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Comment by library8848 | Hacker News Reader

It's going to be cool to get user-replaceable batteries back in new phone releases. Depending how it goes I can see myself keeping a spare instead of a powerbank

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The whole discussion on what the EU is doing has devolved into this idea that everyone will be forced to offer a backplate that pops out and a battery you can remove with your fingers.

The directive is far more complicated, and you will not see that at all.

The regulation doesn't mean batteries have to be made swappable with just bare hands. Common tools and some simple, easily undoable gluing is still acceptable. It gets a battery replacement from a process that risks breaking glass parts, overheating components etc.. to something that can be done by a moderately skilled person with a moderately well stocked toolbox in an afternoon.

Isn’t that the case already for most devices? I can pay £80 and have a guy show up in a van and replace the battery in my iPhone in his van in 30 minutes or so.

Yes, and a lot of that happened in preparation for this specific EU directive.

This happens a lot, see Samsung and Apple announcing more years of security updates and feature updates, Apple announcing the switch to USB-C for the iPhone.

Once it's clear the EU will not budge, some big companies will just switch over in advance, other companies will lag.

The guy has trained himself to replace iPhone batteries and carries special tools for each model of iPhone in his van because it's not a simple process. The new law says he should only need a screwdriver set (roughly).

> something that can be done by a moderately skilled person with a moderately well stocked toolbox in an afternoon

This is what the OP said, and what I was replying too.

It is not going to happen, because pretty much all major phone makers have exemption since their battery has still enough capacity after 2 years of use to be eligible for exemption.

Powerbank: Works with all phones, Doesn't require you to shut down and take your phone apart, Can be charged with a regular phone charger.

Spare battery: ???

I don't need to be able to swap a spare battery like we did 15 years ago.

However when your battery is old, and drains fast, it's really nice to be able to order a new one and easily change it by removing 4 screws.

Not having to perform surgery on your phone, heating it to remove glue, etc.

I'll never forget the feeling when you get an old phone, replace the battery and it's like brand new again. People no longer need to replace their phone every year anymore so being able to just replace the screen and battery makes the device practically brand new.

Another thing you can do: scroll through your app list and delete all the ones you don't use.

And if you keep your phone in flight mode when you're not using it, you'll quadruple your battery life or more. Both because the radio is off, and also because apps aren't waking up the CPU to spy on you every few minutes, since they can't transmit it.

Quadruple? Depends on how you're counting I suppose. The problem with using flight mode is that the phone then becomes useless at its job as a phone, i.e. a device that other people can use to call you.

Highly depends on signal strength, too. Having a phone with only one bar of LTE absolutely murders battery life, so that claim is probably accurate in that circumstance.

I was expecting the bew folding screen to be really easy to replace, given that its basically floating behind a frame, but turns out no! its actually so built into the frame as to be a full body replacement with all the accompanying surgery

I wouldn't want to design the phone around an event that happens every 3 years at minimum.

Sure, but so far I've replaced my phone screen once and the battery never, I suppose both would be equally easy though. Why is heating a big issue but removing screws not? Shouldn't we mandate user-replaceable screens too? Soon you'll end up regulating all phones to be modular.

> Soon you'll end up regulating all phones to be modular.

That would be great, obviously there would be tradeoffs (not as thin, potentially less waterproof) but that seems like the right direction to go in.

I don't really see the value of regulation requiring a certain preference, given that there are tradeoffs. I owned a modular phone previously, and it was, as you say, not as thin and not waterproof, and not dustproof either. Given that it takes like 30 minutes to change the screen or battery on my current phone (which is not modular), I don't see why my preference should be disallowed by EU regulation?

I doubt any EU court will stop you selling a waterproof phone, but they will stop you making your flagship phone waterproof specifically for the purpose of making it hard to repair. They do have common sense, you know.

So what do you want to change, actually? My point is that the waterproof phones I've owned hasn't been hard to repair, because heating a phone to remove some glue, is not hard. The point is that the waterproofing glue, for me, is a worthwhile tradeoff because it adds like 10 minutes to the repair process.

Obviously, if you want to introduce new regulation, it must be because you want to change something, right? Or is the regulation about preventing a hypothetical scenario that's not the case right now?

> I don't really see the value of regulation requiring a certain preference, given that there are tradeoffs.

Reducing the amount of manufacturing for phones, and thus reducing the impact of the species on the environment is an extremely sensible goal, given that basically all resources are limited.

If you can do that while making things cheaper for your populace, then it's a double win.

Seems like we very quickly went from "there are tradeoffs" to "modular phones are objectively the best in all aspects". So, where's your proof of that claim? In my experience (as stated above) it's not the case.

