One of the most frustrating things about HN is that people seem so unaware of how idiosyncratic their preferences are. If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery".
It's okay to have idiosyncratic preferences (I certainly do), but people should recognize that this law will make phones _worse_ for most people, because this law will force phone manufacturers to compromise the things that most people want in order to provide something that most people don't want.
I suppose someone will say that this law is necessary for environmental reasons, regardless of people's preferences. But that's nonsense, because the law doesn't actually require people to replace batteries rather than replacing their phone, and by the time batteries wear out, most people are going to want a new a phone. At the very least we'd need to see some data that shows that most people replace batteries when it is possible to do so.
It used to be true that it made sense to replace your phone every few years because new ones were so much better. But like... I have a Pixel 8 and there's not really anything in a newer phone that's compelling enough to spend any money on...
I honestly know I could “optimize” my phone replacement schedule based on resale values of phones etc, but for the last ~15ish years I just replace my iPhone when the battery starts shitting itself (3-5 years each in my experience)
I'm curious about the environmental reasons here. Is there some hard data that shows that there is a meaningful number of consumers that buy new phones only because of battery degradation?
The article (granted, probably not the best source of information) has some numbers like "number of phones sold", but doesn't actually tackle the crux of the issue: how many of those phone sales would be _prevented_ by having user swappable batteries?
> by the time batteries wear out, most people are going to want a new a phone.
Not true. In recent years smartphones do not advance much, and would be perfectly fine to keep working if not for the dying battery.
> At the very least we'd need to see some data that shows that most people replace batteries when it is possible to do so.
The degree of "possible" varies greatly depending on the available expertise and spare parts. Right now in EU it's cost prohibitive for both coz the special labor required is crazily expensive and almost no official spare parts for consumers. So of coz this will be no data to support your claim.
> If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery".
Are you sure about this? I've heard this complaint from a lot of non-tech people who are old enough to remember flip phones with replaceable batteries. It might be age related.
I think phone manufacturers will figure it out once it is a requirement. Was switching everyone to USB-C annoying for Apple? Sure. Are we in a better place because the EU forced it. You betcha. That's the point.
I don't love everything the EU does (cookie banners!?) but this is one where I have confidence that the consumer will ultimately benefit.
As others have noted, most people do not replace their phones every two years anymore, there just isn't any big reason to.
Me and partner are both on iPhone 14 Pro. And this is more than powerful and sufficient for our daily use, except the battery is around 82%. I'd happily replace the battery right now for a more powerful one.
This doesn't require the battery to be replaceable. It requires either the battery to still be good after 1000 charges or for it to be replaceable, either one.
Although some of this depends on how you define replaceable.
I think the data for your last sentence does exist. When Apple was forced to replace broken batteries on the 12, lots of people opted to replace the phone and there was a corresponding drop in iPhone sales.
It’s a pretty commonly used canonical example of revealed preferences.
I used to be in this camp, and before we had the charge limit and power saving mode it was true, but now? I'm no longer sure.
Like, I've had my phone for 6 years now and the battery is still going strong with the 80% charge limit always on throughout its lifetime. Meanwhile the USB-c port is shot to fuck and disconnects constantly, it can't connect to 5G, leaving me without a connection in lots of locations cause there are no fallback towers, and the OS support has basically been over for a year now.
I think that’s the wrong way of framing it. If, before the launch of the iPhone, you asked what people wanted from their phones you’d be there a very long time before anyone described something like an iPhone (no buttons, capacitive touch interface, etc). And yet, once they were offered it, people flocked to it.
This regulation is targeted to devices with poor battery lives. Just because it hasn’t occurred to people to ask for the feature doesn’t mean they won’t appreciate it.
That's an odd reply since by that argument they also flocked to a phone with no replaceable battery, which was pretty standard in the 2000s.
But you could be right. I guess this will be an experiment to watch: If EU consumers show a strong preference for replaceable batteries once they become more widely available, we can expect manufacturers to start offering it in other markets as well.
I think everything is a tradeoff and at that point people took the trade. But the place smartphones take in our lives today compared to 2006 is radically different, I wouldn’t assume much carries over.
It would take a great deal of lawmaking to make phones more worse, for most people, than phone manufacturers and mobile app developers already do. You want to talk about idiosyncratic preferences, really? Here?
> If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery".
If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby if they want their phone to have a replaceable battery, I don't think you would be there very long before receiving a "yes". I think that's a more honest framing of the question.
> I suppose someone will say that this law is necessary for environmental reasons, regardless of people's preferences. But that's nonsense, because the law doesn't actually require people to replace batteries rather than replacing their phone
How could they replace their batteries if they wanted to, unless the manufacturer makes it possible? The goal is not to force individuals to not replace their phones, but rather to provide that as an option at all, for those who want it.
> At the very least we'd need to see some data that shows that most people replace batteries when it is possible to do so.
At the very least, we'd need only data showing that that number is non-zero. From where did you get the idea that it is necessary to prove "most" people would choose to take advantage of this option?
> The goal is not to force individuals to not replace their phones, but rather to provide that as an option at all, for those who want it.
But my point is that you need to recognize that in so doing, you are taking away the option of having other things, such as waterproofing, larger batteries, smaller/lighter phones, etc. There is no free lunch.
I was wondering about that. I lost my iPhone 13 mini the other day, did the find my phone beep thing and got a distant beep from my washing machine which was on wash cycle.
Surprisingly the phone was fine and works fine after a brief rinse under the tap. It must be hard to combine that sort of water resistance with easy user changing.
Don't fall for the 'glue cuz of protection' myth - there are and had been water-resistant phones way before Apple started glueing to avoid customers doing their own repairs and them losing out on new sales.
How much of the total volume of the device was the case/housing?
I suppose the glue-everything approach is partly due to the desire of making a device very thin. There's no room for strong, load-bearing outer case, the internals are load-bearing.
Yes, but IP67 is not nearly as water resistant as IP68, which all modern phones are for the most part.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if IP68 could be achieved in a phone without glue. There's no clamping mechanism for the backs, they're just press-fit with small clips.
From a mechanical perspective ip68 is perfectly achievable mechanically and watches have been achieving it for a long time, however… with what sort of margins for the manufacturer and what sort of cost for the consumer ? Additionally a lot of them require pretty carefully adherence to instructions torques and tolerances to achieve the same waterproof rating.
Personally I’d be very happy to have a phone that says, if you swap the battery you might lose the ip68 rating unless you follow the resealing process within tolerances.
Who cares though? Sealing the battery in makes the device less drop resistant. I somehow managed to avoid water damage to my phones for decades, while none of my phones managed to avoid being dropped in a way that would most likely be fatal to them if their batteries were sealed in - and yet most of them survived to this day.
A phone needs to handle some rain droplets falling on its screen, anything more than that is a gimmick that's not worth the downsides it comes with.
I wonder if this is part of why Apple is behind most competitors in terms of fast charging. Would almost make marketing sense to come out and say it at this point.
This could be "fixed" right now by a software update that limits the maximum charge level to 80% of capacity. However, this comes at the cost of how many minutes of runtime your phone can operate.
So manufactures might just responds to this by making your phone heavier with a bigger battery that is being under utilized.
This sounds great. I would've loved to have set my phone to charge up to only 60% or 80% of its design capacity to reduce wear. I do this on my laptop.
It has been on iPhones for quite some while, but on androids even longer. Before that it was in the form of some smart charging scheme that it would only finish charging until the moment it thought you would unplug it.
Honestly we should define 80% as the new "100%" on such batteries and label "charging to full" as "overcharging".
Psychologically, people understand charging a battery to "125%" (or whatever) a lot better: Do it when you really need to but if you do it all the time it wears down the battery a lot faster.
The goal should be reducing e-waste, and honestly this seems reasonable.
I’d rather get the additional structural rigidity, compactness, and weatherproofing that comes from the tight construction and then pay $99 to have Apple professionally install a new battery for me in 3-4 years. Forcing everyone’s iPhone to take all of the tradeoffs of replaceable batteries so some people can save $50 to replace their own battery isn’t a good deal.
I wouldn’t be surprised if forcing all phones to have easily replaceable batteries would result in a net increase in e-waste due to the additional failure modes introduced. Even if batteries were easily replaceable I think most iPhone users would have Apple do it for them anyway.
I’ve also replaced some iPhone batteries myself and it’s really not that bad if you are familiar with taking modern electronics apart. Apple will send you the entire toolkit if you want complete with a return label.
> and then pay $99 to have Apple professionally install a new battery for me in 3-4 years
In 3-4 years yes, but how about in 10-15 years? Apple will refuse to take your money then.
> Apple will send you the entire toolkit if you want complete with a return label.
Which is malicious compliance. They should allow the friendly neighborhood repair shop to purchase a toolkit so you can choose who does the repairs for you.
And what about if 4 years they says that they have dettected a problem in your battery? A new battery should fix that but now you cannot do it properly because it could do 1000 cycles.
This same thing happened to Pixels 6a after 500 cycles.
Then don’t buy a phone from a company with a piss poor record of customer service.
Just looking in maps, there are three Apple Stores within a 45 minute drive from where I live in central Florida.
The situation is worse in my hometown in South GA admittedly, you have to drive 70 miles for same day service for an authorized repair place - mostly Best Buy.
Those laws are usually anti-China or anti-small-business. The first is on purpose, the latter unintentional by the lawmaker, but funneled in by big money.
Isn't this pretty much what Nothing are doing? At least one of their phones has a different battery rating in India than elsewhere, despite containing the same hardware.
Aren't today's phone batteries already replaceable with commercially available tools? I can walk into a non-apple store with my iPhone and walk out with a replaced battery 20 minutes later.
This isn't even what drives obsolesce of phones, it's software updates.
If you really want to be able to self-swap your own battery, you can just buy an Android that has a replaceable battery.
Do we need to regulate something that isn't a problem? All regulation has downsides, is it worth paying this price here?
With all due respect, I can buy a kit on iFixit for $55 for an iPhone 16 pro max, including the battery. I’ve replaced my iPhone battery before, aside from the glue being a bit sticky so needing a heat gun it isn’t that difficult.
> This isn't even what drives obsolesce of phones, it's software updates.
Agreed, and software-locking parts, like batteries, to only first-party or authorized third-party repair shops is one of those drivers.
I can see the argument for software locking some components (to cut down on theft) even if I don't appreciate or agree with them - it is at least a valid reason from some perspectives.
Batteries are a wear item though, and will have to be replaced periodically until the device is discarded. Software-locking them to only "Apple and people Apple likes" is unconscionable
You talk about "an Android that has a replaceable battery" as if that was something you could just buy at any store at no inconvenience. Sadly the majority of Android phones no longer have user-replaceable batteries, and only a select few models have official replacement parts available.
I'd be happier if this was something the market took care of, but after 10 years of glued-in batteries that you most likely can't even buy, I think it's time for a regulatory nudge.
In a perfect world, sure. But people also want phones these days that are physically durable, have some degree of waterproofing/water resistance, maximum battery life, etc. Many of the demands and expectations of a modern phone aren't easily compatible with a replaceable battery design that can withstand the incompetence of the average end user.
A GoPro fits all of those requirements and has easily replaceable batteries. Now, I understand that the shape and sizes are different. But I wouldn't mind some extra mm of thickness (I already get a pretty big camera bump anyway) if that means I can replace a battery faster.
There is a lot you can do with advanced materials science but as you get close to the high end of capability the cost goes up very rapidly and the ability to scale production is reduced.
