EU law mandating universal chargers for devices comes into force
france24.com
france24.com
The delay was largely due to intense lobbying from manufacturers, especially Apple, which profited significantly from licensing their proprietary Lightning port.
Next up on the EU's list for 2026: Easily Changeable Batteries (you know, what every cell phone 20 years ago had before Apple).
How significant? Doubtful it moves the needle for Apple.
People often forget Lightning is much superior to microUSB which was the alternative at the time (also mechanically superior to USB-C), and that Apple was instrumental in widespread USB-C adoption by taking a heat for the longest time on their butterfly MacBooks.
And yes, while I am happy with USB-C today, I totally believe mandating it does stifle innovation. Imagine if we mandated microUSB in 2010.
I understand as a consumer you get emotional and pissed, but even if true, that is a drop in the bucket and not "significant" profit for Apple.
The true value of MFi licensing to Apple would be influencing the accessory market, not peanuts in dongle sales.
They're going to keep milking their followers no matter how ridiculous each point seems when someone puts it in writing. That's how "the needle moves".
Last time I checked some European countries have not only tax-free churches, they also facilitate collecting taxes and funding them.
Instead of policing cults and dictating pricing, I suggest simply not purchasing what you don't like.
(While we are on the subject of forcing behavior changes, let's mandate air conditioning and a singular electrical wall outlet. Why not?)
> How significant? Doubtful it moves the needle for Apple.
I made no claims about governments dictating prices anywhere.
Dictating behaviour, however, is already being done in many areas, especially consumer protection, anti competitiveness and others.
Maybe you could consider Apple cables to be overengineered, but I can readily understand why a cable built this way - irrespective of manufacturer - is not overpriced. And it's not just about a chip.
The cable is simply factually better on every metric than the hand-soldered 4 wire el cheapo one at 15~16 min. There is no cult in that.
Now if one only needs to carry USB 2.0 speeds or a limited amount of power it'd be ridiculous to buy a 100+ or even 50+ cable. That doesn't make the cable overpriced either, merely overspecced for that use case.
Not that AFAIK iPhones support Thunderbolt anyway so how is this relevant?
Lightening was most likely a combination of:
* The connection interface was superior to USB-A Micro/Mini in both size and reliability - and this was the contemporary connector in 2012.
* They had undergone a physical connector change only once, and it was not received well by vendors.
* USB-C was not anywhere near ready for the iPhone 5, and the 40 pin would not do well in that type of device.
* USB-C and Lightening are comparable on size and reliability (saying nothing about speed) - so even after USB- started gaining adoption there was not a strong incentive to switch over. It wasn't superior.
* USB-C charging only would be fine, but people would expect drivers for storage, HDMI, radio docks etc. Easy to undersell this effort in hindsight.
I also doubt that it was a profit motive.
let’s not forget that Apple themselves helped design USB-C and pushed for it to be the standard. I guess they couldn't wait for it to be ready, and given the iPhone 5 came out in 2012 and the first commercially successful USB-C devices came in 2016 I guess they were right.
One of the most profitable companies in the world trying to build more of a moat of incompatibilities with the rest of the non-apple world with no profit or ulterior motive? /s
Once a for-profit company gets large enough doing anything other than “maximize profit up to the point of illegality” becomes a Herculean task. It’s a natural consequence of capitalism, greed, and large organizations.
Good on EU for being a counter-balance force
At the time, yes. But not for years now. Apple could've changed the path by opening this as a standard but choose not to.
> Imagine if we mandated microUSB in 2010.
Apple would include an extra/expanded connector like a number of other device producers. Then they'd talk to the other large companies about moving to a new standard just like the currently introduced law proposes. This is not a "you must use usb-c" law, but rather "you must figure out how to get along" law.
Also, this pretty much happened, just without regulation. EU at the time effectively said "figure it out, or else" and microUSB became a standard for years. Now they felt like they need to push harder.
Sure, and Apple could have shipped a free pony to every child on earth. But expecting them to do so is childish.
No, this is exactly "you must use USB-C law." Please don't reframe it as a strawman.
> Apple would include an extra/expanded connector like a number of other device producers.
They did mandate such thing IIRC, just not forced directly on device, which is a slightly better IMO, to mandate how something is sold rather than dictating how the device should be built.
If you read it any other way, you'd be naive.
Good luck getting to "consensus" with the low end Android manufacturers who do not give a flying fuck about the customer experience and want to save $0.02. It just won't happen before they are forced to do it by the market competition, which won't happen now.
> Good luck getting to "consensus" with the low end Android manufacturers
Are they going to be more influential than Apple? Because this change happened even with Apple opposing it. And I really don't believe others have a stronger voice in Europe.
Apple is a minority manufacturer in the EU especially now that UK is not part of the EU. Plus EU politicians measure their manhood by sticking it to US companies so they love hating on Apple and Google and favoring China and South Korea.
Correct, thanks for reading the actual regulation
It does specify USB-C as the common charger port for now, of course (with support for future charging protocols over USB-C). And it does allow for technological evolution
(And of course the margin of improvements in wired charging diminishes over time - I think such regulation would have been more problematic before USB-C came along)
That’s just silly because it doesn’t. Any new standard won’t be able to get any traction because no device would be allowed to use it.
You need actual functioning devices that people use before any of those hypothetical advantages become obvious.
We should look at data but USB-C anecdotally have been an order of magnitude worse for me and people around me.
Most of those batteries are standard at the wholesale level. But a thin plastic layer added to house the battery makes it proprietary due to the connection interface. And now it’s a world of incompatible batteries and price gouging for replacement batteries.
