TL;DR
- The European Council has ended its adoption procedure for rules related to phones with replaceable batteries.
- By 2027, all phones released in the EU must have a battery the user can easily replace with no tools or expertise.
- The regulation intends to introduce a circular economy for batteries.
Now let me replace the operating system, have unified drivers and I’ll be fine with it
God bless the EU.
Remember to vote to keep this up next June, my fellow Europeans
as an American, bless the EU, they’re carrying America with stuff like GDPR
hungarian here, i’ll try my best but please keep on overpowering us when we inevitably fail
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oh yeah, we know. the problem is, 80% of the country is a rural population and a lot of them just want to “own those libs in budapest” even if they fuck their own life up. that’s why the same right-wing party has stayed in government for 13 years now with no change on the horizon.
we tried last year. like really tried, even the left and the far right have made an alliance with one goal: topple this shitty party, everything else is secondary. it didn’t even make a dent.
at this point, i see no chance that our eu parliament reps won’t be from the same party either. i’ll vote against them for sure, but it’s just inevitable at this point.
Vote in what exactly? I’m lost.
European Elections are on June 2024.
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Not really as a design change as drastic as user exchangeable batteries means phone companies would probably rather adopt a unified design (removable batteries) than a region based design
2027 is actually pretty early for such a dramatic change, and somewhere I heard that it’s all phones sold, if that’s the case (i.e. you can’t sell old models if they don’t have easily replaceable batteries) than that is a really early date for such a law.
Companies would need some time to redesign their products.
Well some GDPR implementations did make it across the pond for the sake of simplicity so I imagine this might go the same way.
In the case of GDPR it is not just for simplicity. It’s because companies that operate in the EU need to provide those protections to all EU citizens, even those across the pond. You cannot check if someone is an EU citizen so if you operate in the EU you effectively need to treat everyone like an EU citizen.
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Only because the US government doesn’t feel like doing any actual governing whatsoever.
God I love Europe so much <3
Now we just need headphone jacks and SD cards and lineageos support and my dream phone will be mandated.
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My YouTube premium downloads are on my sd card, which works out nicely.
Not having SD card is real painful.
Between basic storage being so much larger than it used to be (the 4-8GB days were brutal) and USB-C flash drives that can plug into your charging port, I seldom miss them these days
Still sucks that they removed them as an option though
I pretty much stopped using my phone for audio when they got rid of the headphone jack.
Wireless headphones still aren’t great and most are uncomfortable. It’s super annoying keeping them charged and they are so expensive when you consider how short their lifespan is.
I listen to certain YouTube videos to get to sleep and have for years and years. Wireless ear buds just aren’t in the cards for something like that.
I’m in a similar boat. The only time I do plug in headphones (via the usb port) is on nights I’m having a very hard time fall asleep. But I do that at the expense of being able to charge my phone 😔
Man, that sucks. One of the other things for me is that you can buy decent headphones for like seven bucks with a 3.5mm jack. Most USB headsets are going to be a lot more expensive.
Does your phone support qi charging? That could be a solution if it does.
We’ve gone full circle. This used to be the way!
Good.
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is that this will inevitably make batteries smaller.
If you are supposed to be able to open the phone and remove the battery manufacturers need to design a way to remove the cover, shield other components, create a compartment for the battery, and use sturdier batteries. All of those things take us space. Manufacturers aren’t just going to make phones thicker so that physical space has to be eaten by something… and it’s going to be the battery.
I really liked having a removable battery on my phone 10 years ago in case I had a particularly long/intensive day. But now that I make it through a day without worry this could actually be sorta annoying.
If we are gonna get removable batteries there needs to be a standard battery format so that each company won’t have its own special battery design. One battery design for all devices. This way the battery will work in whichever phone you put it in.
On the surface that sounds good, but wouldn’t that put a hamper on battery innovation?
Usb is a de-facto standard and are we still using usb 1.1?
I don’t believe so. A battery standard would specify the interface, not the actual battery design from a technical standpoint. It would specify:
- size and shape, i.e. where connectors go, assuring it fits in a phone
- voltage and amperage provided
The rest is up to the battery manufacturer and is completely open to innovation. You want to put a Li-ion battery in there? Just make it the right shape and as long as it can provide the output required, it’s fine. Want some future-tech fusion battery? As long as it’s the right shape and puts out the required power!
Waterproofing will also become more difficult
Why the hell do we need to wait for 2027 for this? Perfect amount of time for something like this to get overturned at the last minute.
How much time do you think it takes to design a new phone?
A week, because a car takes 5 years and a phone is 1/250 the size of a car?
Solid logic
Hang on, I’m going to take five minutes to invent some nano-technology that’ll cure all diseases.
Why didn’t we think of this before?
Hopefully this doesn’t go the way of charging cables and we have a different battery shape for every phone… Otherwise a 2040 regulation will be to standardize battery shape(s)
Battery shape (and connector) will sadly still be a thing for a long time, and usually it’s for engineering reasons, so I don’t really think it will be possible to standardize it
We really should just adopt the “best one” that becomes the standard. Only change it with significant advancement
It depends on the layout of the phone though. Size of camera module, placement of fingerprint sensors, other sensors/modules, heat sinks. You name it, really.
As such the batteries tend to be oddly shaped, and even spread out in different places to get as much battery in as possible.
The “best one” differs from phone to phone.
I‘ve had a couple dozen different phone batteries in my hand. It’s really not that complicated if you have to make it work. Sure, manufacturers will yell that they couldn’t make their 27 lenses at the edge of the case work. I say make them 16:9 in 5 different sizes and manufacturers can work around that, end of story. New sizes can be adopted if the benefit for everyone outweighs the cost.
I’d really like to see it but I don’t think we will see it unless legislation forces it.
I’d like to see it in more than just phones. Standardise battery sizes for cars and other vehicles as well, and make it possible to replace them manually. If there were automated battery charging stations I might even be convinced that electric cars will work for more than just city travel.
I agree again. EVs do work imo but proprietary stuff always gets in the way. It’s actually time to reform the way intellectual property works and is enforced. It’s a way to leech out millions of dollars for insanely old or convoluted content which is not how our world functions anymore. There should be a limit on how big of an idea can be patented as well. Just think about tissues in boxes. If that got patented, they would be insanely expensive. That’s why I think things that are insanely common (medical formulas) should have very short patent spans. We need to take power away from megacorps (which is a can of worms in itself). Same goes for ev batteries, vaccines, etc.
There isn’t one “best one”. Always depends on requirements, which vary by device, underlying technology and use case.
Sometimes the EU is just based af.
They should do the same for laptops
It is a special day when there is happy tech news. This is a day for celebration. Having done my own battery replacements some have been a nightmare to do with all the glue and hoping the screen doesn’t break. I look forward to this, since with rise of phone costs I don’t intend to update frequently. I’d actually change my battery annually if it wasn’t such a hassle.
if this makes batteries smaller so be it
let’s go back to 2012 and carry a few of them at a time
There’s no need. Battery tech has advanced substantially. There is no reason phones shouldn’t last all day and then some, then when the battery becomes shitty, replace it instead of massive e-waste. We’re lucky the EU exist.
The battery is only one piece of the puzzle. If the EU wants to really reduce e-waste they should also mandate a minimum of 4 years of android security updates, preferably 5 or 6.
Very true, or mandate unlocked bootloaders so people can put custom roms that will patch.
Both is the real answer.
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Yes, but the vast majority of android phones get 2, maybe 3 if you’re lucky, and on the budget market you’re lucky if you get 2.