Can we have this discussion once? In this thread alone, there's like 50 instances of people making this claim and each time it takes about 20 minutes before at least one person replies that it's not the case, after which no refutals are posted. I'm happy to learn it is false if it is (I never had a phone that I trusted to be waterproof to any degree so I don't have first-hand knowledge), but it gets really tiring to read the same information level over and over as a reason for why we can't have nice things
Taking this comment as an example of someone who actually used a battery-swappable phone in rain on a motorcycle: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835184 (I'm not only taking the person's word for it: the device is also IP certified as waterproof 30 mins at 1m depth)
>people also want phones these days that are physically durable,
Anecdotally on this front, I have had to replace the screens of my iphones at least three times in the past (different models). Incidentally, I have never needed to replace the screen of a phone that had a replaceable battery. YMMV, but this seems needlessly defeatist.
>maximum battery life
One could also claim that bespoke charging cables allow for faster charging or longer battery life, but I don't know any iPhone users that are a crying a river for their deprecated non-standard chargers. But again, YMMV I guess.
You severely underestimate the capabilities of modern electronics manufacturers. Sure, it’s harder to produce something that fits all those capabilities. But it’s totally possible. This is exactly the scenario where government regulation is critical to a well-functioning market.
Those are not mutually exclusive at all, and there were waterproof phones with replaceable batteries (without even needing a screwdriver). This is mostly an excuse.
I just don't see why we can't have nice things until proven otherwise (especially considering there is already evidence that this works), rather than have glued-shut devices until proven otherwise (by whom then? Apparently IP and practical experiences aren't enough for you)
It's likely impossible to legislate but it would be nice to say "each generation has to have one user-replaceable battery". Everyone who doesn't care (the 99%) can buy the iPhone 19x, and the people who want replaceable batteries can get the iPhone B.
How is it that I owned a fully-submersible phone—with user replaceable battery—over 15 years ago?
You've bought into and are now parroting Apple & Samsung marketing BS.
P.S. it had a headphone jack too. Gaskets over the ports. The headphone jack was the first victim of "but muh waterproof" despite all the other holes and cutouts.
you can have both. the waterproof was just an excuse to make you either change the phone or go to a specialised center to change the battery, something that is so incovinient/expensive that people just obsolete their phone instead.
I trust that most batteries from iPhones are currently recycled through proper means either by Apple or third party firms.
I don't know how most people will dispose of user replacement batteries, but I suspect the recycle rates will be lower. If you want to ensure higher rates you also need to do something they do in the USA for car lead acid batteries. Charge a deposit fee on the new battery that is returned only when the battery is turned into a valid recycling entity.
Plenty of phones that were waterproof and had replacable batteries already. This isn't new or even particularily hard to do.
For a simplest example - somehow my watch is waterproof to 200M down and replacing the battery just takes a tiny screwdriver. Gaskets are not particualarly hard to work with.
Why do you imply that the phone could no longer be waterproof? Granted, it would take a bit of extra engineering to make it comparably waterproof. There is no reasonable implication that water needs to leak into the internals of the device where it makes contact with the battery.
Engage with the content of his comment instead of resorting to ad hominem.
He's right - the market wants embedded batteries, although perhaps not directly. Embedded batteries have improved price, battery capacity, water proofing, size, and strength. If the consumer really wanted a removable battery and all that that entails then there would be more phones that offered that. The reality is people misjudge what all that entails. By all means, I would love to just make the iPhone battery directly replaceable without any compromises but that's not reality.
You can buy phones with non-embedded batteries but they suck. That's not a coincidence.
What is your hypothesis for why more phones arent designed with non-embedded, directly replacable batteries? If it's such a highly valued trait in a phone, why doesnt some company just gobble up that market share? Why havent existing solutions sold well? Mine is that consumers dont actually value non-embedded batteries when accounting for all the tradeoffs. What's your hypothesis?
I originally did engage with the comment. Water-resistance absolutely still is physically possible if the replacement battery is waterproof. Water can over time be corrosive at the contacts, but that's a risk for the user. It does not in any way imply that water will enter the internals of the device from the point of contact with the battery. This will require a bit of engineering at the contact to ensure that water doesn't enter the device. As for the size argument, adding 2 mm of thickness is less important than providing five years of extra life.
Wait, are you proposing sealing the phone and sealing the battery separately, but not sealing the contacts between them? That’s… super sketchy for salt water immersion. Unless you add fuses and a BMS and safety mechanisms into the “battery”. In which case wouldn’t customers want to be able to replace the actual battery within the now-a-battery-plus-computer phone accessory once it wears down?
Says who? Not all devices can have the same level of repairability by laypeople. What if I complained that todays' CPUs are too miniaturized and that in my time I could swap the individual vacuum tubes in case something went wrong?
If CPU failure was a leading cause of device obsolescence, your argument would make sense. Next, the EU or other regulators should explicitly regulate software mechanisms that prevent owners of a device from installing an alternate OS, enabling open source or aftermarket OS developers to support devices that mainstream vendors no longer want to support.
How do you feel about the batteries in electric vehicles?
What about wearable devices like a smartwatch, headphones, smart glasses?
Should all these be consumer-replaceable without tools, regardless of the effect on the other things people value in these devices (waterproofing, size and weight, battery life, etc.)?
FYI I do not work for anything close to the consumer tech industry.
For EVs you need at least a hoist/lifter/crane/other power tool to replace a battery. But sure, there's no actual engineering reason they can't be replaced by the user. Same for the smartwatch - you can replace a battery in most ordinary wristwatches that use them, why not the smart ones? IEMs are usually too small and that's where the engineering limitations might matter. Headphones, no problem.
What if we regulate batteries even more? i.e. what if, in some magical perfect world, the world get's together and agrees on batteries for phones like how we agree on AA,AAA,D,C batteries? Even more though.. a standard connector, a standard comms bus, a variety of sizes, and they were designed for reuse as efficiently as possible.
Now we can scale up volume, swap them out, be free to purchase from a different manufacturer, and have scaled up recycling services.
I recently bought a Supernote Manta. It's an e-ink writing tablet. Guess what: it has a back which can be opened, and its innards are easily accessible. I could pop in an SD card, and the battery can be replaced, too. It's thin and light.
We are being gaslighted by Apple. They keep telling us that it's impossible to have a thin and light device with a user-replaceable battery, or even, heaven forbid, an SD card slot. I beg to differ: there are some compromises (it won't be as seamless perhaps and Jony Ive or whoever won't be able to wax poetic about the materials), but it can be done.
I would imagine something similar is true for waterproofing. There are certainly ways to have a separate battery and phone, with a waterproofed connector.
Now they only need to make sure that a supply chain for replacement batteries exists, there is regulation and competition and options remain available for a reasonable price.
There are plenty of old Dell and HP laptops with replaceable batteries which can only be found on eBay or some random seller that does who knows what under the refurbishing process.
- rules on disassembly and repair, including obligations for producers to make critical spare parts available within 5-10 working days, and for 7 years after the end of sales of the product model on the EU market
- availability of operating system upgrades for longer periods (at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market of the last unit of a product model)
I was looking forward to finally be able to easily switch out (i)Phone batteries again - after 20 years - but turns out the lobbyists managed to get a loophole in the law - exempting Apple & Co from making their phones more repairable / longer live-able.
> If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt
Seems entirely reasonable. Embedded batteries have a lot of advantages. Cheaper, higher battery capacity, water proof, smaller, stronger. I think this will largely just make the mid to low tier android market in the EU shittier.
Citation needed. It seems pretty clear that a mechanism to allow a user to access a battery will increase complexity, making all the other properties harder to achieve.
1) iPhones for example are ip68 rated while those are just ipx8/9
2) Do you want to be limited to the universe of those search results? Do you want to buy a Sony Xperia?
You can't make batteries directly replaceable at the same quality and price. There are tradeoffs. Obviously waterproof non-embedded batteries exist. Just like you could make a removable battery the same slimness as embedded. With massive tradeoffs. It's capacity will be terrible. No one is surprised a removable battery can be waterproof but the point is there are tradeoffs.
I recently did a battery replacement on an iphone mini 13 with some success and some failure. I absolutely killed the screen without cracking it. A little too much pulling with the ifixit reverse clamp.
Had i gone a little slower, it would have been a very easy repair.
My experience with an Apple battery saying ~81% longevity remaining is that it'll die when it still reports half full and you open a demanding webpage
It's a genuinely hard problem to measure battery capacity with existing smartphone hardware, also because it's a matter of opinion how much to factor in the peak load capacity (how do you count the bottom 40%, where it can't handle peak draw anymore? Should one include half of it because the phone is still usable but in a degraded state?), so I'm not faulting Apple here at all. They choose to display this estimate and it's better than nothing / better than most manufacturers. Just that you can't take it at face value, even if you charged your phone from 0% to 100% for >=1000 days
The exemption is about ensuring customers get what they paid for. It shouldn’t care how the manufacturer achieves that; driving the batteries less hard is an obvious tactic, and actually also makes them safer to use.
Yes, this is the most non-story I have ever seen on this topic. I do not know of any manufacturer who does not claim this, verifiable or otherwise; and even if they can't claim it, all they have to do is one minor purely-software capacity adjustment, which they will gladly do before they will even consider offering removable batteries.
Apple has no chance to claim their batteries can have 80% capacity after 1000 cycles seeing how they never achieved this so far. Lying about it puts them in a world of mass recalls and fraud investigations.
Depends on how "cycle" is defined - I'm sure they can finagle it so "any charge added to the battery" counts as a cycle.
As a datapoint my iPhone reports 522 cycles and 89% max - from march 2024. I do use the "limit charging to 80%" feature which I suspect may become mandatory before 2027 ...
I don’t think “a cycle” is up for redefining. I hope these terms are defined in the law.
But that supports my assumption that realistically the batteries don’t last 1000 cycles even when charged conservatively. The last 9% will go faster than the first 11%, the battery already has lower capacity and needs to be charged even more often.
On the other hand if I only get to 1000 cycles by charging up to 80% then I’m not getting 100% of the battery, am I?
Dieselgate was caught by some dudes with an emissions measuring device. It’s not that extreme to get a number of iPhone batteries, test them to 1000 cycles and see if statistically they still retain 80% capacity. If they don’t Apple could be looking at replacing everyone’s batteries.
The obvious solution is underrating - just like a 1 TB SSD actually has more than 1TB of "raw storage" available internally. What is a 100% battery today will be sold as an 80% capacity tomorrow, with 20% "overage" available for wear.
That’s fine as long as the battery ends up having 80% real capacity after 1000 cycles and maybe Apple is also transparent about how.
A bigger issue which I don’t know if the law covers is with the other battery specs. An 80% battery that can’t handle any spikes (low power mode) is useless.
> the lobbyists managed to get a loophole in the law - exempting Apple & Co
But Apple batteries are already user replaceable? I've replaced my own and batteries come with kits that have all the tools and disposable glue strips and seals.
“ If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt”
I mean isn’t that an okay exemption? If the intent is to drive devices to be less disposable and more sustainable… if it incentivizes all mobile phone manufacturers to improve battery longevity, I’d say that’s a win.
I wouldn’t even call it a loophole. The entire purpose of the legislation could be that clause
No shot at all apple batteries can last 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity. Probably can’t even do 300 in my experience. Sounds like an easy lawsuit.
No doubt they will redefine maximum battery capacity to a figure that does achieve 80% over 1000 cycles. If you under-declare maximum capacity then there is a lot of headroom for actual degradation before you start to show degradation to the user.
