EU mandates replaceable batteries by 2027 (2023)
environment.ec.europa.eu
environment.ec.europa.eu
The amount of avoidable e-waste generated since then is unfathomable: We are talking about mountain-sized piles of discarded electronics, much of it exported to Africa and Asia. There, people (often children) burn those pieces to extract the remaining rare earths, inhaling toxic fumes in the process, while the remaining hazardous garbage is buried and left to poison the groundwater. It is an absolute moral failure that our society, and politicians beholden to Big Tech lobbyists, let this go on for so long in the name of pure profit for a few big companies at the expense of everything else.
But I get it. This ideology has more to do with how much money these types can then extract from a government and if implemented fully you would have some sort of neo-feudalism where everybody needs to pay them to even exist. But that is not a real utopian vision of something that moves humanity forward (quite literally the opposite).
But, really this is a non-issue because if you need a new battery for you phone, including iphone and samsung, just get it replaced. That's not super common to need it (again) but there is no issue having it done. I had it done before.
So overall I am skeptical that it will make a difference or that people will keep devices like phones longer because of this new mandate. I also doubt that the EU Parliament has data on this because many of those new regulations seem very hand-wavy to me and usually presented as obvious.
If you can quickly swap out an old phone battery with one you can purchase in a store, it's as easy as doing groceries.
If on the other hand you need to hand off your phone to a third party for repairs, and require people to make a backup of important data, maybe factory reset just in case, get a replacement device for the time without it, tell people you'll be unavailable for a bit... It's a big enough hurdle for people to think "well, guess it's a good enough excuse to upgrade to a new model". I've heard the latter too many times in my surroundings purely due to battery life issues.
My point is that things are rarely obvious. As you say, it "could". It is not obvious that it will make a difference and it might also increase the materials needed on both phones and battery.
I think the EU and European countries have much bigger fish to fry, including with regards to the environment.
Yes. And they should fry those too.
That being said, now they buy external power banks...
My 9 year old ThinkPad T470 is doing well with his 3rd or 4rd battery (and a new SSD and more RAM).
Also external powerbanks are pretty unpractical compared to a fresh new internal battery.
So allow to find that "yay I can buy more batteries!" is a highly ironic response.
And again, all the statements that it this "obviously" better than possibly buying a new phone seem to lack any references to actual data...
The User above also said he bought two or three batteries, so he can swap them out when the battery is empty (I've also done this with my laptop) and distributing the charging cycles between the batteries, so they will all last longer.
If he wasn't a power user, he wouldn't drop money on two or three batteries in the beginning, and just buy a new one when the old goes bad.
But yeah, I can see the irony in my comment.
But would it be doing well with only a new battery? Chances are a regulation that only regulates batteries won’t do much for tech that still is improving at a fairly decent rate.
I've thought already about replacing it, but it doesn't make any sense for me. Especially that new ThinkPads in the T-Series have worse battery Life than I get right know due to their batteries being smaller and not anymore hot swappable.
Please don't engage in argument for argument's sake.
If you think this is what the EU battery regulation means, I’ve got some bad news for you.
Besides, as others pointed out, encouraging people to carry around multiple batteries for their devices would just lead to more e-waste, not less.
Also, carrying “naked” Li-ion batteries that are not installed in a device is prohibited on airlines - another reason why it shouldn’t be encouraged!
There's a big difference between buying a new battery for swapping it yourself and having to pay someone else to do the same for you.
Well, it was the most common thing to do for me - after a couple of years, you notice the battery performs worse, so you order a new one and enjoy brand new performance. Now it's hard to do even for laptops, especially some brands.
Also, your phone must be in pristine condition because otherwise you will need to "repair" tons of stuff you don't need repaired/replaced.
Different phone users have very different usage patterns, in my experience.
I don't use my smartphone at home (I have a PC), at work (I have a PC, and a sense of professionalism), in between (can't use a phone while driving or cycling), while exercising or while socialising (it'd defeat the purpose). I'm basically checking public transit schedules, calling taxis, making payments, and occasionally taking a photo or sending a message.
My phone's still at 80% when I put it to charge while I sleep.
On the other hand, a person who spends a load of time on public transit, streaming netflix the whole time? A person who listens to music all day while they work? A delivery/uber driver? A teenager without a computer of their own, who uses their phone for games and social media? And maybe they're on a budget so they have an older device and/or a smaller battery?
These folks are cycling their battery twice a day. Buying portable power banks. Getting fast chargers, for an early evening battery top-up.
It's these people who need to replace their batteries.
That could be me. I am amazed at the battery life of my iPhone 16e. I have no need for daily battery swaps.