It appears much harder to opt out of said socialism without leaving the country though, so read that again with this pretext perhaps?
Arguably achieved nothing as Android was already on USB-C and Apple too on everything but iPhone and would have switched anyway soon for speed reasons regardless. Arguably, the switch was too early and a disservice to iPhone users.
That said, I stand by my comment that most iPhone users would have been better off with Lightning. For many of us who carry Macs as well as phones, having a singular charger is beneficial (less so now that you'd wanna use MagSafe with the Mac, again), but still years of Lightning cables make them easy to find in any iPhone household.
They had already switched iPad Pros long before EU mandate was a thing, so I don't think your would've-not-been theory is substantiated by evidence. If I were to speculate, Apple's evolution would be towards killing the port altogether and do everything wirelessly which is an admirable goal (I'm sure will be downvoted to the oblivion in this community for saying this, but that's also the sentiment of the initial MacBook Air release in 2008 which now defines the modern laptop).
For sending files, Apple has perfected wireless AirDrop and that's quite speedy.
I don't think we are at that point yet. There is still a lot of innovation happening in batteries on the cell and pack level. Cell sizes are mostly standardized indeed, but packs not. For high performance and reliability, you might want to glue those cells in-place. Or some manufacturer may decide to use a more capable battery management system, which then requires more space. I think that enforcing standardization would be a major hindrance for innovation.
> price gouging
Can we stop using this term? It's a meaningless word used by politicians to scapegoat businesses. If they really wanted to solve problems, they would go after monopolies or cartels. Both hinder competition and thus make it less likely that the consumer gets a good deal. "Price gouging" on the other hand is about whether a price is "fair" or not. Unlike monopolies or cartels, there is no clear definition for "fairness". I can call something fair while you would call it unfair. You cannot solve people being unfair to other people, but you can solve a lack of competition. So that's where the aim should be.
I think this removability is part of a broader push for the EU to become a circular economy - at the end of life of the phone the user would discard the device and battery into separate bins.
That is at least the official goal regarding EV batteries and there are efforts underway to make it happen.
Perhaps my lack of understanding comes from using more expensive phones? I use iPhones and keep them for 5 years and usually replace 1-2 screens in that time. And since the phone is $1k new it feels completely irrelevant if a battery replacement costs $50 to have it done at a shop or $25 do do myself. If I used a $200 phone there could be a difference of course.
Parent comment: handwavy "still compromises something", but can't be certain what, then gives a personal anecdote.
The drawback could be as simple as “higher cost to manufacture” or “higher risk of consumers using incorrect/third party batteries”. I’d argue the latter is a real problem, but everyone might not agree.
As for parent comment it was about an android phone. I never used or owned one so can’t comment.
This wouldn’t be an issue if we had some kind of standards around batteries for cellphones rather than making unique batteries for every single model.
If you could just buy a “Type B” format phone battery for a phone this would eliminate the issue. It would be similar to the charger market, where different manufacturers could compete. This is _toward_ the market economics that capitalists so love, unless they’re benefiting from market capture of proprietary parts.
One-off designs are wasteful and drive up costs and drive down quality.
> drive down quality.
How so?
There are ways to make a phone stiff, such as a rigid metal shell around the battery. Or glue.
Phone costed me 600€, replacement after recent Apple price hike costs another 100€. I’m already considering just buying another iPhone next year since replacement costs so much.
Since my first Nokia 5110 I’ve replaced 0 screens, 2-3 screen protectors, 1 keypad, and so many batteries. Ofc this is all anecdotal, for me batteries, lack of updates and non-extendable storage have been the main reasons killing otherwise perfectly useable iPhones.
Yes replaceable batteries make your phone thicker, ok. The upside outweighs this downside by a far margin for me.
The reason it does not exist is definitely not because people do not want it, it’s because it ensures a higher revenue to smartphone constructors, it is basic capitalism (and I don’t mean capitalism is bad, it just will always tend to maximise profit, it’s its nature)
Finally, it is less wasteful to be able to replace components.
And to add an anecdote: replacing my battery on my iPhone was so complicated that the apple technician broke the screen (it was replaced free of charge) and it cost me 50% of the residual value of my phone. Wasteful and expensive, in summary. Replaceable batteries would solve this.
If you want - you can buy modular phones, pay for that, don't force other people
And I'll go and pay a couple dozen bucks for this work, like all normal people. But eco-activists are starting to say that eWaste is caused by non-replaceable batteries, not by the obsolescence of devices. No one will change the battery in an outdated device, even if it is replaceable.
There are pros and cons everywhere, so far I see more cons.
I don’t feel like focusing on fixing things at home is the best way to ensure device longevity.
Creating a demand for technicians that can replace all kinds of things on our phones makes it so there’s always some phone repair shop nearby. Every mall I frequent has one. This creates a lower threshold for keeping the phone alive no matter what goes wrong with it.
The battery on my last phone outlasted the phones useful lifespan, so it’s not like batteries on modern phones is a part that’s particularly likely to need replacement. Every user is different of course, some go through a lot more charge cycles. But then there’s others that often break their screens. Or their charge port. If all these things should be easily user replaceable without tools, the phone would become very bulky.
I feel like we’re pretty close to a good compromise, now that Apple has a program to do these kind of replacement at home if you want. It’s really not that difficult.
Unless they happen to be LTO but that would make a phone like three times bulkier.
If a TV has something like flash memory wear issues, it absolutely should make the part that wears into a microSD or m.2 card.
What, China doesn't exist? India too?