This is what they should have been doing all along. My Pixel tells me that charging above 80% is bad for battery longevity and I should set a charge limit. Well then maybe 80% should be the new 100% and the advertised capacity should be the 80%.
This balancing act is already happening. If you modify the battery controller, you can totally continue charging beyond the voltage that the phone considers to be 100%. It also increases the risk of damaging the battery (https://www.acebattery.com/blogs/what-will-happen-when-a-lit...). What they define as 100% is already some point on a damage probability curve, and charging to anything below that point will further decrease the amount of battery stress (for li-ion batteries and similar technologies)
Fwiw, based on tests I've seen recently such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj4LMlGr4og, I think limiting to 80% is overblown, but somewhere in the 90%s could be a sweet spot that gives you several hours' longer battery life than with 80% but still has a much reduced chance of significant degradation. I don't understand why they didn't make this configurable
They can use a large battery and software lock the capacity to 50% but that would be very wasteful and expensive for them, and make for a very chonky phone.
Or they can use a normal battery, label it with a lower capacity and actually allow you to use all of it but that would be lying and probably very illegal especially when it comes to mislabeling batteries.
A battery that can support 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity would be a literal brick. For an example the Vision Pro's battery has extreme over-provisioning and limit how long it would last. (note I know it is removable but that isn't the point).
That has not been my experience, at least with Apple laptops. Even when rated for 1000 cycles, I'll get the warning that service is needed (AFAIK that means 80% capacity or lower) well before then. I've seen this on several, but the one I just checked is at just under 670 cycles and has had that warning up for some months already.
Maybe iPhones are better about this, though, I don't know. But I definitely don't have a lot of faith in the laptops maintaining 80% for 1000 cycles.
Batteries have been used as part of planned obsolescence for too long and a whole small business industry of replacing phone batteries has appeared because of it. Next the EU are going to have to address security patches because its another aspect being used to sell new phones.
I have found out that the main phone providers (Apple, Google, Samsung) have extremely long support period. I really don't get the "planned obsolescence" thing.
As an example, in Jan 2026, Apple published iOS 12.5.8 which provides updates for iPhone 5s which released in Sept 2013. That's 12.5 years ago. The equivalent would be to connect to the internet using ADSL in Jan 2000 with your IBM PS/2 rocking in intel 8086, 512 kb of RAM and expecting an update for your DOS operating system.
>As an example, in Jan 2026, Apple published iOS 12.5.8 which provides updates for iPhone 5s which released in Sept 2013. That's 12.5 years ago. The equivalent would be to connect to the internet using ADSL in Jan 2000 with your IBM PS/2 rocking in intel 8086, 512 kb of RAM and expecting an update for your DOS operating system.
The updates for ios 12 are all security updates, not feature updates, so your comparison to "connect to the internet using ADSL in Jan 2000 with your IBM PS/2 rocking in intel 8086" doesn't really make sense. The phones stuck on ios 15 are basically unusable because many apps don't support it anymore. At best you can download an older version from a few years ago, but that depends on whether the backend servers were updated. Apps that insist you use the latest version (eg. banking/finance apps) basically unusable.
Believe it or not, "apps" are an important "feature" of a smartphone, even if it's not theoretically bundled with it. Moreover it's not just banking apps, those are just the first ones to go, but any that don't keep backend compatibility will eventually break.
The EU already requires 5 years of patches since last year. Motorola thinks they have found a loophole, so there are still some, ahem, patches needed to the law.
Do you have more info about this? I recommended Motorola phones to people based on a combination of price, their needs, and expected longevity (at least 5y now with the new update and replacement part requirements). If that's not the case then I want to update my recommendations
> Batteries have been used as part of planned obsol[esc]ence for too long and a whole small business industry of replacing phone batteries has appeared because of it.
Note that early phones had replaceable batteries and it was later phones that dropped that feature. The idea wasn't that making the phone impossible to open would compel people to replace their phone faster; it was that given that people didn't keep their phones long enough to wear out the battery, there was no need to make the battery accessible.
also camera just not being satisfying enough anymore is a big deal
sure on highest end phones you have very good cameras since a long time by now, but even there they find improvements here and there (e.g. zoom, low light pictures, even better image stabilization)
but middle to lower end phones are still have major improvements in every generation of a certain brand/line/price category. And you might be satisfied with a "acceptable" quality camera, until everyone around you has way nicer photos, or you now have a reason to make photes you didn't had in the past, or you get older and your hands a bit unsteady etc.
Batteries are generally a cheap fix from third party stores. If you wanted to keep the phone why not spend the small dollars and just replace the battery?
Because you need to bring it to a shop, sometimes they may keep it for more times, sometimes if they are not that honest they will find something else and factory reset it and a long etc. If it's something one can do at home by one self as an expected and supported by the vendor operation, why not? You can still bring it to a store if you don't feel like crafty enough to do it.
Upgrade cycles have slowed down in recent years, the improvements are relatively incremental nowadays. Screens, durability, processors, storage sizes, cameras, even battery life are okay-ish and aren't improving quickly enough to justify the same upgrade rate. Foldables are basically the only big innovation in recent years, but are still a little too fragile and expensive.
This is also reflected in the increasing support durations from major manufacturers.
This might be partially true, but making them inacessible is still a great way approach to planned obsolescence and there's no way this was not part of the motivation. The fact that an entire industry exists to provide replacement batteries is proof of this, as is the fact that Apple offers a £100 battery replacement. They also replace the batteries of all refurbished models they sell, which again wouldn't be necessary if battery life wasn't a concern over the useful life of a phone.
Secondly, what you said may have been true in the past, when smartphones were rapidly evolving and upgrade cycles were short, but people are holding on to their devices for longer now, so its possible its becoming a problem again.
Not sure how comparable that is when considering that the devices are also commonly required as ticket on public transport with no offline fallback (going so far as to include animations on the screen so you can't send a screenshot to a friend or print it out -- no, I have no idea why they think you can't send a video to a friend). Having 10 minutes of use time is simply not on the table, and GP was probably not talking about that class of phones (pre-"smart" phone) in the first place
Nice! As a heads up, don't be tempted to replace the battery via a third party if the Samsung battery ever stops meeting expectations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834810
This was true back when Moore's law was the driver of obsolescence. You bought a new phone every year simply because next year's phone was twice as fast.
Now that this doesn't happen, the driver of obsolescence is the battery, which is much less defensible because you can swap it much more easily than "the whole internals of the phone".
I have never used a phone without easily replaceable battery (where "easily" means no screwdriver necessary, just pop the backcover and pull the battery out). It just happened this way, but I think I'd refuse to buy one anyway, as aside of obvious repairability and maintainability issues having the battery sealed in is also a big factor that makes dropping the phone so dangerous. When I drop my phone, the battery is easily set free to disperse its kinetic energy away from more fragile parts of the device, so it's much harder to break the phone this way. I have made some small dents and scratches from drops over the years, but no serious damage.
While this is a good step forward, it feels like complaining about the 0.025% of plastic from straws in the ocean while ignoring the 75% of plastic from fishing nets.
I own a 2020 Kona EV. The battery cannot be upgraded. Eventually, I'll have to replace the entire car to get a longer range. BEVs should be mandated to have upgradable batteries and modular interfaces so that the shell can continue to be reused, the batteries (and BMS) upgraded, and old batteries easily recycled.
Useful life of most of the cars is on par with their battery longevity, as long as you have proper thermal management and your usage patterns are not outliers.
Focusing on being able to upgrade battery (and to be clear - upgrade, not replaced/repair) is solving 1% problem.
Given the huge environmental cost involved in manufacturing a car, 20 years seems fair.
I’m still driving a 26-year old Nissan Micra – though it’s now on its last legs: the Irish climate isn’t kind to steel and we’ve had to have the under-carriage re-welded three times in the past five years. :(
> Should I be able to eventually replace gas tank with the larger one in my ICE vehicle?
FWIW, that is actually a thing you can do. It is mostly done for SUVs and pickups since the primary use case for the extra range is off-pavement driving and the upgrade is simpler.
Yes, which is why they are replacable, and Hyundai is bound by law to keep making batteries for OP's Kona for a good while even after the production stops.
That will probably come when EV marketshare is higher and innovation plateaus. I definitely appreciate the phone thing as someone typing from an iPhone SE. I also think phone batteries degrade faster than cars, right? I think my phone is from 2022 and I’m definitely starting to feel it.
I don't see how that's even remotely comparable. It's not like you can replace the battery in your phone with a larger one. You will be able to buy a new battery for your car, that's already guaranteed in the EU - but it will be the same capacity as what you got.
I don't know why is this even an argument really, like.....in a petrol car, do you expect to be able to fit it with a bigger fuel tank after 10 years? or a more powerful engine? Until very recently even software updates to the infotainment weren't really a thing, if you wanted a newer interface you had to change the entire car(I'm not saying this was a good thing, just that generally the expectation is that the product will work the way it was when you bought it).
It's not for me at least. Nobody can prove their inner intent to you but most people will know from themselves that their actions are sometimes misunderstood (especially when something worked/came out badly) but that they genuinely mean well
Disagree. I want a replaceable battery in my phone. They can get to extensible memory next. And it's not because you don't care about something that you should remove this freedom from me. And don't tell me that the market will self regulate in the best interests of the consumer or other nonsense like that.
Seems to me like the top goal should be: you can easily replace the most-likely-to-break parts (screen, back, battery, etc) in any local independent repair shop, with genuine parts that have low markups.
I'm confused why that still isn't the case today given all the EU headlines we've seen over the years.
>The regulation states that batteries must be removable using ‘commercially available’ tools
This is doing a lot of work here. There's enough wiggle room for this to be absolutely meaningless. Anything short of I can slide off the back cover and maybe unscrew two or three screws to replace the battery means that a lot of people are going to end up not being able to replace the batteries.
The rest of that same sentence, " – and that if specialised tools are required, they must be provided free of charge when the phone or tablet is purchased," seems to mitigate that concern, no? I suppose it hinges on what the test for a "specialized tool" is.
EU regulatory bodies haven’t been as blindly sycophantic towards megacorporations in terms of allowing them to skirt by rules set forth by their legislatures, so I would be more optimistic than if this were a development in US law.
Specialised as in created specifically for swapping battery of that specific phone? As in you cannot do it with a generic commercially available tool (e.g. a screwdriver)
Article 11 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 states that a 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.
Guidance on tool types can be drawn from standard EN 45554:2020e (2). In the context of the assessment of a product’s ability to be repaired, reused and upgraded, this standard uses the following classification groups: (i) basic tools (including
those provided with the product as a spare part) or no tools; (ii) product-group specific tools; (iii) commercially available
tools; and (iv) proprietary tools.
The concept of commercially available tools mentioned in Article 11 comprises the categories of basic tools or no tools and of commercially available tools as per EN 45554:2020e.
The concept of specialised tools laid down in the Regulation refers to product-group specific tools that are not available for purchase by the general public but are not protected by patents either. Article 11 requires that any such specialised tool that
might be necessary to have a portable battery removed and replaced is provided free of charge with the product into which the battery is incorporated.
As per EN 45554:2020e, proprietary tools refer to tools not available for purchase by the general public, or for which any applicable patent are not available for license under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Such tools should not be
needed to remove portable batteries
--- start quote ---
(I fully expect literally no one on HN to spend even a second looking for and reading the relevant texts, and complain about the law being vague or impossible to implement or something)
Maybe. Maybe not. If my local phone and phone accessories shop can do it for little money in 15 minutes then the current calculus changes for a heck of a lot of people.