(Apple claims something like 21 hours of video streaming on a full charge -- that's on Apple's own streaming service but it is still many hours on Netflix and Youtube.)
The "fast charger" is a tiny 20W USB-C charger that I no longer remember if I bought separately or not. It's nice and fast.
Modern phones are really good at not using much power. Modern batteries are remarkably energy dense. They also degrade slower than older batteries, among other reasons because we have better (and cheaper and greener) additives now. Thank you, Dalhousie and Tesla!
This is legislation that would have made a lot of sense 10-15-20 years ago. It is symbolic now (and likely to be slightly worse for the environment).
The EU battery regulation has exemptions for IP67-rated devices which retain 83% of original battery capacity after 500 charge cycles, which most modern smartphones will qualify for.
Your MacBook isn't water proof either yet the battery is also permanently glued in. Why?
https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Late+2020+B...
Sorry but why do we have to accept mediocre as acceptable these days? My old laptop had hot-swapable batteries.
I can’t remember my battery draining below 50% since I bought my M5 a while back. 10+ years ago I agree that the needs were different but these days needing swappable batteries seems like a very minor niche IMHO.
Many member states want censorship. Many MEPs want censorship.
The fine was wrong, too, and the amount (6000€!) was absurd.
https://brusselssignal.eu/2024/03/german-businessman-cleared...
She should have challenged him to a duel instead. That would have been a lot more fair than mobilizing the state to fight battles that should never have been fought AND it would have put the risk where it should have been, namely on her shoulders (and stomach and thighs) instead of on his.
Another insulcident happened in January 2024:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ricarda_Lang&oldi...
The German police thought it was within its rights to demand that a foreign social media platform hand over identifying information on a user that apparently called her "well-rounded" in a less polite manner.
I don't think the German police should search citizen's houses or demand identifying information about people who say things that aren't nice (but true).
We also shouldn't have to use personal ID to get online, but that is all being emplaced as we speak.
Phones back then were bad (so accommodating replaceable batteries was easy), and batteries degraded quickly (so it was a necessity).
Modern phones are smaller, need to be more water proof, stuffed to an unimaginable degree with components -- and modern batteries last a really long time.
I am not so sure it's a good idea to force them to become consumer replaceable again.
My iPhone SE (1st gen) ended up being pushed apart from the inside last year because the battery had swelled up. I could have had it replaced but the CPUs were a bit too weak for the modern world and the RAM too limited. A fresh new battery would not have upgraded the CPUs or the RAM.
Li-ion batteries have improved since 2016 so I expect the battery in my iPhone 16e to outlast the useful life of the CPUs and RAM in it.
> extract the remaining rare earths
More for the gold, I believe. There are youtubers who do it semi-professionally and are remarkably transparent about how they do it. It looks like the only really toxic fumes they contend with are a tiny bit of sulphuric acid vapour from their electrolytic baths.
I don't think we should ship the trash to Africa or poor parts of Asia. I don't see how replaceable batteries would have prevented my iPhone SE from becoming trash or have prevented my iPhone 16e from becoming trash in the future. Or preventing them from ending up in Africa/Asia, for that matter.
Edit: had accidentally written "back" in the first line when I meant "bad".
Edit 2: used the past tense by mistake ("expected the battery in my iPhone 16e").
This argument always comes up when talking about replaceable smartphone batteries and headphone jacks. But Samsung had waterproof phones before Apple, and they still had replaceable batteries and, gasp a headphone jack.
I actually had a Galaxy S5 which I used as a GPS attached to my motorcycle's handlebars under heavy rain. It never skipped a beat. The only problem I had was that raindrops on the screen made it difficult to see the map. It was also thinner than the iPhone 7 which replaced it. Now I have an iPhone 14 pro which is even thicker than the 7.
I also had to replace the battery on that iPhone 7, which was an unbelievable PITA. Had to stand in line to talk to the service person even though I had an appointment, go away for a few hours, come back, stand in line again to pick up my phone. Fuck that. I'd much rather go to some store, buy a new battery, and replace it in less than one minute, on my terms.
So, yeah, pardon my French, but these tired arguments are just bullshit. There is prior art that proves them wrong.
Also, Apple (and I assume others) were building stuff with non-replaceable batteries before they were building stuff that was waterproof. Clearly they're not sealed off in order to make them waterproof, because they were sealed off back when they weren't waterproof too.
The battery on the Pixel 6a should be good enough to make the phone run a whole day with no problem. It's almost exactly the same size as the battery in my iPhone 16e that has excellent battery life.