Companies like Apple greatly prefer (well, when they're not petulantly trying to show the EU who's boss) to ship one design to the whole world. It's a nuisance to have separate design processes, manufacturing processes, marketing materials, etc.
This is why, once it became affordable, the entire industry started making auto-switching power supplies.
Unless hardware manufacturers finagle a way to continue selling soldered batteries in the EU, user-swappable batteries will become the norm again.
Thankfully usb c is standardized but it wouldn’t have happened nearly as quickly without Apple.
I’m also curious, how and when will it be decided that it’s eventually time to move onto a new/better standard? If the law came into force 20 years ago, would we still be stuck with the standard of that time? Who decides when a new standard is worth upgrading?
Edit: I see now others mentioned China already.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_mar...
Before that there was no connector that was suitable for a universal charger, we barely even knew if dynamic voltage negotiation was going to be safe or not(I remember thinking it was going to try devices with bugs).
MicroUSB was craptastic, barrel jacks aren't voltage standardized in practice, but pretty much every average consumer adores USB-C. It's like a shining example of what tech can be.
If you made a law requiring any other connector, people would probably be angry. We could probably learn to live with a barrel jack, but most likely wrong voltage connection accidents would have happened at least occasionally.
Because almost none of the electronics you buy come with a replaceable battery, the second you buy something and use it on a regular basis it's destined to die and be thrown out within the next 4-8ish years due to the battery degrading and becoming increasingly more dangerous to keep around. Something that might be in perfect working condition and could be used for another 10 years has to be thrown out because of one single component.
I understand that batteries come in all shapes, sizes, capacities, yada yada, but imagine if we had standard rechargeable batteries like we have standard non-rechargeable batteries and things were built in a way where you could easily replace batteries like we could on phones a decade ago. You would double or triple the lifespan of a ton of things.
Until they get dropped in the toilet.
Phones have gotten more waterproof as the batteries have gotten more permanently secured (not to mention induction charging). It's not a spurious correlation.
If anything, sealing electric toothbrushes is even more paramount than a phone. The normal use case is literally getting it wet through use.
Also, anecdotally, I’ve never had a sonicare toothbrush battery die. They still last weeks after many many years of use.
> Also, anecdotally, I’ve never had a sonicare toothbrush battery die. They still last weeks after many many years of use.
Sure, these exist too, though it doesn't reflect the majority of items which cheap out on all components, including batteries.
I feel like modern phones and the marketing around them (mostly from Apple) has pushed this nonsense that it's difficult to make water-resistant or water-proof electronics that still have a user-replaceable battery. Unfortunately this marketing seems to be working. Worked on you, at least. Gaskets, o-rings, and pressure seals are old, time-tested technology.
Admittedly it isn't as easy to make a water-resistant smartphone as it is to make water-resistant electric toothbrush. But it's far from impossible.
It might well be possible to do this in a phone, but this sort of reasoning to come to that conclusion seems faulty. Like saying "Phones should be able to blow buildings apart. After all, tanks do it, so it's clearly possible."
It’s the same for me, the whole toothbrush died two times shortly after warranty ended, with the battery having no issues. Not touching sonicare ever again. The cheap honeywell Chinese whatever brand is far more reliable for a small fraction of the price.
Tell that to the Ericsson t888 I washed (phone turned on) for a full cycle at 60C. After drying out for a few days it worked fine.
> Rated IP68 (maximum depth of 6 meters up to 30 minutes) under IEC standard 60529
But then, the fine print says:
> iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max are splash, water, and dust resistant and were tested under controlled laboratory conditions with a rating of IP68 under IEC standard 60529 (maximum depth of 6 meters up to 30 minutes). Splash, water, and dust resistance are not permanent conditions. Resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear. Do not attempt to charge a wet iPhone; refer to the user guide for cleaning and drying instructions. Liquid damage not covered under warranty.
What is the difference here between being water proof and water resistant?
Is it because water proof is permanent and resistant is time based?
Doesn't that mean that nothing is water proof? A submarine then is also only water resistant, because they have depth limits.
Lastly, they're advertising something, but then stating it's not covered under warranty. Doesn't that go against the Warranty of Merchantability?
That was back in 2014.
I didn't say it was impossible, or that people shouldn't try it, just that the flashlight comparison isn't relevant.
However, my casio G-Shock often comes with me and it’s only protected by a flat surface pushing on a gasket through 4 tiny screws.. the battery inside is a coin shape.
So I still think that’s an excuse.
That's not the case with a modern smartphone.
It's REGULATION (EU) 2023/1542 if you want to read it.
> ‘portable battery’ means a battery that is sealed, weighs 5 kg or less, is not designed specifically for industrial use and is neither an electric vehicle battery, an LMT battery, nor an SLI battery
> [...]
> 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, unless provided free of charge with the product, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product.
Because I think we can all agree: The battery on an ICOM walkie-talkie is portable, the battery in an Apple iPhone is not portable.
Other ways to see it: An Electron program is portable, a .exe program is not portable; they are both programs. A stick of RAM is portable, soldered RAM on a motherboard or in a CPU is not portable; they are both RAM.
The proper understanding was that electronics ("appliances") will become required to have portable batteries, because most batteries in them today are not portable.
If I'm still not coming across, let me put it this way: "Portable" in "portable iPhone" is a modifier on "iPhone", it is irrelevant with regards to the iPhone's battery which as of today is decidedly not portable anyway.
If I'm still not coming across: An iPhone being portable does not mean its battery is also portable.