No. I can't find a legit battery for my Samsung phone, only forgeries and "compatible with"s. Local repair shop said they could put a new OEM battery into this 4yo second-hand phone
So I pay them and they do it. The result:
- back cover becomes rather loose while it's warm e.g. from fast charging or a hot day out. No longer waterproof
- the battery is no better than the original and is (2y later now) degrading faster than the original. If you ask a lot of it, the last 35% are gone within minutes. I think it's a knock-off battery but that the repair person doesn't know that
If there had been commercially available repair parts and tool access, neither would have been a problem and I could just have done it myself
My mom has the same model and sent hers in to the manufacturer for a battery swap. Took a while and cost half the price of the phone (since it was a 2yo second-hand at that time). That could have been much faster, even if the manufacturer is free to set the same steep prices
A colleague got their phone back from Google for some repair last week, I don't remember if screen or battery swap. He asked and they said it wouldn't be reset. He put a sticker on it not to wipe the device. They wiped the device. He's now trying to piece together what's in various backup files that Android allows making. Fun fun fun. Also not necessary if you, or your techy nephew, can just do it at home
---
The requirement for commercially availability of repair is so much better than the current state of what repair places can/are offering
I think the supply chain is pretty broken. I had just about the same experience as you with an iPhone 7 a few years back. I booked my replacement through Apple's website, so I was pretty confident I wouldn't get scammed. The new battery started bulging in less than two years, to the point that there was a serious gap between the screen and the body.
It was clearly worse than the battery that came with my refurbished (!) phone, which never did that; it just couldn't hold a decent charge anymore. I won't even go into the absolutely ridiculous experience I had with the repair shop, like not honoring booked times and whatnot and having me wait in line for ages, both to drop off and pick up my phone.
My current phone has lost some of its battery health as reported by the OS, but still gives me over a day of use, but when the time comes to fix it, I'll go directly to Apple.
Same with laptops btw. I once caught a seller where the webpage and sticker said 5200 mAh but acpi -i reported 4400 mAh. They provided a replacement free of charge, presumably their supplier scammed them in turn (it was a small local webshop), but that replacement also wasn't great even if now the chip reported the expected capacity. Never once have I had good experiences with replacement batteries, I really wonder what they do with the originals to make them so vastly superior
Also quite noticeable that the laptop battery market became much smaller once the batteries became an internal component (around 2015) that you can't see without opening it up completely. These also used to be behind a slider or two
People don't dare unscrew electronics, even if it's about as trivial as replacing a light bulb in a fixture that requires removing a screw. With phones having the battery inside as well now, not above the sim tray for example, I wonder how much such legislation is going to help the average person
Last time I checked I’d have to leave my phone for a couple of days and the glue factor meant they wouldn’t guarantee it would come back perfectly. My assumption is this might make it a more trivial change.
There were models that were both waterproof and not glued (the only tools needed for a battery swap were the replacement battery and opposable thumbs). I never had/tested one myself though, this is just going off of the manufacturer's claims and IP (ingress protection) certification
I used to have a Galaxy S5, the model that usually comes up in these discussions. Now, I never went and threw it in a swimming pool, or pressure washed it, or whatever other ridiculous test you may come up with. But I did attach it to my motorbike's handlebars and rode around under heavy rain on more occasions than I care to remember.
It was often drenched to the point that the map on the screen was basically illegible without stopping and wiping off the water. But it never skipped a beat. Basically, I was the limiting factor and would eventually give up and find some hotel with a hot shower to pass the night.
Why waste space for gaskets and o-rings when you can already get the battery changed out while you wait with glue? Glue is clearly the superior method, which is why almost the entire market has adopted it.
Heat pads exist even in the most basic repair shops. It's not advanced technology, no need to over-engineer it.
My last phone was all glued and the entry point was the screen. The repair guy said there was a 50% chance the screen would break in trying to unglue it so it was not worth the try. It was a shame, it was a decent phone killed prematurely by a faulty battery.
There are a number of phone designs that require special heating apparatus and very careful prying tools to get the back case off. And then extremely careful application of new glue to reassemble. Basically the whole thing is glued together at the factory. Google "phone heating pad for repair" for some examples...
That reads true. While replaceability is definitely a good thing, but whether it will end up being a good thing for the average user (and not lead to some further price hikes in the EU market) remains to be seen.
This might be shifting us closer to worse overall design/performance to accommodate swapability. The pouch cells are very fragile, with the phone itself being the physical protection for the cell. If end users begin to handle these, you likely have to add additional packaging to the cell which increases the overall dimensions or reduces total capacity to maintain the same size.
Maybe it's for our own good, maybe we have to suck it up and lose a little capacity to meet sustainability goals. Or maybe this won't do much for the environment.
I am not sure people actually care that much about dimensions.
Most phones today only look thing on promotional material. With the massive camera bump that is sometimes thicker than the phone itself, and the way most people use cases, in the end, you have quite a brick. Also a glass back panel, which to me is one of the worst materials for that purpose, but it looks good on the store stand.
So to me, a removable battery will not affect the phone dimensions as much as it will affect the look, which may piss off the marketing guys, and I take it as a positive!
Seriously, bring back the removable plastic back covers, plastic may look cheap, but to me, it is the best material, and if you put on a case, as most people do, you won't even see it!
Obviously it helps with the design to embed. But it's also obvious so hard to replace batteries are by design to make those phones throw away after the 1000cycle or whatever batties last.
A good middle ground would have been to enforce an easy to replace specification..but then we are up to interpretation.
I know a common refrain with my friends is "IDGAF about an extra few centimeters, give me an audio jack". I think consumers are down for thicker phones if they get something for it. In this case, a phone that lasts longer
Where in the market can I buy a thicker phone with a 3.5mm jack that has comparable features to those of best sellers? How can I reveal a preference that isn't offered.
They (Samsung, Apple, etc.) should never have been allowed to glue it behind the screen. Threaded fasteners and a silicone gasket cover is good enough for 99.999% of the public use-case.
Will this affect the water-resistance of current iPhones? I thought that was why the batteries are not easily replaceable by users, because of the seals/gaskets.
There are multiple watches, cameras, etc., with a lot of physical buttons even, all with replaceable batteries and weather-resistant (or even better, water proof). This is a bad excuse.
Most wristwatches provide much stronger water resistance while still being very user serviceable with a $20 watch tool kit. Whatever the phone makers are peddling are mostly excuses.
water resistance + easily battery exchange for repairs is very viable (AFIK always had been, too.)
like this law isn't about users causally replacing batteries like on very old phones
but about an repair shop easily and without risk of breaking your phone being able to replace it without only holding on your phone for idk. 10 minutes
So that you can just drop by (once they have the replacement parts) wait a moment and have a new battery.
This means in the worst case something like needing to a add a bit of additional seal/wax/glue or similar to improve sealing is very much fully viable (Id the sealing agent is generally buy able.)
It just is something you have to design in from the get to go. And it's easier to not do so at all. And maybe if you obsess if your phone is 1/10mm smaller or not that gets in your way too. And not doing so is more profitable as people will buy successor products more likely, even if just very slightly more likely.
But in general? That really isn't the problem.
Also even if it where the problem. What is better? Having a less waterproof phone, but not needing to buy a new one for another one or two years or having to buy one now?
While I'd be perfectly content with an IP67 iPhone with interchangeable battery, the current iPhones are IP68 which is a significant step up in dust/water ingress protection. IP68 devices generally require a sealant, IP67 normally doesn't, making it easier to do a battery hatch etc.
IP68 doesn't require a sealant if you just use enough pressure. Phones are just too thin to screw on the back plate and use a proper gasket. Which is stupid in the first place because most people then go and put a bulky cover on them.
and applying a sealant isn't per-see the problem either
iff
- it's generally commercially available
- and re-applicable after replacement with just generic tools
- and removing the battery doesn't risk breaking your phone due to physical strong binding glue being used as sealant etc.
As a dump example you can design the phone as a sealed unit with the battery department being "outside" the seal. Then have the battery also sealed and apply a bit of "sealant" (wax?, glue?) on the electrical contacts braking the seal on both sides. As the battery and battery compartment back have to only be waterproof and not "rigid" this probably fits "just fine" into most phones (except the most over the top slim ones).
Which is probably more the actual problem. Thinks like phone makers over-obsessing with making phones slimmer on a sub 1mm standard ... and then people anyway putting "thick" cases on the phone to protect it...
How about computers to have replaceable SSDs? There's no point you can exchange the battery when the hard-soldered SSD dies first. (I had more dead SSDs than batteries)
Recently replaced the battery and charging port of my Fairphone. 5 screws, two plucked components, done. Hopefully this means that soon you won't have to buy a specific company's phone for this marvelous experience.
The Fairphone 5 is only IP55 rated (dust protected, and water droplet resistant). Most flagship phones are IP68 rated (fully dust sealed, and water submersible). IP68 phones are sealed with a single-use adhesive gasket, and replacing battery requires breaking (and replacing) this seal. If the seal is improperly applied, the phone is no longer protected from dust or water.
This is good. I recently had to replace a generally working phone because the battery was dying and there was no cost effective & reliable means of replacing.
A proper gasket and screws needs to be the standard solution here.
It seems like the whole world could massively benefit from this much like the other great innovation out of the EU -- the Common Charger Directive (aka USB-C).
I hate to say it, but the lack of removable batteries serves a purpose. It wasn't done just because 'screw consumers'.
It was done because:
* It makes phones massively easier to waterproof
* It allows for larger batteries
* It allows for more compact and lighter phones
Consumers, based on what they buy, have shown again and again that they want these features.
It also simplifies manufacture and lowers costs, which everyone likes.
I like removable batteries. If I had the option, I'd get a phone with that feature. But I know that I am certainly in the minority, as is almost everyone in this thread.
It's also worth pointing out that these days, battery and software have advanced to the point where degradation is quite slow in many cases. The phone will often outlive its useful life due to specs rather than battery.
Considering that this, and other, regulation is officially aimed at reducing e-waste, the EU should commit to publish independent data on the amount of e-waste and phones replacement rates now and every year afterwards in order to measure the real world impact.
Too often, including in HN comments, those regulations are presented as "obviously" good policies. Well, data are better than assumptions.
I don't know if this is standard, but at least for some previously enacted electronics regulations I know they look into the real-world effects. I think I was looking for information on how they calculate the battery life for the new smartphone energy labels (which videos should be played at what screen brightness; is the browsing test over WiFi or the LTE/NR modem; etc.) when I found some document about how much energy they're expecting to save with this regulation. It showed a base path of expected energy consumption development, and then how the regulation is expected to modify that
The shaded area is the effect that they think is attributable to regulations, e.g. -2.2TWh electricity per year in the category of phones and tablets when comparing 2010 and 2030
As another example, for "Servers and data storage products" they expect almost no change due to regulation: the consumption is expected to go from 48 to 67 TWh (2010 till 2030) and that it would have been 70 TWh without regulations. If I'm reading it right, this small improvement would be due to the 2019 "information requirement ... including the maximum allowed operating temperature for the equipment ... to stimulate data centres to choose equipment that supports higher operating temperatures, to enable further reduction of the cooling load."
Page 42 shows that they also take into account 'additional acquisition costs' (how much more expensive devices are because of this, I think that means?), but that this added expense is well below the energy costs that would have been incurred otherwise. Of course, that's what I'd say too about my regulations :) but I don't know of another information source for this so this is the best info I have atm
So this means no iPhone Air 2 in Europe? I can hardly see Apple wiggle around the special tools requirement when these batteries are glued and sealed shut in the devices.