My watch could handle a day (about 22 hours) with occasional direct network access. Nowadays, that’s out of the question. I cannot use it for the night, only if I charge it twice per day. I bought the exact same time as the iPhone.
I bought a beefy laptop two years ago. I used it with some battery saving option, and never charged more than 80%. I could use it for about 4 hours on battery. At first. Then now, I already can use it an hour less than back then with the same usage.
All of these devices lie to me, that I lost less than 20% of battery health. Where in reality it’s somewhere between 25-50%, and when they wouldn’t pretend that maximum output is any way a good indicator of the real battery life, aka how long you can use a device.
And yeah, apps. If we pretend that I don’t have misbehaving apps all the time. The difference is, that when I bought these devices, I could ignore them completely.
I'd really love to know the reasoning behind not allowing this charge-limit thing to older iPhones, since AFAIK the 15 and up have it.
FWIW, I've only directly witnessed this so far on Oneplus devices, others have remarked the health gauge on these seem to use gacha mechanics where health % will be all over the place. (like >10% variability). I have theories as to why this happens, it's in firmware not OS as LineageOS shows same behavior.... but tough to really know for sure if this was by design or not.
Oh and charge thresholds only do so much, heat kills batteries reliably fast. Deep discharges under 20% or so seem to run more risk of electrolyte breakdown. Don't fear fast charge in bulk charge range, it causes less wear than other factors. I slammed the 65W charge into my 8T's and still got years of >80% battery, replacement wasn't too hard to do on these.
I might be doing something wrong, but battery life always degraded for me. I've even bought the same Pixel on eBay when it stopped being sold by Google, so I can save money on buying the latest.
My Pixel 8 had to be replaced because the screen starting randomly detecting presses in a spasmic fury, which would happen with no known correlation.
There are NO new features worth getting on the new Pixels. I love taking photos - insider tip - huge megapixel sensors don't make better photos.
I liked the pixels that had the fingerprint sensor on the back best
Years ago I had and loved the Samsung phones with replaceable batteries.
I buy new ones because they make me, not because I chase as aesthetic novelty like a stereotypical Apple consumer.
Let’s put aside that this is a 10 year old phone now and well and truly obsolete, you actually didn’t get the basic maintenance done. Batteries all fail and degrade with time, especially if abused and left in extreme heat.
The original SE had perhaps the most user replaceable battery in an iPhone. No parts serialization, aside from the touchid cable being a little finicky it is an easy and cheap battery swap. Also it was probably degraded for some time so you were getting CPU throttling to keep it from randomly shutting off.
I do not understand people like you. Do you buy a car and never change the oil or tires, then complain it breaks and buy a new one?
It is pretty much a requirement now to either greatly overpay for a battery replacement from Apple or get a service plan from them, or just limp along with worn out shit and hope it doesn’t blow the back off. Can’t DIY or goto a third party repair shop, the battery is paired to the device.
Finally, before we even get into the ‘trivially easy to replace’ end user design, it’s not going to fix the problem of the asshole that won’t pay $10 for a batt in their bulging $500-1200 idevice. I saw this all the time with laptops that did have easily replaceable packs, people just didn’t do it. They’d just live with 20min battery if they were lucky and run it into the ground.
To top it all off you then go onto weird virtue signaling about children breathing recycling fumes, how about you climb off your high horse and maintain your own equipment for a change? Maybe stop fighting against the people that DO want to be able to maintain their own equipment.
Apologies about this part, you are correct that this wasn't your words, the rest of what I wrote I still stand behind. Mostly, it's a problem that you seem to believe that because of incremental improvements in battery technology, we're at a point where it's acceptable to make devices an end-user can't service. That we can't design for water/dust ingress protection and have an easier to replace battery.
Realistically batteries currently made reach end of service life around 3 years, previously it was around 2. People using devices heavily (gaming/videoconferencing) or living in hot climates will have shorter service life. You can push them past the 80% health threshold, but then it's throttling, risk of bulging, etc. You got 9 or so years out of a SE using the battery long past its service life.
But you, (yes, you!) act like everything's currently fine with designs and that we won't burn up the batteries sooner. I'm saying that is misguided and it doesn't line up to the reality you've experienced directly (which is that batteries are still a consumable that need to be replaced eventually). You probably haven't got your hands dirty to DIY, nor are you aware of how they made it harder than it has to be (some manufacturers don't put adhesive tabs on the batteries to pull off). You don't understand that it's possible for the engineering divisions to design a no compromise device that's easier to service and the only reason manufacturers don't is because of the pervasive mindset of: 'Well the battery is cooked, time to buy a new device'. Apple basically still designs their devices for maintenance, but they did it in a way to require specialized equipment.