> portable battery’ means a battery that is sealed, weighs 5 kg or less, is not designed specifically for industrial use and is neither an electric vehicle battery, an LMT battery, nor an SLI battery;
> ‘portable battery of general use’ means a portable battery, whether or not rechargeable, that is specifically designed to be interoperable and that has one of the following common formats 4,5 Volts (3R12), button cell, D, C, AA, AAA, AAAA, A23, 9 Volts (PP3);
When words are defined statutorily, that supersedes any "common sense" use of the word with respect to the sections governed by that statute.
It further goes on to state:
> Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those products are accompanied with instructions and safety information on the use, removal and replacement of the batteries. Those instructions and that safety information shall be made available permanently online, on a publicly available website, in an easily understandable way for end-users.
So the goal is for all portable batteries to be removeable. However there's an exemption ("derogation") for devices intended to be used around water or washable. Most high end phones these days are to some extent submersible, which raises the question of whether this will exempt them from the user-replaceable requirement.
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230609IP...
Apparantely this makes it significantly easier to change the battery compared to previous models:
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/09/11/apple-makes-iphone-16-b...
“portable batteries incorporated in appliances shall be readily removable and replaceable by end users or by independent operators”
Recently I started buying gadgets that have 18650 batteries, seems about the only standard around, but trying to buy the batteries has been a challenge. I even tried a couple European Amzn stores, but they only seem to have third party suppliers. It put me off from buying the MNT Reform even though I love the concept.
And the 18650 USB torch I bought has some stupid propriety magnetic connector on one end, so I'd say any such legislation should include both ends of these charger cables.
Huh? I had no trouble getting 18650 batteries in the EU. They're everywhere, both protected and unprotected cells; lots of brands to choose from, including cheap unbranded ones. You can even get ones with built-in USB-C socket for charging.
I don't know if this is an education problem or what. Maybe manufacturers make it less obvious that you can get batteries replaced, because doing so would hurt sales of new phones. I dunno.
Sure, in an ideal world standardized batteries would be available off the shelf, and regular people could replace theirs with standard or even no tools. But honestly, I don't think the world we live in is that terrible when it comes to this.
It's not that I'm not sympathetic toward wanting the new shiny. I've been there and done that and generated my share of e-waste. But I've managed to (mostly!) get off that treadmill. I only got a new phone last year because my old one stopped getting security updates. The new one will (in theory) be supported for 7 years, so, barring loss or catastrophic breakage, I should be good until 2031.
Surely wrinting better software will help. /s
Mobile phones haven't yet reached the point of diminishing returns on power, cameras, etc., so it doesn't yet make economical sense for an individual to keep the old devices working. I have kept the Moto G5+ and I use it as an internet radio and to listen to podcasts so it isn't a complete waste. Unfortunately the battery is now in such a poor state that I have to keep it on a timer to cut off charging frequently to avoid overheating.
Android could of course make batteries last longer by giving the user control over the charging regime.
And then there is the other problem that an old enough phone is no longer getting software updates, including security updates either.
Yes, it is still probably less than buying a new phone but you don't know how long it will be before another component dies. If replacing the battery gives you another 4-5 years it might be worth it, but if something else is going to break in a couple months, probably not.
Then we could begin forcing manufacturers to sell security updates regardless of the age of the device.
Lots of questions and puzzles here that would be interesting to figure out.
Who's going to pay for those updates? It's hard for the economics to work out. It makes sense for handset makers to pour engineering resources into developing and maintaining operating systems when there's millions of customers. How are you going to scrape together enough money when there's only a handful of customers?
But in the current ecosystem every device has its own medley of custom firmware and software that gets abandoned when the maker stops selling that version, and the makers are incentivized to stop updates to drive customers to buy new devices.
It is actually cheap and easy if we change the question: Should you be allowed to run a closed source proprietary platform with insufficient security? After all, if you open it up and let people do what they want it becomes their responsibility.
Bricking the device at a predetermined date isn't very elegant but it would work. Maybe the user should have the option to return it (working or not) and get some money back.
The new battery, even if it's Samsung original, it isn't as good as new, it is better than the old one, but not anywhere close as first day phone.
Why? No idea. I imagine that although the battery is new it was built circa when the model was in production and somehow that has affected its capacity.
So you get a phone, you pay 60/80 euros, and you get maybe, two hours more of battery when a new phone would give you 6 or 7.
Rather than mandating a specific solution, a better strategy would be to tax electronic waste so that manufacturers have more financial incentive to make phones that last longer. It might also be helpful to limit the liability of anyone who sells phones with removable batteries, or have more standards for battery manufacturers, as most malfunctions will be due to 3rd party batteries.
The official vendor normally have an artificially high service fee because they want you to buy a new one instead which is much more profitable. But servicing it in third party vendors isn't that expensive.
I've replaced the battery in most of my phones over the past decade, but that's because I don't like the larger form factor of new phones. Right now I'm on the iPhone 13 mini. Before that I had a 2nd gen iPhone SE (the same form factor as the iPhone 5). If I could get the form factor of an iPhone 4 and the specs of a modern phone, I'd probably be willing to pay $1,000. Unfortunately, like the headphone jack enthusiasts, people with my preferences are too small of a market segment to be worth going after.
The law won’t reduce smartphone ewaste. It will just satisfy the people who want removable batteries over sleaker design.
The battery is serviceable and it can be done quite easily and cheaply. In fact it’s done billions of times over.
Really just nanny state regulation, which as typical, will not bring any benefit and impose tremendous compliance costs and actually make some products worse.
Not sure about the US or Apple, but over here if you go to Samsung a battery replacement generally takes less than an hour.