[edit] didn’t see the fine print with the cycles requirement etc. so it seems Apple etc is still safe.
I think most (all?) would already comply. What laptop do you see as not having a user replacable battery? Even MacBook can be swapped out pretty easily [1].
MacBooks are not easy at all. I did it twice and it's an annoying, dangerous mess (danger of tearing the battery open). Apple won't even bother with it. If you want an "official job", they will just replace the whole top shell including the keyboard, because they can't be bothered to remove the glue. And of course it's expensive because of that.
I won't name brands, but there are lots of low cost "tablet with keyboard" laptops with glued battery. Just a couple of months ago I had to ditch one.
Anyway, if most comply, why not make it mandatory? Or are these kind of directives only aimed at picking fights with manufacturers?
Note that I am not suggesting that all laptops should have USB-C chargers, that's a separate directive. I mean user replaceable batteries available for at least 5 years, without requiring major surgery to replace.
They’re just going to change the software for thebattery so that it only charges to 80% capacity so that it meets the requirement of 1000 cycles no one is actually getting replaceable batteries.
Edit: commercially available tools. All right so you just sell that tool on your shop.
> The move comes amid EU-wide efforts to cut the continent’s carbon footprint and tackle mounting waste [...]
...
> [...] if specialised tools are required, they must be provided free of charge when the phone or tablet is purchased.
So if a family buys several phones and tablets that all use the same specialized tool to change their batteries they end up with several identical specialized tools?
From a reducing waste perspective wouldn't it be better to just require that the tool be available for free for some reasonable amount of time such as however long the manufacturer is required to support the device?
It probably makes things easier, but its unlikely that the industry that found a way to make foldables waterproof couldn't figure out a way to put rubber gaskets on battery covers. And in fact, they did, there were several devices introduced in the transition period that had both features.
Rubber gaskets wear out. Best practice is to replace them every time you open the cover. We can put them in, but the replacement battery better come with the gasket because you can't safely replace the battery without a new gasket.
Galaxy S5 was IP67-rated (1 metre depth, 30 minutes) and had a user-replaceable back cover / battery
Also a notification LED, OLED screen, bezels to pick the device up by, headphone jack, unlockable, a continuous light sensor... peak smartphone, save perhaps for the meager 200 Hz accelerometer refresh rate (modern phones have 500 Hz usually, I have no idea what for but I personally love toying with FFT plots)
Waterproof phones all still have charging ports and no flaps. Not sure how but that seems to be solved. Maybe that one part's connectors are encased in glue?
Yes and don't forget consumer preferences. This is Hacker News where they are still clamoring for a "small smartphone" because everything else is too big. Shocker, small phones don't sell. Neither do bulky ones when compared to sleek iPhones.
Not sure if I should be repeating the same answer below each instance of the question but here goes: See the Samsung Galaxy S5 for example as having a good waterproofing rating and user-replaceable battery
Every post about the EU here gets absolutely flooded by negative comments of people who tell me that whatever the EU proposed won't work, governments shouldn't do these things, the proposed legislation is ineffective, it doesn't go far enough, they're just trying to extract money from our successful American companies, and so on and so forth. It's just a neverending diarrhoea of anti-government anti-European underbelly sentiment.
That sounds like seeing a pattern where there is none (apophenia). Do you have examples of posts that wouldn't be downvoted outside of times where Europe/Africa is awake, or that weren't only because it was posted outside of said hours?
This is idiotic. What's next, disallowing unified memory or SoC with packaged memory? These people think they know better than world experts on these matters.
Damn, recently I had a phone with a battery that wasn’t properly glued and it would turn off when shaken. I hope this doesn’t become the norm from now on.
Never had this issue with several cellphones I had in ye olden times when all cellphones had removable batteries. All it takes is a properly designed connector.
Yeah, none of my Nokias with a removable back cover and battery had that issue. What you realistically might've had was instead that you dropped your phone on the floor and the battery came flying out.
I am simply not a fan of this type of legislation. It reminds me of CA bullet button. I also don’t quite understand the purpose. Official retail cost from Apple in the US ~$120. Third-party you can usually get it around $60. Sure the battery does not have quick accessibility but I can replace it pretty cheaply.
Agreed. This rule will likely be irrelevant in 5-10 years when battery technology improves, and it has such a huge carve out (batteries that maintain 80% capacity after 1000 cycles are exempt) every phone manufacture can get around it. Phone makers can meet this regulation by artificially limiting battery capacity through software to protect battery health. Or they could put in a 10,000 mAh battery and only allow the user to use 8,000 of it, and use the rest as buffer.
A better example is the EU cookie consent law. The intent was to make websites stop using cookies, but what resulted was websites didn't change anything except put up annoying consent banners, and made the internet experience worse.
Phone manufacturers should be able to seal their phones to prevent unwanted substance egress and to compete on aesthetics. They should also make the seal breachable with consumer-grade hand tools like a hairdryer, suction cup, and plastic wedges.
The inside of the phone should use standard screws and securing mechanisms, and batteries should not be glued to the phone.
I actually really like what Apple's been doing with its new batteries by sealing them in metal. That way if a user is being careless and accidentally slips a screwdriver under the back of their phone, the risk that they puncture their battery and start a fire is greatly reduced.
It secures the most dangerous component of your device in a way that makes it easy for anyone to remove and replace safely. I'm sure Apple has a robot to rip the battery out of its case at its recycling plant, and if the phone gets dropped in a lake or something, if that battery eventually catastrophically fails, at least it's wrapped in a suit of armor.
Yikes, I don't live in the EU, but I absolutely don't want this. Maybe I'm mistaken and they could have achieved the same with removable batteries, but my phone is completely waterproof, dustproof, and has survived more than a few hard drops with no case. I would definitely take that over a replaceable battery. Again, I acknowledge they might not be mutually exclusive.
As the law is written, the latest iPhones, for example, would be compliant (battery is replaceable with commercially available tools under the self-repair program), and they are completely waterproof and dustproof. Some manufacturers now use glued seals for their phones and would probably need to change their approach in design, but I think the majority would be okay with minimal changes.
Like others have pointed out, if phones can certify using batteries with 1000 cycles of charge above 80%, they'll also be exempt, so this will likely only affect very cheap models.
With respect, maybe read the article? You're against it, because you didn't read what is being mandated and instead just invented worst-case scenarios instead. You're against your own Strawman.
The proposal is: batteries must be removable using commercially available tools, if the manufacturer requires specialist tools then they must provide them for free.
Essentially they're banning specialized tools, and mandating that repair shops and consumers must be able to purchase replacement batteries for "at least five years."
For context the iPhone was already altered to be compliant with this law and none of the issues you raised were notably worse in the iPhone Air, or 17.
This likely will eliminate specialist software to "sync" batteries, and non-standard screws/attachment mechanisms.
> The proposal is: batteries must be removable using commercially available tools
That's exactly what he's against, plus the premise "Making batteries removable prevents them from being waterproof, dustproof, and collision resistant". Which may be true or false, but not a straw man.
It absolutely is a Strawman. There's no basis in fact for why using commercial tools instead of specialist tools would result in worse "waterproof, dustproof, or collision resistance." It is completely fictional claim invented whole cloth.
Again, multiple phones have already become compliant with this law and didn't lose or compromise any of those things.
So you OR they, will need to explain the basis for the claim, otherwise it is just a Strawman you're poking baselessly.
One of the most frustrating things about HN is that people seem so unaware of how idiosyncratic their preferences are. If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery".
It's okay to have idiosyncratic preferences (I certainly do), but people should recognize that this law will make phones _worse_ for most people, because this law will force phone manufacturers to compromise the things that most people want in order to provide something that most people don't want.
I suppose someone will say that this law is necessary for environmental reasons, regardless of people's preferences. But that's nonsense, because the law doesn't actually require people to replace batteries rather than replacing their phone, and by the time batteries wear out, most people are going to want a new a phone. At the very least we'd need to see some data that shows that most people replace batteries when it is possible to do so.
It used to be true that it made sense to replace your phone every few years because new ones were so much better. But like... I have a Pixel 8 and there's not really anything in a newer phone that's compelling enough to spend any money on...
I honestly know I could “optimize” my phone replacement schedule based on resale values of phones etc, but for the last ~15ish years I just replace my iPhone when the battery starts shitting itself (3-5 years each in my experience)
I'm curious about the environmental reasons here. Is there some hard data that shows that there is a meaningful number of consumers that buy new phones only because of battery degradation?
The article (granted, probably not the best source of information) has some numbers like "number of phones sold", but doesn't actually tackle the crux of the issue: how many of those phone sales would be _prevented_ by having user swappable batteries?
> by the time batteries wear out, most people are going to want a new a phone.
Not true. In recent years smartphones do not advance much, and would be perfectly fine to keep working if not for the dying battery.
> At the very least we'd need to see some data that shows that most people replace batteries when it is possible to do so.
The degree of "possible" varies greatly depending on the available expertise and spare parts. Right now in EU it's cost prohibitive for both coz the special labor required is crazily expensive and almost no official spare parts for consumers. So of coz this will be no data to support your claim.
> If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery".
Are you sure about this? I've heard this complaint from a lot of non-tech people who are old enough to remember flip phones with replaceable batteries. It might be age related.
I think phone manufacturers will figure it out once it is a requirement. Was switching everyone to USB-C annoying for Apple? Sure. Are we in a better place because the EU forced it. You betcha. That's the point.
I don't love everything the EU does (cookie banners!?) but this is one where I have confidence that the consumer will ultimately benefit.
As others have noted, most people do not replace their phones every two years anymore, there just isn't any big reason to.
> At the very least we'd need to see some data that shows that most people replace batteries when it is possible to do so.
I don’t understand. If we want to see the data we do need to make batteries replaceable.
Me and partner are both on iPhone 14 Pro. And this is more than powerful and sufficient for our daily use, except the battery is around 82%. I'd happily replace the battery right now for a more powerful one.
This doesn't require the battery to be replaceable. It requires either the battery to still be good after 1000 charges or for it to be replaceable, either one.
Although some of this depends on how you define replaceable.
I think the data for your last sentence does exist. When Apple was forced to replace broken batteries on the 12, lots of people opted to replace the phone and there was a corresponding drop in iPhone sales.
It’s a pretty commonly used canonical example of revealed preferences.
How about you ask people if they want a non-swappable battery for 1 mm less thickness?
>and by the time batteries wear out, most people are going to want a new a phone
That remains to be seen. This could accelerate cultural change around desiring shiny new toy being seen as cool
I used to be in this camp, and before we had the charge limit and power saving mode it was true, but now? I'm no longer sure.
Like, I've had my phone for 6 years now and the battery is still going strong with the 80% charge limit always on throughout its lifetime. Meanwhile the USB-c port is shot to fuck and disconnects constantly, it can't connect to 5G, leaving me without a connection in lots of locations cause there are no fallback towers, and the OS support has basically been over for a year now.
I think that’s the wrong way of framing it. If, before the launch of the iPhone, you asked what people wanted from their phones you’d be there a very long time before anyone described something like an iPhone (no buttons, capacitive touch interface, etc). And yet, once they were offered it, people flocked to it.
This regulation is targeted to devices with poor battery lives. Just because it hasn’t occurred to people to ask for the feature doesn’t mean they won’t appreciate it.
