The article is wrong. The rule is that obscure tools must not be required:
> A portable battery shall be considered readily removable by the end-user where it can be removed from a product with the use of commercially available tools, without requiring the use of specialised tools [...]
No consideration at all of tradeoffs, IE how much dust/water proofing do we lose and how much bulk/weight it will add.
There are not enough reasons for every model to need a different specific set of tools. There's one common reason: to make service difficult.
> No consideration at all of tradeoffs, IE how much dust/water proofing do we lose and how much bulk/weight it will add.
Seems like it's all about tradeoffs. They're trading whatever hypothetical advances you're referring to here for less tech waste and lower consumer costs. They're deciding that it's an area in which manufacturers aren't allowed to innovate, because the innovations are trivial compared to the externalities that they impose.
You don't because that's not actually what most consumers want, and thus the misguided need to regulate it.
- Consumers optimize for what looks nicest in the store, and it's easy for the store to bury the nonreplacability of the battery under a thick layer of tech mumbojumbo.
- Most consumers (at least here in Germany) get their phones from their phone plans, so they are limited by what the phone companies offer with their contracts.
You could turn the argument around: clearly consumers do want this tradeoff, because they have decided to vote in governments to legislate for it to be a requirement.
If you think that's an overly simplistic argument, then I invite you to re-evaluate yours.
Looking at the iPhone 14 iFixit kit, the tools are not particularly exotic... pentalobe/tripoint screwdrivers (kinda mandatory for super small screws) and just a bunch of things needed to work with small devices, spudger, tweezers, suction cup, clamp. Stuff that for the most part has been part of fixit kits going back many generations.
A generic toolkit for working w/ most Apple devices shouldn't have a particular high number of parts.
I've stripped a handful of smaller torx heads due to worn bits over the years. Can't recall ever stripping a pentalobe.
I won't argue Apple came up with a new design for security purposes, at least initially. But that doesn't mean they didn't come up with a superior design for tiny bits at the same time.
Samsung Galaxy S5 had:
- easy user removable/swapable battery 2800mah
- external port for microSDXC
- audiojack
- was still IP67 dust/water resistant (up to 1m for 30 min)
- 5.1 inches AMOLED screen
- just 145g weight
- just 8.1 mm thickness
- this was already mass produced in 2014
But that nomenclature is void if you ask me. I got water on the upper front part of my iPhone XS which is IP whatever and Face ID died. Apple said they wouldn't give me a new one because water resistant doesn't mean they have to replace your phone when something happens.
They didn't do this for water proof iPhones - that were lame excuses. They removed e.g. the headphone jack early to increase incentives to adopot (the then future) Airpods.
This was an outright lie; some Android manufacturers (I believe it was Samsung and Sony, but maybe others as well) had waterproof phones with headphone jacks and it didn't seem to negatively affect the phone in other ways.
Also, I can't figure out how there could be more than one way to replace the battery. It's incredibly simple.
Samsung even had a warning display on the phone when you turned it on to make sure the battery was secure.
Looking at the ifixit guide for iphone 6s[1], it doesn't look like you need any special tools (as defined by the regulation). Sure, they're not exactly tools that a typical person has in their toolbox, but they're all "commercially available". ifixit even offers them for sale in their guide.
[1] https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPhone+6+Battery+Replacement/29...
> A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge, or proprietary tools, thermal energy or solvents to disassemble it. Commercially available tools are considered to be tools available on the market to all end-users without the need for them to provide evidence of any proprietary rights and that can be used with no restriction, except health and safety-related restrictions.
Also answers the above question regarding "specialised" - that would be anything not fitting the "commercially available" definition.
[1] https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/PE-2-2023-INIT...
1. tools must be commercially available. 2. Tools must not be specialized, unless provided free of charge. (Reminder, part of the idea that the idea is that throwing away batteries is gradually getting outlawed, so end users need to be able to extract the battery before they throw away/recycle/or provide to eWaste facilities the rest of the device.). 3. Tools must not be proprietary. 4. Use of thermal energy cannot be required. 5. Use of solvents cannot be required.
And finally a clarification about the definition of commercially available.
Number 2 seems like it is independent of commercially available. Otherwise the "free of charge" part would make no sense. Furthermore, replacement is actually a secondary motivation of this law. A slightly more primary motivation is to ensure users can remove the batteries before throwing away the device or handing the rest to an eWaste facicity as applicable. I'd assume anything that the average consumer cannot expect to find at a local tool shop would be considered specialized.
Anything else like use of knives should be considered special if slots are not designated for them.