It's generally about 2 or 3 hours here. Probably just watch a movie at theater or workout at gym for a while and it's finished.
It depends on costs. When both service and a new phone cost 120 €, guess what will the user prefer ?
If your phone has a hole (usually the charging port), the water will get in.
I don’t think that the case situation is necessarily rational but people generally seem to prefer more fancy/expensive/better looking phones these days.
There are a lot of waterproof connectors on the market. They pretty much all work but if a standard is chosen it will absolutely be one that works.
I've used a good few battery powered tools, even cloths. If any manufacturer made [say] a drill with a glued battery I wouldn't use it if you paid me for it. You just walk to the charger, swap the battery and get back to whatever you were doing. There is nothing special about phones that deserves special consideration.
I wonder if the battery can be smaller if you can easily bring a few extra. My cameras have very small ones 700mah-ish specially when compared to the size of the camera. It is never a real issue. Just bring more batteries. Say phones have 4-5 times the mah and last 8 to 30 hours. You could slide on a battery with a bump and get 60 hours or a slim one with only 4-15 hours. That will eventually outperform the degrading cell.
I don't know where innovation is at but I imagine we could see new batteries with much better size to power ratio. If you already have the newest phone it would be a no-brainer.
Also 2031 is just 7 years away - my current refurbished iPhone that I got for 100 bucks is supported until 2028.
After checking service manual I am sure I won't be doing anything on it myself.
Sure, if battery dies, I service it with a 3rd party.
I wish I got Fairphone.
The problem is, as always, with marketing - it's easier to sell "this is newer/better because <x> parameter is higher" [1] so we have gigantic phones with more megapixel cameras and higher waterproof rating though I'd argue that more people would be affected by dying battery than by lack of waterproofing… (no data to back it though). Anecdotally I were changing all my previous phones because the batter was dying and never in 20 years had issue with phone being sumberged...
Those are just dumb trends :/ I would love for a phone that has lumia design - it was polycarbon/rubbery, had easy access to battery and yet was super sturdy and I didn't feel the need to buy yet another cover because, to bump the margins, whole effin world is going "premium".
Same with cars so you have less and less choice for a normal sized city-car and everything has to be "crossover" or "SUV"... ffs...
There is a huge diversity in phone and battery models, it is easy to find a replacement for some, difficult or impossible for others.
Sure, it wasn't a law. And we went from micro-usb to usb-c, but I've read so many articles claiming "the end of a drawer filled with different chargers is here!", when that basically already happened over 10 years ago.
Some Flemish articles about this: https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf29062009_040 https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20110208_104
The maker of your device like many just switched the connector from microUSB to USB-C not reading the spec.
So yes, if you add 2 pulldown 5.1k resistors your device should also charge off a USB-C host. That may however not be worth the effort as to how small USB-C connectors pin footprints can be.
Try different chargers, there’s a lot of defective hardware out there. Also it’s at 80%, but there’s a setting on iPhones and possibly iPads etc that avoids charging to 100% to preserve long term battery life if you’re going to leave the device plugged in long term.
> To change your charging option with iPhone 15 models and later, go to Settings > Battery > Charging and choose an option. You can choose a charge limit between 80 percent and 100 percent in 5 percent increments.
My bet would be sth about the voltage the charger provides.
Not necessarily, Chargie lets you configure minimum charge, minimum charge for a cycle, time to charge, etc.
In practice, what it looks like for my devices:
1. I plug in my phone when I go to bed. 2. Phone charges to 40% (if it's not already >40%) and stops charging. 3. At 5am or so, the phone is still at ~38%, it then charges to 80% and stops. 4. I get up and my phone is still at ~78% charge.
For devices with more software capabilities than phones (e.g. macOS) you can use software (e.g. Al Dente) that will cap the charge level and run off wall power. In practice this means that if I plug my laptop in at 90% charge, it will take weeks to drop to 80% since it's running off wall power, and unless I'm doing particularly high power-draw things the drop to 80% comes down to the battery's self-discharge rate.
If you want to test, consider trying with a non-Apple wall-wart for which the rated wattage is equal to or greater than the one which Apple provides with your iPad mini and which uses a USB-C connection rather than a USB-A one. If it comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable, use that, otherwise get one that supports USB-C PD and enough watts to match the iPad mini’s needs.
Battery tech is a horrible black hole that is not very fun to dig into, chargers are a little bit more transparent: with markings for various voltages and amperages printed on the device.
iPad batteries output 3.7v if I'm not mistaken, but I'm unsure what they charge with.
> iPad batteries output 3.7v if I'm not mistaken, but I'm unsure what they charge with.
For the layman, the equation is Volts x Amperes = Watts.
Where if we use the common water examples: Voltage is electric charge ("water pressure" or "volume of water"), Amperage is electric current ("water flow rate"), and Wattage is electrical energy ("amount of water transferred").
2V x 6A, 4V x 3A, 1V x 12A, 12V x 1A and similar are all 12W but they are obviously very different in nature.
A lot of phones only charge to 80% to wave battery life. You can change this setting. Spread the world.
I wonder how much they pay in tech support because of this one thing.
Honestly, we're not that great.
I have 20 different barrel plug wall warts in a crate used for 20 different routers, switches, and other misc DC-powered products.
I had thought briefly that something like this should exist, but then dismissed the thought, since such devices would be too much to hope for in the current environment of corporate enshittification. Slight amount of faith in humanity restored.