That's an odd reply since by that argument they also flocked to a phone with no replaceable battery, which was pretty standard in the 2000s.
But you could be right. I guess this will be an experiment to watch: If EU consumers show a strong preference for replaceable batteries once they become more widely available, we can expect manufacturers to start offering it in other markets as well.
I think everything is a tradeoff and at that point people took the trade. But the place smartphones take in our lives today compared to 2006 is radically different, I wouldn’t assume much carries over.
It would take a great deal of lawmaking to make phones more worse, for most people, than phone manufacturers and mobile app developers already do. You want to talk about idiosyncratic preferences, really? Here?
> If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby what they would change about their phone, I think you would be there all day before someone said "I wish I could replace the battery".
If you stood on the street corner and asked every passerby if they want their phone to have a replaceable battery, I don't think you would be there very long before receiving a "yes". I think that's a more honest framing of the question.
> I suppose someone will say that this law is necessary for environmental reasons, regardless of people's preferences. But that's nonsense, because the law doesn't actually require people to replace batteries rather than replacing their phone
How could they replace their batteries if they wanted to, unless the manufacturer makes it possible? The goal is not to force individuals to not replace their phones, but rather to provide that as an option at all, for those who want it.
> At the very least we'd need to see some data that shows that most people replace batteries when it is possible to do so.
At the very least, we'd need only data showing that that number is non-zero. From where did you get the idea that it is necessary to prove "most" people would choose to take advantage of this option?
> The goal is not to force individuals to not replace their phones, but rather to provide that as an option at all, for those who want it.
But my point is that you need to recognize that in so doing, you are taking away the option of having other things, such as waterproofing, larger batteries, smaller/lighter phones, etc. There is no free lunch.
If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt from this, which is exactly what Apple implemented a few years ago.
Low cost phones will be most affected.
I was wondering about that. I lost my iPhone 13 mini the other day, did the find my phone beep thing and got a distant beep from my washing machine which was on wash cycle.
Surprisingly the phone was fine and works fine after a brief rinse under the tap. It must be hard to combine that sort of water resistance with easy user changing.
Don't fall for the 'glue cuz of protection' myth - there are and had been water-resistant phones way before Apple started glueing to avoid customers doing their own repairs and them losing out on new sales.
Which phones? I ask as someone that's had to replace multiple phones after a trip through the washing machine.
Modern phone water resistance is incredible. I've even seen people literally swim with their phones and not even question if it was a bad idea.
Fifteen years ago, I had a Garmin GPS (admittedly not a phone, but similar form factor) that survived a week of knocking around the bottom of a raft.
The battery compartment had a rubber gasket and some very tight screws.
How much of the total volume of the device was the case/housing?
I suppose the glue-everything approach is partly due to the desire of making a device very thin. There's no room for strong, load-bearing outer case, the internals are load-bearing.
Samsung Galaxy S5 was the last one that attempted it. IP67 with a removable back cover and swappable battery.
Yes, but IP67 is not nearly as water resistant as IP68, which all modern phones are for the most part.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to know if IP68 could be achieved in a phone without glue. There's no clamping mechanism for the backs, they're just press-fit with small clips.
From a mechanical perspective ip68 is perfectly achievable mechanically and watches have been achieving it for a long time, however… with what sort of margins for the manufacturer and what sort of cost for the consumer ? Additionally a lot of them require pretty carefully adherence to instructions torques and tolerances to achieve the same waterproof rating. Personally I’d be very happy to have a phone that says, if you swap the battery you might lose the ip68 rating unless you follow the resealing process within tolerances.
Who cares though? Sealing the battery in makes the device less drop resistant. I somehow managed to avoid water damage to my phones for decades, while none of my phones managed to avoid being dropped in a way that would most likely be fatal to them if their batteries were sealed in - and yet most of them survived to this day.
A phone needs to handle some rain droplets falling on its screen, anything more than that is a gimmick that's not worth the downsides it comes with.
A phone needs to handle some rain droplets falling on its screen, anything more than that is a gimmick that's not worth the downsides it comes with
Some like to read in the bathtub. Statistics say women prefer the bathtub more than the shower. Therefore your position is sexist.
(Yes, I'm being an asshat)
Nothing stops them from adding a gasket and some screws though.
Samsung Galaxy S5 is the first one to cross my mind.
Re the repairs, I can get the battery swapped on the 13 mini for £49 which isn't that bad. (iSmash, not Apple).
And they weren't bulky tactical phones that looked like the smartphone equivalent of Humvees?
Samsung xCover series phones are smaller than flagship phones with a case that many people add to achieve the same durability.
I wonder if this is part of why Apple is behind most competitors in terms of fast charging. Would almost make marketing sense to come out and say it at this point.
This could be "fixed" right now by a software update that limits the maximum charge level to 80% of capacity. However, this comes at the cost of how many minutes of runtime your phone can operate.
So manufactures might just responds to this by making your phone heavier with a bigger battery that is being under utilized.
This sounds great. I would've loved to have set my phone to charge up to only 60% or 80% of its design capacity to reduce wear. I do this on my laptop.
It has been on iPhones for quite some while, but on androids even longer. Before that it was in the form of some smart charging scheme that it would only finish charging until the moment it thought you would unplug it.
I charge my s25 to 80%. Previous phone (pixel) was also limited to 80%, but radio stopped working after 2 years so I had to buy a new phone.
Honestly we should define 80% as the new "100%" on such batteries and label "charging to full" as "overcharging".
Psychologically, people understand charging a battery to "125%" (or whatever) a lot better: Do it when you really need to but if you do it all the time it wears down the battery a lot faster.
Samsung phones let you limit them to 80% charge. I've had this enabled since I got my current phone.
The goal should be reducing e-waste, and honestly this seems reasonable.
I’d rather get the additional structural rigidity, compactness, and weatherproofing that comes from the tight construction and then pay $99 to have Apple professionally install a new battery for me in 3-4 years. Forcing everyone’s iPhone to take all of the tradeoffs of replaceable batteries so some people can save $50 to replace their own battery isn’t a good deal.
I wouldn’t be surprised if forcing all phones to have easily replaceable batteries would result in a net increase in e-waste due to the additional failure modes introduced. Even if batteries were easily replaceable I think most iPhone users would have Apple do it for them anyway.
I’ve also replaced some iPhone batteries myself and it’s really not that bad if you are familiar with taking modern electronics apart. Apple will send you the entire toolkit if you want complete with a return label.
> and then pay $99 to have Apple professionally install a new battery for me in 3-4 years
In 3-4 years yes, but how about in 10-15 years? Apple will refuse to take your money then.
> Apple will send you the entire toolkit if you want complete with a return label.
Which is malicious compliance. They should allow the friendly neighborhood repair shop to purchase a toolkit so you can choose who does the repairs for you.
Will we even have a compatible wireless standards in 15 years?
And what about if 4 years they says that they have dettected a problem in your battery? A new battery should fix that but now you cannot do it properly because it could do 1000 cycles.
This same thing happened to Pixels 6a after 500 cycles.
Then don’t buy a phone from a company with a piss poor record of customer service.
Just looking in maps, there are three Apple Stores within a 45 minute drive from where I live in central Florida.
The situation is worse in my hometown in South GA admittedly, you have to drive 70 miles for same day service for an authorized repair place - mostly Best Buy.
What if they don't? What if there are manufacturer errors? What if they burn your battery with updates along the way?
Isn't like most of the new phones claim at least 1000 cycles?
Those laws are usually anti-China or anti-small-business. The first is on purpose, the latter unintentional by the lawmaker, but funneled in by big money.
> Low cost phones will be most affected.
Not really. Take a 4000 mAh rated cell, advertise it as "rated for 3500 mAh" and that's it.
Isn't this pretty much what Nothing are doing? At least one of their phones has a different battery rating in India than elsewhere, despite containing the same hardware.
Is 1000 cycles above 80% even possible without gimping the device like apple does with all its hardware?
yuropoors will spend 15 years debating rules like this and then at the last second add carve outs you can drive a truck through lmao
Wish they'd have implemented it before the iPhone 14 Pro launched. I'm at 624 cycles right now and my phone's gone below 80% fucking ages ago.
Apple’s replacement program is $99 for out of warranty battery replacement
Not really. The "estimated cost" on Apple.com is 139€ to 199€ depending on which company I take it.
My battery’s at 70%, I could replace it for $50, but I consider it a feature to get me off my goddamn phone more.
> The regulation states that batteries must be removable using ‘commercially available’ tools
I’m pretty sure that’s more or less already the case, so…
Funnily enough I've had a "low cost phone" with replaceable batteries (the "old school way")
So it does not seem a big deal
Aren't today's phone batteries already replaceable with commercially available tools? I can walk into a non-apple store with my iPhone and walk out with a replaced battery 20 minutes later.
This isn't even what drives obsolesce of phones, it's software updates.
If you really want to be able to self-swap your own battery, you can just buy an Android that has a replaceable battery.
Do we need to regulate something that isn't a problem? All regulation has downsides, is it worth paying this price here?
They're taking "commercially available" to mean things like a screwdriver - not a $1000 phone disassembly machine.
With all due respect, I can buy a kit on iFixit for $55 for an iPhone 16 pro max, including the battery. I’ve replaced my iPhone battery before, aside from the glue being a bit sticky so needing a heat gun it isn’t that difficult.
> This isn't even what drives obsolesce of phones, it's software updates.
Agreed, and software-locking parts, like batteries, to only first-party or authorized third-party repair shops is one of those drivers.
I can see the argument for software locking some components (to cut down on theft) even if I don't appreciate or agree with them - it is at least a valid reason from some perspectives.
Batteries are a wear item though, and will have to be replaced periodically until the device is discarded. Software-locking them to only "Apple and people Apple likes" is unconscionable
You talk about "an Android that has a replaceable battery" as if that was something you could just buy at any store at no inconvenience. Sadly the majority of Android phones no longer have user-replaceable batteries, and only a select few models have official replacement parts available.
I'd be happier if this was something the market took care of, but after 10 years of glued-in batteries that you most likely can't even buy, I think it's time for a regulatory nudge.
This one is pretty cool, it has a swappable battery plus an internal battery so you can swap the battery without shutting down the device.
https://rugone.net/products/xever-7
> If you really want to be able to self-swap your own battery, you can just buy an Android that has a replaceable battery.
Those don't really exist anymore.
> Do we need to regulate something that isn't a problem?
It is a problem and needs to be regulated.
> All regulation has downsides, is it worth paying this price here?
Of course the upsides of regulations are worth it. The downsides might cause slight inconvenience to the manufacturer, so that doesn't really matter.
People shouldn't have to go to a special store or buy special tools requiring special skills to change a battery.
In a perfect world, sure. But people also want phones these days that are physically durable, have some degree of waterproofing/water resistance, maximum battery life, etc. Many of the demands and expectations of a modern phone aren't easily compatible with a replaceable battery design that can withstand the incompetence of the average end user.
A GoPro fits all of those requirements and has easily replaceable batteries. Now, I understand that the shape and sizes are different. But I wouldn't mind some extra mm of thickness (I already get a pretty big camera bump anyway) if that means I can replace a battery faster.
The missing part is "at a specific price point".
There is a lot you can do with advanced materials science but as you get close to the high end of capability the cost goes up very rapidly and the ability to scale production is reduced.