The modular phones I've owned probably used more resources than the non-modular ones, because I needed to repair them more often. But hey, at least the repair was marginally more easy.

And yes, modular phones might have gotten better the last few years. But then you need to show that, not just claim it.

Yes please! That would be great. I would love to just be able to replace a screen easily.

And really this is what this law does already.

> I would love to just be able to replace a screen easily.

Yes, as I said, I've easily replaced my screen on my phone from 2022 already.

My point is that the definition of "easy" is different for me and GP (is it "easy" to remove and apply glue?). So which definition do we need to write into the law?

People were probably saying "I'd love to avoid tracking cookies on all websites" back before the EU cookie law too, and look at how that turned out.

> People were probably saying "I'd love to avoid tracking cookies on all websites" back before the EU cookie law too, and look at how that turned out.

The problem there was industry lobbying. What the EU should have done was one of two things:

- Forbid third party tracking entirely, completely

- Or mandate that a technical flag (e.g. Do-Not-Track) be respected by law

However the advertising industry would have been decimated (rightly so IMO) and billions of euros are coming from that so they lobbied for this stupid compromise that made things a lot worse.

They are now doing the latter: There will again be a DNT flag under the recent proposals, but it still has to go through rounds of lobbying and watering down.

Spare battery: remove empty battery, switch battery, you are back to 100% Powerbank: mess with cables, keep phone plugged until it's charged and wait

If there is a market for spare batteries, there might be a market for external battery chargers as well > swap battery in the morning instead of charging, place empty battery on charger, repeat the next day

I purchased a Lenovo T580 ThinkPad in 2018, and I configured it with an extra battery. So it had one built-in and one that was removable. This added some extra weight and plenty of extra battery life.

Several times I thought about purchasing a spare battery, but I never did. I also thought about detaching the battery and using the machine without it, such as on AC line power, or when I didn't need the extra juice. But I realized that it was a bad idea to carry it around with a gaping hole on the bottom and exposed battery contacts. I would've felt comfortable if there was a dummy cap to snap on instead.

Spare batteries are a nightmare to handle. Far too easy to bend or have something short-circuit the pads, and you have to shut down and restart your phone.

However, what is needed desperately is the ability to quickly change a degraded battery.

Spare batteries that are designed as internal batteries not to be easily swappable, yes.

Look at DSLR cameras: take out in 1 second, put in in 1 second, physically robust.

We absolutely can have the best of both worlds. We just need to align the smartphone manufacturers to user serviceability and right to repair… even if they go kicking and screaming since they decided their bottom line is most important.

Ever had a GoPro? Or professional camera? Drone? It's really not so hard to imagine a market for replaceable batteries lol.

My ThinkPad t420 had a small built in battery so I could switch batteries without shutdown. Imagine the magic. Imagine taking 20+ hours of laptop battery with you 15 years ago.

> Ever had a GoPro? Or professional camera? Drone? It's really not so hard to imagine a market for replaceable batteries lol.

All three, in fact. GoPro is about 15 seconds from "battery empty warning" over safe shutdown, battery replacement and it's booted back up into fully working. Professional camera (Sony A7S2) about 10-15 seconds, depending on what BS the lens tries to pull on startup. Drone about 1 minute including landing/takeoff (DJI Mini 3 Pro).

My Android tablet from Samsung however? Two minutes for safe shutdown and boot to userland alone plus all the apps starting in the background that keep yapping to whatever mothership cloud. It's an annoying hassle. And on top of that, despite the thing actually having a removable battery and being marked watertight and suitable even for underwater operation - it clearly is not.

I'd rather have an actually watertight device that has guaranteed availability of spare batteries, and actual screws instead of that glue shit that can't ever be fully removed from either the display or the housing.

> Spare batteries are a nightmare to handle.

New definition of nightmare just dropped: changing a battery. Or is it simply handling a battery? I can't figure out what's supposed to be the nightmare.

Maybe it's the turning off of a telephone.

Nah, when the old Samsung phones allowed user battery replacement it was completely safe and easy to handle. Restarting the phone took only a few seconds.

And the S5 was waterproof and almost the same thickness as the S26 Ultra.

I would be more optimistic but I ordered some pretty solid power banks from Anker, which should be a top notch power bank manufacturer.

Both types of products from them were recalled after about a month for being fire hazards.

I imagine it's not universal but it really made me question the product category.

Just like external AUX-type-C DACs, manufacturers took a trivial feature of a smartphone and outsourced it to an array of disposable device vendors with questionable practices

Having spare batteries was so great with the old Samsung smartphones. I usually kept a spare on the charger and swapped it as I headed out the door. It took like 10 seconds, just pop the back cover off.

I really, really don’t want to carry a second clunky device around with me.

And extra batteries aren't?

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