You're clearly not a device lessee if using the device that long, so why have lessee mindset?
I was perfectly happy with the battery life of my iPhone SE and my iPad Mini 4 far longer than just three years. Those batteries were not "currently made", were they? And it was not like I was a light user of those two devices...
Now days, there is much less need for that because a charge lasts much longer, and if you do run low you can fast change in 30 minutes or so. Not buying extra spare batteries for every device means less e-waste, not more!
Later, as phones and batteries got better, the spare batteries became unnecessary. They still degraded fast enough that there was a market for replacement batteries and they could indeed easily be replaced. We are talking things like the Nokia 3310.
Even later, the need for user replaceable batteries pretty much disappeared.
These days, it is entirely gone.
You might also be misremembering talk times, unless you had a phone with an exceptionally large battery.
A typical device like the Nokia 3210 had 3-4 hours talk time, which is far less than modern smartphones.
Further to the above, my Nokia (32|33|51)10's battery lasted a hell of a lot longer than any iPhone I have owned.
The phone that had the worst battery was the first iphone, it wasn't water proof either yet the battery was non removable.
My current iPhone's battery capacity is already starting to decrease and it was never great to begin with (needed it for work). If it was replaceable, I'd do what I used to with Android phones years ago - get a spare, if the old one is really bad or turning into a pillow, then recycle that and keep using the replacement, otherwise could use both side by side and didn't even need a separate charging bank.
Lots of people will look in the direction of getting a new phone altogether, I might have to do that as well, turning the whole phone into e-waste, instead of giving it 5 more years of lifetime.
It’s the Apple Watch, AirPods, etc that are more of a concern...
It's not for when you run out of power its for when the battery stops holding a charge. Phones almost always last much longer than their batteries.
Smartphones have always had replaceable batteries, and in the case of the iPhone, they’ve been compliant with the upcoming EU battery regulation since the iPhone 16 or so.
You're really grasping here. Is it possible that non-removable batteries offer a better tradeoff of capacity, size, weight, durability, water resistance, and safety?
> The amount of avoidable e-waste generated since then is unfathomable:
Equally possible that removable batteries would generate more waste in the form of extra packaging since it is very rare to replace phone batteries. We also now have a defacto standard in the form of magsafe batteries.
I guess the burden of proof is on you here.
https://www.productchart.com/smartphones/removable_battery
Man, is it empty these days. The chart used to be pretty full. Now it only has about 1% of all phones that are in the Product Chart database. As the other 99% have fixed batteries.
I'm looking forward to see if the EU decision will push some companies to do this for their US versions too and revive the chart.
[0] https://repair.eu/news/making-batteries-removable-and-replac...
I like apples approach to removable battery glue. Though it needs an extra tool. These days it should be easy to make a cheap USB-C PD powered thing that supplies a good DC voltage.
This is a follow-up directive that goes further. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CEL...:
“Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those batteries are readily removable and replaceable by the end-user at any time during the lifetime of the product. That obligation shall only apply to entire batteries and not to individual cells or other parts included in such batteries.
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.
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.”
Maybe if someone here is in the USA and has bought one, they can chime in and tell where they got it from?
Batteries are part of a device.
There are other parts that can be replaced by the owner or third parties if there are sufficient parts supplies, either first-part or third-party, and these parts aren't explicitly killed by the device's DRM even if they're sourced outside of the manufacturer's own "replacement assemblies" that cost half the phone eventhough it's just a $10 part that needs replacing.
Further there is the software which is probably the most disposable of all. First of all, the keys to a device should come with the device. The device can default to booting software signed by the manufacturer but the user should always be able to use a physical key to unlock the device and install his own keys and certificates instead.
Further, manufacturers should be forced to either keep supporting the device's software or release all the necessary blobs and parts as legal abandonware so that others can hack and reverse-engineer it further, allowing legal reimplementation of the software in open source.
This part is not going to happen, because security services need their backdoors intact. If you supply user with keys, they might flash the device with more secure operating system rendering any surveillance effort fruitless.
I would fly to Europe to buy my next phone if it ever happens though.
So we won’t be seeing more easily replaceable batteries in smartphones and tablets.
Which is exactly the way it should be.
Sounds reasonable to me, although I expect the zero-regulation folks to have their usual meltdown about this.
Next time you see one, look for the "no bin" symbol)
Just 10 years ago you could detach back of the smartphone with a nail, then switch the battery in a few seconds yourself. Smartphones even sometimes came with a second spare battery in the box!