I have a fun-restoring fact for you though: USB PD 3.0 in 2018 added a feature called Programmable Power Supply which allows a device being powered to request any voltage from 3.3 to 21 volts in 20mV increments. As support for this feature is required for a product to carry the "Certified USB Fast Charger" logo it's pretty much standard on any decent charger. I have yet to encounter a single PPS-capable charger that didn't also support the fixed 12v mode.
Perhaps you mean something like these:
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806952052632.html
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806950028548.html
I'd be interested to know if they can really up/down convert voltage as appropriate for USB-C.
This legislation wasn’t primarily trying to kill Lightning, it was trying to kill the 2.1mm DC barrel jack
Ecodesign will regulate things like power delivery, which includes charger and PoE efficiency and characteristics.
1 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_...
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/16/24272009/amazon-disconti...
(which I consider as complete nonsense.)
I had contacts with people in the Kindle unit (I used to work at Amazon), and apparently the focus is on making as much profit as possible. So the Kindle ecosystem is probably going to be on the downwards spiral pretty soon.
- Xbox Series X: Controller charging cable's Xbox side is Type-A. In fact, no Type-C on Xbox AFAIR
- All my travel phones (cheap, non-android), -including 2 Nokias- chargers are USB Mini
- My headphones: Type A
- JBL portable speakers: Type mini
Now give me USB-C on my watch, face trimmer, electric salt/pepper shakers, and every other gadget.
Hey remember when the Motorola Razr wouldn't charge on a regular USB port unless you had a specific driver (or had to use the actual charger?). Amazing innovation
No one regulated the number of mobile operating systems, and there were really many of them, even before the era of smartphones. Now there are 2 main ones and a couple of outsiders, all the rest died in the competitive struggle
The only manufacturer that didn't do anything about it was Apple
A reason to not demand USB-PD, such law would prevent upgrades to later better version of that thing.
Can we apply some common sense please? You're right that not allowing revised standards would be silly. So, they simply update the law to reference newer versions of the standard. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_del/2023/1717/oj
Like it resulted in standardising on USB C? Oh wait, the EU had to force everyone.
> A reason to not demand USB-PD, such law would prevent upgrades to later better version of that thing
The EU has got you covered, there are provisions on updating the mandated standard.
For ‘fast’ charging, the radio equipment listed in Part I of Annex Ia, if it can be recharged by means of wired charging at voltages higher than 5 volts, currents higher than 3 amperes or powers higher than 15 watts, must: (a) incorporate the USB Power Delivery (USB PD), as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-2 (as referenced in Annex Ia); and (b) allow for the full functionality of the said USB PD if it incorporates any additional charging protocol.
26. Is a radio equipment allowed to support a higher charging power (e.g. 40 W) when using a proprietary charging protocol than when using USB PD (e.g. 30 W)?
The RED (in its Annex Ia, Part I, point 3.2), ensures interoperability with different charging protocols. For that purpose, radio equipment which is subject to the ‘common charger’ rules must ‘ensure that any additional charging protocol allows for the full functionality of the USB Power Delivery referred to in point 3.1, irrespective of the charging device used.’*
Source: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=OJ:C_202...
> In so far as they are capable of being recharged by means of wired charging at voltages higher than 5 Volts, currents higher than 3 Amperes or powers higher than 15 Watts, the categories or classes of radio equipment referred to in point 1 of this Part shall:
> 3.1. incorporate the USB Power Delivery, as described in the standard EN IEC 62680-1-2:2021 “Universal serial bus interfaces for data and power – Part 1-2: Common components – USB Power Delivery specification”;
[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv%...
First, USB PD is capable of much higher wattages than what SuperVOOC artificially caps USB PD to.
Second, proprietary charging standards are not compliant with the USB specification, so it didn't meet the regulation.
SuperVOOC doesn't really do anything special that isn't also achievable using the PD PPS (programmable power supply) specification.
All we needed was the equivalent of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_60320 for low voltage devices.
This bureaucracy has only standardized something everyone except a single stubborn, different-thinking company was already using for years.
everyone except a single stubborn, different-thinking company
...and if the only purpose of this law was to go after one company (which I personally don't agree with the decisions of, but this is the wrong way to do it), that reflects even worse on the bureaucracy.
You are forgetting that the stance of EU was known for more than a decade, if not two, at this point so when you say "were already using" you are actually saying "they were aware that this day would come so the majority agreed on using USB".
> I'm referring to laptops, where a 20V barrel plug was already a de-facto standard
What do you mean by standard? These connectors come in various sizes and pin configurations, there is no standard to speak of. I don't think that I've ever seen laptops of different manufacturers to be able to use the same charger.
There's only a small number of them, easily convertible with a passive adapter; but some of the ones with an ID chip do need to go away, preferably replaced by resistor-sensing for higher power outputs.
I don't think that I've ever seen laptops of different manufacturers to be able to use the same charger.
The actual manufacturers are Compal, Inventec, Pegatron, Wistron, etc. and they can definitely use the same charger.
The point I'm making is there was already a convergence towards a simple de-facto standard for laptops, one that has been in existence for over 2 decades. Yet the EU decided to force them to change to the most complex standard, with far more fragile connectors.
Another example: Shokz had to switch from their magnetic connector to USB-C for the OpenRun bone conduction headphones. I think it makes no sense given the small size of their device and it makes it less durable (there is a small cap to protect the USB-C from water, which is easily broken) and probably one reason they don't market it as IP68 anymore.
I haven’t had a laptop with a barrel plug for the past 10 years or so. Why would you ever add one to a laptop instead of USB-c?
Sure, it has some issues in some of the more complex cases (mostly because not all USB cables have all the wires they should), but I don't see any alternative that will give an overall better experience.