> some degree of waterproofing/water resistance
Can we have this discussion once? In this thread alone, there's like 50 instances of people making this claim and each time it takes about 20 minutes before at least one person replies that it's not the case, after which no refutals are posted. I'm happy to learn it is false if it is (I never had a phone that I trusted to be waterproof to any degree so I don't have first-hand knowledge), but it gets really tiring to read the same information level over and over as a reason for why we can't have nice things
Taking this comment as an example of someone who actually used a battery-swappable phone in rain on a motorcycle: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835184 (I'm not only taking the person's word for it: the device is also IP certified as waterproof 30 mins at 1m depth)
We can make waterproof things that are attached with screws.
>people also want phones these days that are physically durable,
Anecdotally on this front, I have had to replace the screens of my iphones at least three times in the past (different models). Incidentally, I have never needed to replace the screen of a phone that had a replaceable battery. YMMV, but this seems needlessly defeatist.
>maximum battery life
One could also claim that bespoke charging cables allow for faster charging or longer battery life, but I don't know any iPhone users that are a crying a river for their deprecated non-standard chargers. But again, YMMV I guess.
You severely underestimate the capabilities of modern electronics manufacturers. Sure, it’s harder to produce something that fits all those capabilities. But it’s totally possible. This is exactly the scenario where government regulation is critical to a well-functioning market.
I'd rather my phone be waterproof than have a battery I can replace myself
Those are not mutually exclusive at all, and there were waterproof phones with replaceable batteries (without even needing a screwdriver). This is mostly an excuse.
I am not sure I believe this, but I'm sure there are phones that attempted it.
Then read upthread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835184
I just don't see why we can't have nice things until proven otherwise (especially considering there is already evidence that this works), rather than have glued-shut devices until proven otherwise (by whom then? Apparently IP and practical experiences aren't enough for you)
Samsung only rated the S5 Active as water resistant, and only IP67.
We're talking about IP68, where you can take a new phone with you on a long swim.
It's likely impossible to legislate but it would be nice to say "each generation has to have one user-replaceable battery". Everyone who doesn't care (the 99%) can buy the iPhone 19x, and the people who want replaceable batteries can get the iPhone B.
Then the 99% have to pay extra to subsidise the compliance phone for the 1%...
How is it that I owned a fully-submersible phone—with user replaceable battery—over 15 years ago?
You've bought into and are now parroting Apple & Samsung marketing BS.
P.S. it had a headphone jack too. Gaskets over the ports. The headphone jack was the first victim of "but muh waterproof" despite all the other holes and cutouts.
you can have both. the waterproof was just an excuse to make you either change the phone or go to a specialised center to change the battery, something that is so incovinient/expensive that people just obsolete their phone instead.
I trust that most batteries from iPhones are currently recycled through proper means either by Apple or third party firms.
I don't know how most people will dispose of user replacement batteries, but I suspect the recycle rates will be lower. If you want to ensure higher rates you also need to do something they do in the USA for car lead acid batteries. Charge a deposit fee on the new battery that is returned only when the battery is turned into a valid recycling entity.
Plenty of phones that were waterproof and had replacable batteries already. This isn't new or even particularily hard to do.
For a simplest example - somehow my watch is waterproof to 200M down and replacing the battery just takes a tiny screwdriver. Gaskets are not particualarly hard to work with.
We have the technology to have both - it's called a gasket.
Why do you imply that the phone could no longer be waterproof? Granted, it would take a bit of extra engineering to make it comparably waterproof. There is no reasonable implication that water needs to leak into the internals of the device where it makes contact with the battery.
Engage with the content of his comment instead of resorting to ad hominem.
He's right - the market wants embedded batteries, although perhaps not directly. Embedded batteries have improved price, battery capacity, water proofing, size, and strength. If the consumer really wanted a removable battery and all that that entails then there would be more phones that offered that. The reality is people misjudge what all that entails. By all means, I would love to just make the iPhone battery directly replaceable without any compromises but that's not reality.
You say "the market wants" like consumers are given much choice.
Using that hypothesis, the market also loves cookie banners and prefers subscriptions over one-time payments.
You can buy phones with non-embedded batteries but they suck. That's not a coincidence.
What is your hypothesis for why more phones arent designed with non-embedded, directly replacable batteries? If it's such a highly valued trait in a phone, why doesnt some company just gobble up that market share? Why havent existing solutions sold well? Mine is that consumers dont actually value non-embedded batteries when accounting for all the tradeoffs. What's your hypothesis?
"instead of resorting to ad hominem" Was this edited out or which part do you mean?
I originally did engage with the comment. Water-resistance absolutely still is physically possible if the replacement battery is waterproof. Water can over time be corrosive at the contacts, but that's a risk for the user. It does not in any way imply that water will enter the internals of the device from the point of contact with the battery. This will require a bit of engineering at the contact to ensure that water doesn't enter the device. As for the size argument, adding 2 mm of thickness is less important than providing five years of extra life.
Wait, are you proposing sealing the phone and sealing the battery separately, but not sealing the contacts between them? That’s… super sketchy for salt water immersion. Unless you add fuses and a BMS and safety mechanisms into the “battery”. In which case wouldn’t customers want to be able to replace the actual battery within the now-a-battery-plus-computer phone accessory once it wears down?
Says who? Not all devices can have the same level of repairability by laypeople. What if I complained that todays' CPUs are too miniaturized and that in my time I could swap the individual vacuum tubes in case something went wrong?
If CPU failure was a leading cause of device obsolescence, your argument would make sense. Next, the EU or other regulators should explicitly regulate software mechanisms that prevent owners of a device from installing an alternate OS, enabling open source or aftermarket OS developers to support devices that mainstream vendors no longer want to support.
No, not everything can be repairable or replaceable, but batteries can and should be.
>Says who?
The EU, just now.
So the EU is the objective truth of the universe, I guess
How do you feel about the batteries in electric vehicles?
What about wearable devices like a smartwatch, headphones, smart glasses?
Should all these be consumer-replaceable without tools, regardless of the effect on the other things people value in these devices (waterproofing, size and weight, battery life, etc.)?
FYI I do not work for anything close to the consumer tech industry.
For EVs you need at least a hoist/lifter/crane/other power tool to replace a battery. But sure, there's no actual engineering reason they can't be replaced by the user. Same for the smartwatch - you can replace a battery in most ordinary wristwatches that use them, why not the smart ones? IEMs are usually too small and that's where the engineering limitations might matter. Headphones, no problem.
> without tools
With commercially available tools, yes. The argument is that, given the skill, you could pull it off.
Then again, maybe cars are a different category. I really don't have enough skilll to add to this discussion
> The argument is that, given the skill, you could pull it off.
Obviously true for any iPhone battery.
In other words: IKEA-esque. Should be the goal of any so-called modular systems.
What if we regulate batteries even more? i.e. what if, in some magical perfect world, the world get's together and agrees on batteries for phones like how we agree on AA,AAA,D,C batteries? Even more though.. a standard connector, a standard comms bus, a variety of sizes, and they were designed for reuse as efficiently as possible.
Now we can scale up volume, swap them out, be free to purchase from a different manufacturer, and have scaled up recycling services.
I recently bought a Supernote Manta. It's an e-ink writing tablet. Guess what: it has a back which can be opened, and its innards are easily accessible. I could pop in an SD card, and the battery can be replaced, too. It's thin and light.
We are being gaslighted by Apple. They keep telling us that it's impossible to have a thin and light device with a user-replaceable battery, or even, heaven forbid, an SD card slot. I beg to differ: there are some compromises (it won't be as seamless perhaps and Jony Ive or whoever won't be able to wax poetic about the materials), but it can be done.
I would imagine something similar is true for waterproofing. There are certainly ways to have a separate battery and phone, with a waterproofed connector.
Now they only need to make sure that a supply chain for replacement batteries exists, there is regulation and competition and options remain available for a reasonable price.
There are plenty of old Dell and HP laptops with replaceable batteries which can only be found on eBay or some random seller that does who knows what under the refurbishing process.
What good are replaceable batteries if the software becomes obsolete and un-upgradeable by the time you need to replace the battery?
https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/...:
- rules on disassembly and repair, including obligations for producers to make critical spare parts available within 5-10 working days, and for 7 years after the end of sales of the product model on the EU market
- availability of operating system upgrades for longer periods (at least 5 years from the date of the end of placement on the market of the last unit of a product model)
the secondary market for old phones seems strong?
Because people don't understand the security implications of non-updated software?
I was looking forward to finally be able to easily switch out (i)Phone batteries again - after 20 years - but turns out the lobbyists managed to get a loophole in the law - exempting Apple & Co from making their phones more repairable / longer live-able.
> If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt
Seems entirely reasonable. Embedded batteries have a lot of advantages. Cheaper, higher battery capacity, water proof, smaller, stronger. I think this will largely just make the mid to low tier android market in the EU shittier.
Citation needed.
All of those can be achieved with replaceable batteries.
Are you claiming it's not cheaper to embed batteries?
Citation needed. It seems pretty clear that a mechanism to allow a user to access a battery will increase complexity, making all the other properties harder to achieve.
You're asking for proof that effective waterproof phones with removable batteries exist?
https://m.gsmarena.com/results.php3?chkRemovableBattery=sele...
You're proving the point.
1) iPhones for example are ip68 rated while those are just ipx8/9
2) Do you want to be limited to the universe of those search results? Do you want to buy a Sony Xperia?
You can't make batteries directly replaceable at the same quality and price. There are tradeoffs. Obviously waterproof non-embedded batteries exist. Just like you could make a removable battery the same slimness as embedded. With massive tradeoffs. It's capacity will be terrible. No one is surprised a removable battery can be waterproof but the point is there are tradeoffs.
> just ipx8/9
Do you actually need it? For what?
It'll increase the size of the case by a small amount but a battery cell is a battery cell... Rip open an old device and you'll see.
Fairphone managed to do it, I'm sure companies with more budget than them can figure it out.
I recently did a battery replacement on an iphone mini 13 with some success and some failure. I absolutely killed the screen without cracking it. A little too much pulling with the ifixit reverse clamp.
Had i gone a little slower, it would have been a very easy repair.
What proportion of devices would need to meet this 80% rule? 50%? 90%? 99%? Could make a huge difference
My iPhone 14 is 1081 days old, charged every night, battery capacity is reported as 81%. So in Apple's own measurements this is possible.
I guess there is some built in spare capacity, but that may still qualify for the exemption?
My experience with an Apple battery saying ~81% longevity remaining is that it'll die when it still reports half full and you open a demanding webpage
It's a genuinely hard problem to measure battery capacity with existing smartphone hardware, also because it's a matter of opinion how much to factor in the peak load capacity (how do you count the bottom 40%, where it can't handle peak draw anymore? Should one include half of it because the phone is still usable but in a degraded state?), so I'm not faulting Apple here at all. They choose to display this estimate and it's better than nothing / better than most manufacturers. Just that you can't take it at face value, even if you charged your phone from 0% to 100% for >=1000 days
The exemption is about ensuring customers get what they paid for. It shouldn’t care how the manufacturer achieves that; driving the batteries less hard is an obvious tactic, and actually also makes them safer to use.
If you charge every night from say 50%, that's not a full cycle.
> If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt
Is there a definition for a cycle? 80->85%? 33->72? 22-83? 87->96? Would each of these be a "cycle"?
A battery cycle is a full discharge/charge cycle (100 -> 0 -> 100). Going from 70% to 20% and then charging back to 70% is half a cycle.
Yes, this is the most non-story I have ever seen on this topic. I do not know of any manufacturer who does not claim this, verifiable or otherwise; and even if they can't claim it, all they have to do is one minor purely-software capacity adjustment, which they will gladly do before they will even consider offering removable batteries.
