compelling the use of USB-C will cause stagnation in connector innovation; there's no point in trying to to create new and more durable/water-proof/wear-resistant/faster connectors. The requirements for replaceable batteries may cause stagnation in other innovations; if we imagine that there'd been similar requirements in the alkaline era, we might never have gotten to Lithium-Ion.

Note that USB-C was invented after the EU mandated Micro USB. Innovation still happens and the regulations get updated.

How did Apple sell phones in the EU without micro-USB?

Common EPS was a voluntary standard.

So the idea that mandatory standards don’t halt progress because phones moved past micro USB is hogwash, then?

There's no reason why devices can't have such a newer, better port alongside type-c. Until the new port gains traction the presence of type-c will help with compatibility, and presumably once this hypothetical connector has been proven better than type-c the regulation will simply be updated to mandate that instead.

How can it exist along side USB-C? You mean two ports or a converter or something?

Either a port that's compatible with USB-C charging but has otherwise different pins or electrical characteristics (just like how a USB-A port has 4 pins in USB 2 but 8 pins in USB 3, but is still compatible). Or you just add a second port.

Ugly to have 2 ports.

Before we standardized on micro USB, lots of phones had ports easily three times the width of USB-C. We were ok with that back then, so why would two USB-C sized ports next to each other be so bad? In return, all your gizmos and chargers continue to work in the transition period.

Or, just make the new port a barrel connector like a headphone jack, just with more segments. Bonus points if you can plug in an actual headphone and it works. Nobody seemed to have a problem with a headphone jack next to their USB port.

Why do I want a headphone jack on my phone?

I don’t. It’s all Bluetooth now. I like wireless headphones.

But you should be free to buy them and we can both vote with equally with our wallets.

Go buy phones that have the 3.5mm jacks and send the signal that consumers still want plugs invented in the 1950s. If that’s what you want to signal. You have a great way to tell Apple if you like what they are doing! So do I.

Maybe Europeans like wired headphones over wireless? That’s news to me, but they should vote with their wallets. If you like what a company does, but things that company makes. If you don’t, don’t.

It bugs me to see a government meddle with what customers want to buy.

Don’t rig the system so you get a bigger voice than others. That’s not fair.

it bugs me to see rabid "free market", after all europe is birthplace of socialism

Ugly to have 5 cameras on the back :-)

> The requirements for replaceable batteries may cause stagnation in other innovations

What conceivable stagnation could requiring replaceable batteries cause?

How can we know?

This is part of the challenge with these regulations - by definition we're defining a framework based on existential knowledge.

What about batteries that can also be panes of glass that act as the display? What about ultra low-power devices that are powered kinetically by typical human movement or magnetic perturbations?

None of these currently exist in a commercially viable form, but if we regulate based on our current view of technology do we run the risk of making these innovations more challenging to bring to market? That's the challenging balance that needs to be considered.

The regulation gives manufacturers quite a lot of leeway on how easy it is to replace the battery. You could make the display a battery, just make sure users can replace the display with pull tabs, a set of precision screwdrivers and whatever other commercially available tools you want. And from just skimming the regulation, I don't see how devices would be forced to have a battery. It talks about devices with batteries, and batteries in mobile phones, but if your device doesn't have a battery then this regulation simply doesn't apply.

History is littered with examples of policy creating unintended consequences causing more harm than good. Or at least negating the early good it created over time. It’s usually fine at the start until cracks start to show and policies are often a one way street, that only get reformed many years after the problems become apparent, if at all.

It's also littered with examples of a lack of policy causing untold harms. A light-hearted one would be the time libertarians found out that policy helps keep the bears away[0].

The answer isn't to abandon policy, it's to design it to be flexible and to respond quickly when problems are discovered.

[0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-...

"Connector innovation" is a solved problem. We really only needed symmetric connectors so we didn't have to insert a cable twice each time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com