If the goal of this law is to reduce electronic waste, it seems like a better solution would be to tax electronic waste. That would discourage other kinds of e-waste (like those adapters for micro SD cards) while still letting manufacturers to choose other connectors for niche use cases. It would also make it possible for companies to move to a new standard without waiting for the EU to allow it.
- EU regulators
Are you American per chance?
So yes, I think updating the law will take a significant amount of time.
As easy as that.
If the user is saving a setting like a language preference, just put “by saving this preference you agree for us to store the setting” next to the option/OK button (it’s really implicit just like their shopping cart example, but this is if you want to be really paranoid)
From the horses mouth:
"GDPR.EU is a website operated by Proton Technologies AG, which is co-funded by Project REP-791727-1 of the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union. This is not an official EU Commission or Government resource. The europa.eu webpage concerning GDPR can be found here. Nothing found in this portal constitutes legal advice."
Companies: Annoying banners.
Legislators: Mission Accomplished. A win for the good guys!
Situation persists for at least a decade.
Law: You have to get some form of affirmative consent if you want to do specific often-abused things.
Companies: We'll do it in the most obnoxious way possible ("here are our 853 technology partners... no, there's not a 'deselect all' option, have fun clicking") so people blame the law instead of the industry that didn't want to allow consent at all.
https://ico.org.uk/about-the-ico/media-centre/news-and-blogs...
https://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/documentation/opinio...
It doesn't say only a few hours.
The optimum behaviour under the law is not to show a cookie banner. It's not to collect copious amounts of data.
You only had 8 years to learn about the law, and you still remain willingly ignorant and misinformed about it.
> These customization functionalities are thus explicitly enabled by the user of an information society service (e.g. by clicking on button or ticking a box) although in the absence of additional information the intention of the user could not be interpreted as a preference to remember that choice for longer than a browser session (or no more than a few additional hours). As such only session (or short term) cookies storing such information are exempted under CRITERION B.
It specifically says that a consent notice is required for UI customization cookies that persist more than a few hours, and it gives an example of preferred language as one of those UI customizations.
1. https://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/documentation/opinio...
What's "Opinion 04/2012 on Cookie Consent Exemption" adopted on 2012, 4 years before GDPR?
Edit On top of that, actual quote:
--- start quote ---
"They may be session cookies or have a lifespan counted in weeks or months, depending on their purpose
... addition of additional information in a prominent location (e.g. “uses cookies” written next to the flag) would constitute sufficient information for valid consent to remember the user’s preference for a longer duration,
--- end quote ---
12 years since this opinion, 8 years since GDPR, and you still have no idea about either.
A whole decade is often needed if the member states consider a new mandate is needed, typically a directive or regulation or treaty clause giving the EC authority and a framework to regulate something.
Any update to this regulation will have to wait at least 3 years after a new standard has been agreed on. And there will probably be a period for adoption by the industry, typically 2 years. So at least 5 years after everyone has agreed what is needed. It most probably won't be updated for the next 25 years.
Care to explain why? If in the land of cable freedoms they come up with something noticeably better, they can just change the law to allow it.
Am I missing something?
"Sorry kids, no kindergarden here for you because the regulator requires us to build parking space for SUVs and obeying this means we can't build enough parking space for all your parents which would break another rule. So we'll do nothing."
Maybe you should check yourself in "seeing anti Europeans everywhere".
I get your point, but painting with such broad strokes honestly just poisons the discussion. If you're rejecting everything on principle by applying a slippery slope, why should people care about your position?
Lastly, I'm not sure I understand what "seeing anti Europeans everywhere" you're talking about, could you expand on that?
So the _real world_ result is, as a society, we favor parking lots over homelessness or green surfaces which is contradictory to pretty much everything else we're discussing. These laws are from times in which the legislator thought of them to be a good idea. Times have changed, the regulation hasn't and nobody is talking about exactly those issues. There's plenty more of those examples which can only lead you to the conclusion that most finely granular regulation is rather harmful than helpful.
[0] https://dejure.org/gesetze/LBO/37.html (German, it might be different from federal state to state)
0: https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/inhalt.landesbauordnung-b...
1) no one will invest in new charging technology because it’s an uphill battle to be approved
2) entrenched charger organizations with political connections will resist change. Their existence depends on it. You will only see change as they use regulations to starve upstarts and acquire their tech Pennie’s on the dollar.
But the good news is Europe invents almost nothing today so they can just have a friendly debate on which American or Asian tech to standardize on.
Notice how there are barely any names like John or Henry on those research papers or patents. It’s even a hot topic lately, acknowledged by the tech titans. As they say, Americans don’t do much and even if the legal entity is in the US, the capital and the talent is actually from Europe, China and India.
Unfortunately, it appears that with the rise of Maga Europe will eventually have to provide its talent a place to experiment things but the techies are fighting hard to prevent that.
In what way is Europe not in the mess of the experiment that is AI? It seems to me that it has all the exact same problems, without any of the benefits (the jobs, experience and money) that comes with it.
What you are claiming is as dumb as saying that Europe fixed climate change by blocking drilling in Europe and buying oil and gas from the Saudis instead.
IMHO just look at the stuff you care about and forget using proxies like GDP or market value etc. For example, US has the largest companies by market cap but they are excited to have Taiwan opening a plant in USA that will produce chips on a few years old tech when Taiwan and Korea have the cutting edge stuff.
