Battery needs to be replaced like once every 2-3 years. Why change the device design to make battery user-replaceable when I can bring it to the repair shop?
- it's expensive
- it takes their phone away
If changing the battery is a one hour cheap deal, a lot more people may do it.
And I am very happy about those EU initiatives: this way I know what sites are tracking me and how much. This tells me which sites values annoying me with their banner so they can sell my data.
Have you noticed there is no banner on Hacker news despite the fact that:
- they serve in Europe
- they use cookies
That's because it's not about cookies, and the banner is only for privacy abusers.
> - it's expensive
> - it takes their phone away
Ok, people don’t go to shops to replace battery now? “oh, it’s 99$ to replace the battery? I’d rather pay 1000$ for a new iPhone!” That’s a bit silly.
Yeap, only compared to a brand new phone. When you have a cheap iPhone from 5 years ago and you compare the price of a battery replacement to the actual price of your phone it quickly become obnoxiously expensive.
There’s no way a user-swappable battery will be cheaper than that.
As far as HN goes it is not clear whether or not they are covered by GDPR. Yes, the site is viewable in Europe and people there can make accounts. But that's not sufficient.
GDPR asserts extraterritorial jurisdiction when you are either (1) offering goods and services in the Union or (2) monitoring the behavior of data subjects in the Union that takes place in the Union.
One of the recitals clarifies that the mere availability of a site to Europeans does not necessarily mean it is offering goods and services in the Union. The site has to envisage serving people in the Union.
If you aren’t being a bastard, you don’t need to show me a banner.
Could have simple valued the Do-Not-Track flag but they didn't want to.
But we all know thats bullshit and the law actually did cause this.
The best we have is to define small markets with strict regulations - within that some competition can happen that will tend to raise better products.
And not all websites have banners
It also says that spare parts should be available for up to seven years after a phone’s release, and, perhaps most importantly, “the process for replacement shall be able to be carried out by a layman.”
This means, that basically every phone where you can unscrew the back, disconnect the connector, remove the glue with a pull tab, and put in a new battery, is already compliant. Its basically the same set of steps any corner shop repair tech would do (but its something you could do yourself).
It just states that manufacturers cant interfere with this process, and have to sell the parts to you for 7 years after purchase.
Having a replaceable battery is a godsend when you're traveling. Changing the battery in my Fairphone 4 takes less than a minute.
I also live in a small village without a repair shop (closest one is probably a 1-2 hour drive away). What a shitty option.
You'd rather go to a repair shop and pay a service fee for something that you can probably do in a couple of minutes at home?
HN userbase in a nutshell
Another point is that making a phone water-resistant is likely not trivial when you can take the whole back panel away.
My point is: are these dramatic changes worth it when the battery degrades only couple years after purchase?
Now, things like bluetooth earphones, those I'm curious about.
"I don't care about cookies"
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...
I don't care about cookies takes a very secondary approach to tracking privacy - if it can't figure out the cookie form, it'll just agree to whatever is being asked of it.
Consent-O-Matic will leave the window up if it can't figure it out so you can reject them yourself.
Edit: IDCAC also has been bought by notorious crapware antivirus scanner manufacturer Avast, so that's another reason to stay away from it.