Old smartphones were much lighter, smaller and thinner then modern shovel sized bricks with fat batteries. Screens were smaller and so the batteries too.
Phones are boring. They work fine already. I could use my current 3 year old phone another 6 years if it lived through the day without charging.
Heat for removal works but is always like defusing a inextinguishable bomb and takes much more time than it should. I also have rarely seen a design where the glue was really necessary for the design. Basically they could just have put the battery in without glue and it would have worked just as fine.
Maybe companies really need that kind of regulation to so the common sense right thing.
There are excemptions in cases where it is really technically needed as far as I can tell (medical, water-tightness for safety reasons, data integrity needed so battery can't be removed). I hope they are not too lax with those.
The problem is that you need heat to open up the device itself (all that is between the battery and the hot air gun is about 1mm of glass), followed by a bath in isopropanol and lots and lots of twaddling around with tweezers and spatulas to get the old glue residue removed from both the display and the case (risking damaging either in the process), followed by really annoying meticulous work to place a new glue sheet exactly onto the case (or display) to make sure it fits again. Oh and you always risk cracking the display while removing it.
Try it with a modern Fairphone for example. I had one for years and not a single time the back lid fell off or the battery disconnected. I had a couple of batteries die in phones tho. General point: If you argue with people who have more experience on an issue than you, bring the receipts and red-team your own statement before you make it. Everything else doesn't really shine a good light on you.
I miss the days of that first google phone where I could just pop the back and replace the battery, I used it quite a bit with a second battery. My modern phone lasts a bit longer so its less of a concern but batteries are a consumable we know they age out faster than the devices themselves and they ought to have been replacable.
1. That's not a "Google device", you mean a smartphone.
2. For a large fraction of the smartphones available today (probably also Google Pixel's), you can still pop the back and replace the battery. The popping may be a bit more complicated, but it's doable. Naturally there's a tradeoff between convenient ergonomics for battery replacement and smaller dimensions of the phone case.
I loved my 2006 17-inch MacBook Pro, when I could simply flip the laptop over, unlatch the latches, and replace the battery entirely within seconds. It's an total shame we lost that. You could even carry an extra battery with you in a bag when traveling, in case you didn't have access to a charger.
We don't have to. There's a large spodumene resource in Portugal.
> and cobalt
Finland alone could cover all of the European Union's need for cobalt even with zero recycling.
https://www.lyellcollection.org/doi/full/10.1144/geoenergy20...
Not that I am against recycling of lithium and cobalt -- it's just that it isn't actually needed when we could fairly easily mine both if we wanted to. Lithium recycling is commercially viable as far as I know so there's no need for the EU to legislate anything. Cobalt recycling from bigger batteries probably is, other kinds of cobalt recycling probably isn't.
If producers aren't forced to sell batteries then we should at least mandate standard sizes that could be made by third parties.
We even made it compatible with Bosch ebikes!
I have a perfectly working iPhone se 3rd gen that’s becoming unusable because the battery is work out after four years of daily use.
I don’t want to change the whole phone, but I’m pretty much forced to and turn it into ewaste.
At least on critical sites.
GAFAM and big tech do not like protocols and file formats simple and able to do good enough job that stable in time, because you would not need the software they control.
There appears to be a few reason to become excempt from the rules, e.g. medical reasons (if it is in your body safety is more crucial than removability of the battery). So who knows what Apples lawyers will do with this.
"To that end, starting from 2025, the Regulation will gradually introduce declaration requirements, performance classes and maximum limits on the carbon footprint of electric vehicles, light means of transport (such as e-bikes and scooters) and rechargeable industrial batteries."
> Starting in 2027, consumers will be able to remove and replace the portable batteries in their electronic products at any time of the life cycle.
Interesting that it's also introducing limits on EV carbon footprints, but that's not to the exclusion of mandating replaceable phone batteries.
A portable battery shall be ... removable by the end-user ... 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.
Any ... person that [markets] products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those products are accompanied with instructions ...
Waterproof products are also specifically exempt.
EDIT: the "waterproof" requirement might leave less room for abuse than you'd think. It only extends to
appliances specifically designed to operate primarily in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion, and that are intended to be washable or rinseable;
Suddenly, all phones will be waterproof.
Phone batteries are already replaceable with standard tools. Instead of having waterproof phones, the EU wants to mandate back phones which die when you are caught in a shower. Reliable water proofing is only possible with gluing in seals, I really hope some lobbyist can actually show them what the consequence of their actions will be. I do not want to have to import a phone from the US to get a usable device.
Saving the environment by creating mountains of dead phones, killed by water, is such an incredible EU move.