Examples are numerous, it goes above and beyond everything. China is not behind US in AI, in fact in some areas US is already trying to catch up. Tesla has enormous market cap but Chinese brands already displaced them in actual product sales. Americans think that self driving cars will be ready to go mainstream soon when China already has those disrupting their taxi sector. Apple is about to become $4T company but Chinese and Koreans have all the cutting edge tech and Apple is faltering.
In military front USA boosts about how much money they spend on military only to find out that they are just paying more than they should and can't match Russia on ammunition.
I think it’s false to think that the value of these companies is just their salary. It’s about experience. Many of today’s businesses exist because their founders were given the chance to gain experience somewhere else. I can’t expect the next Volkswagen to come from a country where entrepreneurship is constrained to starting a bistro.
So we’d rather have nothing at all?
The extremely low salaries for tech workers is one of the best indicators. There is just not enough demand in Europe because there is no growth and very few companies doing anything innovative.
> capital concentration which is not a good thing by European culture.
Higher disposable incomes are also bot good for European culture, right?
Except it’s not. The gap had been continuously growing for the last 10-20 years. Europeans are just getting (relatively) poorer and poorer.
The new USB-C law could be improved significantly if it was a tax instead of a mandate. There is a dollar value associated with the cost of recycling proprietary chargers. Taxing that would be a source of revenue for the EU and allow other chargers for purposes that we can't predict today. The current law is purely a cost center for both governments and manufacturers. And since everyone agrees it will need to be updated at some point, it's the law equivalent of tech debt.
I'm surprised at the responses I've gotten considering how I didn't say I was against this law. I just said I'm not sure if it's a good idea in the long term. And so far, the replies haven't engaged with most of my points. The EU's mandate helps big companies at the expense of small ones, does nothing to discourage electronic waste unrelated to chargers, and makes it harder to switch to whatever will come after USB-C. Yes it's possible for the EU to change the law, but considering they've started with a flawed law and they haven't updated quite a few other laws, I would bet against this law getting updated promptly.
This simply isn't true, and your source for this is biased as another commenter has stated.
The EU website has the exact legal definitions:
https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers...
> Where such devices, for instance cookies, are intended for a legitimate purpose, such as to facilitate the provision of information society services, their use should be allowed on condition that users are provided with clear and precise information in accordance with Directive 95/46/EC about the purposes of cookies or similar devices so as to ensure that users are made aware of information being placed on the terminal equipment they are using. Users should have the opportunity to refuse to have a cookie or similar device stored on their terminal equipment.
Is storing preferred language or default location strictly necessary, or just a legitimate purpose (and thus requires consent)? The EU has had since 2009 to clarify this, but many sites (including the news article about the USB-C law) interpret it to mean that consent is required, and thus have cookie banners for these things.
If you can't agree that the cookie law is a bad law that either needs to be repealed, clarified, or made more strict, then I don't know what to tell you. It's a perfect example of a well-intended law that causes more problems than it solves. And it's a perfect example of the EU failing to update a law with clear flaws. I don't know if the USB-C law will have a similar outcome, but considering the EU's track record, I'm not confident it will be a good thing in the long term.
1. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...
They did, back in 2012. See point 3.6 here: https://ec.europa.eu/justice/article-29/documentation/opinio...
More recently, see point 49 here (in French): https://www.cnil.fr/sites/cnil/files/atoms/files/lignes_dire...
I trust Apple to make decisions that lead to a phone I enjoy using a lot more than I trust the EU regulatory bureaucracy to do so.
- 480Mb/s vs 120Gb/s data transfer
- 9V? vs 48V
- 2.4A? vs 5A
- resulting in 18W vs 240W
- proprietary vs open.
People keep repeating the same thing but it just makes no sense..
They did and (surprise!) we aren't.
https://www.slashgear.com/micro-usb-formally-chosen-as-cellp...
Let’s not even get into the terrible standard of usb-c where no 2 cables are the same. Some cables work on some devices…
Apple's manufactoring is usually more robust than most, so I doubt this is due to usb-c itself of the manufacturer. Personally I have seen bad usb-a port but never usb-c (and usb-c ports are supports to last for at least 10000 insert cycles, as per the standard).
> no 2 cables are the same
We can either have a single port supporting a variety of protocols, or, roughly, a port for each protocol. Considering the mostly hierarchical relationship between protocols, I very much prefer the former. Two usb-c cables are not be the same in order to sustain low prices for the lowest end of the protocols, else every cable would have to be a thunderbolt 5 cable costing 100$ or whatever. The problem is not the existence of the protocols, but the companies that make confusing marketing and the fact that the usb standards namings of the protocols is bad (see usb3.1 gen 2) (probably intended so by the same companies, but do not have any evidence or anything). Otherwise things are not that complicated.
Standardisation is a good thing over all, and, for good or for worse, it often requires governmental entities to move it forward. If anything, it also creates a leveling field that promotes innovation for what really matters. Only big tech love the alternative, as part of sustaining an oligopolic status.
Why?
> in the same way that the current legislation does not prevent revising it.
How would that work? USB-C became widespread because manufacturers gradually started adding it to their devices instead of micro-USB/whatever. As far as I understand that would be illegal now? So how could any new standard gain any traction?
TL;DR — short blog post where the author complains that USB-C cables are not equivalent. No technical information or dive whatsoever, and nothing about EU regulations.
Definitely wasn't worth figuring out how to access gemini://.
Phone chargers have already been made universal for years, they're all USB-A or C. Stop saying we're revolutionizing the charger industry, we're just standardizing the fucking cable.
Smooth transition was the intent - not costly surprise for manufacturers over night.
Remember, we started from: - USB-A
- Micro-USB
- Mini-USB
- USB-C
- Lightning