What a disappointment.
Apple has no chance to claim their batteries can have 80% capacity after 1000 cycles seeing how they never achieved this so far. Lying about it puts them in a world of mass recalls and fraud investigations.
Depends on how "cycle" is defined - I'm sure they can finagle it so "any charge added to the battery" counts as a cycle.
As a datapoint my iPhone reports 522 cycles and 89% max - from march 2024. I do use the "limit charging to 80%" feature which I suspect may become mandatory before 2027 ...
>Depends on how "cycle" is defined - I'm sure they can finagle it so "any charge added to the battery" counts as a cycle.
the definition of a battery cycle is very well established. there isnt really any room to finagle it.
I don’t think “a cycle” is up for redefining. I hope these terms are defined in the law.
But that supports my assumption that realistically the batteries don’t last 1000 cycles even when charged conservatively. The last 9% will go faster than the first 11%, the battery already has lower capacity and needs to be charged even more often.
On the other hand if I only get to 1000 cycles by charging up to 80% then I’m not getting 100% of the battery, am I?
Dieselgate was caught by some dudes with an emissions measuring device. It’s not that extreme to get a number of iPhone batteries, test them to 1000 cycles and see if statistically they still retain 80% capacity. If they don’t Apple could be looking at replacing everyone’s batteries.
The obvious solution is underrating - just like a 1 TB SSD actually has more than 1TB of "raw storage" available internally. What is a 100% battery today will be sold as an 80% capacity tomorrow, with 20% "overage" available for wear.
That’s fine as long as the battery ends up having 80% real capacity after 1000 cycles and maybe Apple is also transparent about how.
A bigger issue which I don’t know if the law covers is with the other battery specs. An 80% battery that can’t handle any spikes (low power mode) is useless.
I'm pretty the spec sheet claimed 1000 cycles when I bought my iPhone 17.
They do claim it at least for iPhone 15 "under ideal conditions": https://support.apple.com/en-us/101575
> the lobbyists managed to get a loophole in the law - exempting Apple & Co
But Apple batteries are already user replaceable? I've replaced my own and batteries come with kits that have all the tools and disposable glue strips and seals.
“ If a battery can do 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity it is exempt”
I mean isn’t that an okay exemption? If the intent is to drive devices to be less disposable and more sustainable… if it incentivizes all mobile phone manufacturers to improve battery longevity, I’d say that’s a win.
I wouldn’t even call it a loophole. The entire purpose of the legislation could be that clause
No shot at all apple batteries can last 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity. Probably can’t even do 300 in my experience. Sounds like an easy lawsuit.
No doubt they will redefine maximum battery capacity to a figure that does achieve 80% over 1000 cycles. If you under-declare maximum capacity then there is a lot of headroom for actual degradation before you start to show degradation to the user.
iPhone 17 Pro launch specs:
> Video Playback: Up to 27* hours
> *: 25 hours in the EU
This is what they should have been doing all along. My Pixel tells me that charging above 80% is bad for battery longevity and I should set a charge limit. Well then maybe 80% should be the new 100% and the advertised capacity should be the 80%.
This balancing act is already happening. If you modify the battery controller, you can totally continue charging beyond the voltage that the phone considers to be 100%. It also increases the risk of damaging the battery (https://www.acebattery.com/blogs/what-will-happen-when-a-lit...). What they define as 100% is already some point on a damage probability curve, and charging to anything below that point will further decrease the amount of battery stress (for li-ion batteries and similar technologies)
Fwiw, based on tests I've seen recently such as https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj4LMlGr4og, I think limiting to 80% is overblown, but somewhere in the 90%s could be a sweet spot that gives you several hours' longer battery life than with 80% but still has a much reduced chance of significant degradation. I don't understand why they didn't make this configurable
They can use a large battery and software lock the capacity to 50% but that would be very wasteful and expensive for them, and make for a very chonky phone.
Or they can use a normal battery, label it with a lower capacity and actually allow you to use all of it but that would be lying and probably very illegal especially when it comes to mislabeling batteries.
I would wager that batteries that powered down at 20% and that halt charging at 80% would be significantly prolonged.
If Apple resorts to those tactics, then there is no limit in moving the goalposts.
A battery that can support 1000 cycles and remain above 80% capacity would be a literal brick. For an example the Vision Pro's battery has extreme over-provisioning and limit how long it would last. (note I know it is removable but that isn't the point).
In the meantime, my daily driver here in reality land: https://i.imgur.com/8yEEJVb.png
That has not been my experience, at least with Apple laptops. Even when rated for 1000 cycles, I'll get the warning that service is needed (AFAIK that means 80% capacity or lower) well before then. I've seen this on several, but the one I just checked is at just under 670 cycles and has had that warning up for some months already.
Maybe iPhones are better about this, though, I don't know. But I definitely don't have a lot of faith in the laptops maintaining 80% for 1000 cycles.
212 cycles, still 100% capacity (maybe 99.5 rounded up) "relative to when it was new". Doesn't that seem a bit dodgy to you?
Batteries have been used as part of planned obsolescence for too long and a whole small business industry of replacing phone batteries has appeared because of it. Next the EU are going to have to address security patches because its another aspect being used to sell new phones.
I have found out that the main phone providers (Apple, Google, Samsung) have extremely long support period. I really don't get the "planned obsolescence" thing.
As an example, in Jan 2026, Apple published iOS 12.5.8 which provides updates for iPhone 5s which released in Sept 2013. That's 12.5 years ago. The equivalent would be to connect to the internet using ADSL in Jan 2000 with your IBM PS/2 rocking in intel 8086, 512 kb of RAM and expecting an update for your DOS operating system.
>As an example, in Jan 2026, Apple published iOS 12.5.8 which provides updates for iPhone 5s which released in Sept 2013. That's 12.5 years ago. The equivalent would be to connect to the internet using ADSL in Jan 2000 with your IBM PS/2 rocking in intel 8086, 512 kb of RAM and expecting an update for your DOS operating system.
The updates for ios 12 are all security updates, not feature updates, so your comparison to "connect to the internet using ADSL in Jan 2000 with your IBM PS/2 rocking in intel 8086" doesn't really make sense. The phones stuck on ios 15 are basically unusable because many apps don't support it anymore. At best you can download an older version from a few years ago, but that depends on whether the backend servers were updated. Apps that insist you use the latest version (eg. banking/finance apps) basically unusable.
A phone is not unusable because some banking apps don't work on it. It didn't even ship with said apps installed.
Believe it or not, "apps" are an important "feature" of a smartphone, even if it's not theoretically bundled with it. Moreover it's not just banking apps, those are just the first ones to go, but any that don't keep backend compatibility will eventually break.
Machines were roughly doubling in performance every year back in 2000.
Nowadays they are doubling in performance every... 5 years?
The EU already requires 5 years of patches since last year. Motorola thinks they have found a loophole, so there are still some, ahem, patches needed to the law.
Do you have more info about this? I recommended Motorola phones to people based on a combination of price, their needs, and expected longevity (at least 5y now with the new update and replacement part requirements). If that's not the case then I want to update my recommendations
> Batteries have been used as part of planned obsol[esc]ence for too long and a whole small business industry of replacing phone batteries has appeared because of it.
Note that early phones had replaceable batteries and it was later phones that dropped that feature. The idea wasn't that making the phone impossible to open would compel people to replace their phone faster; it was that given that people didn't keep their phones long enough to wear out the battery, there was no need to make the battery accessible.
That was true 15-20 years ago. Nowadays changing the phone is basically because:
1) battery dying / not lasting enough
2) shattered glasses whose replacement costs 35-40% of the cost of the phone new (for budget/mid-range phones, not everybody has iPhones)
distant 3rd) not enough free internal storage
Unrelated note but, cheap/midrange phones are a scam, you almost always get better value purchasing a second hand premium one.
also camera just not being satisfying enough anymore is a big deal
sure on highest end phones you have very good cameras since a long time by now, but even there they find improvements here and there (e.g. zoom, low light pictures, even better image stabilization)
but middle to lower end phones are still have major improvements in every generation of a certain brand/line/price category. And you might be satisfied with a "acceptable" quality camera, until everyone around you has way nicer photos, or you now have a reason to make photes you didn't had in the past, or you get older and your hands a bit unsteady etc.
Batteries are generally a cheap fix from third party stores. If you wanted to keep the phone why not spend the small dollars and just replace the battery?
Because you need to bring it to a shop, sometimes they may keep it for more times, sometimes if they are not that honest they will find something else and factory reset it and a long etc. If it's something one can do at home by one self as an expected and supported by the vendor operation, why not? You can still bring it to a store if you don't feel like crafty enough to do it.
Upgrade cycles have slowed down in recent years, the improvements are relatively incremental nowadays. Screens, durability, processors, storage sizes, cameras, even battery life are okay-ish and aren't improving quickly enough to justify the same upgrade rate. Foldables are basically the only big innovation in recent years, but are still a little too fragile and expensive.
This is also reflected in the increasing support durations from major manufacturers.
This might be partially true, but making them inacessible is still a great way approach to planned obsolescence and there's no way this was not part of the motivation. The fact that an entire industry exists to provide replacement batteries is proof of this, as is the fact that Apple offers a £100 battery replacement. They also replace the batteries of all refurbished models they sell, which again wouldn't be necessary if battery life wasn't a concern over the useful life of a phone.
Secondly, what you said may have been true in the past, when smartphones were rapidly evolving and upgrade cycles were short, but people are holding on to their devices for longer now, so its possible its becoming a problem again.
Batteries on early cell phones needed to be replaced multiple times a day. I remember talk time of like 10 minutes on my motorola StarTec.
1996, for anyone else wondering
Not sure how comparable that is when considering that the devices are also commonly required as ticket on public transport with no offline fallback (going so far as to include animations on the screen so you can't send a screenshot to a friend or print it out -- no, I have no idea why they think you can't send a video to a friend). Having 10 minutes of use time is simply not on the table, and GP was probably not talking about that class of phones (pre-"smart" phone) in the first place
Nowadays batteries seem to be doing pretty good, though. I've got a galax s20 fe, and the battery is still fine after 5 years.
Nice! As a heads up, don't be tempted to replace the battery via a third party if the Samsung battery ever stops meeting expectations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47834810
This was true back when Moore's law was the driver of obsolescence. You bought a new phone every year simply because next year's phone was twice as fast.
Now that this doesn't happen, the driver of obsolescence is the battery, which is much less defensible because you can swap it much more easily than "the whole internals of the phone".
I have never used a phone without easily replaceable battery (where "easily" means no screwdriver necessary, just pop the backcover and pull the battery out). It just happened this way, but I think I'd refuse to buy one anyway, as aside of obvious repairability and maintainability issues having the battery sealed in is also a big factor that makes dropping the phone so dangerous. When I drop my phone, the battery is easily set free to disperse its kinetic energy away from more fragile parts of the device, so it's much harder to break the phone this way. I have made some small dents and scratches from drops over the years, but no serious damage.
While this is a good step forward, it feels like complaining about the 0.025% of plastic from straws in the ocean while ignoring the 75% of plastic from fishing nets.
I own a 2020 Kona EV. The battery cannot be upgraded. Eventually, I'll have to replace the entire car to get a longer range. BEVs should be mandated to have upgradable batteries and modular interfaces so that the shell can continue to be reused, the batteries (and BMS) upgraded, and old batteries easily recycled.
Useful life of most of the cars is on par with their battery longevity, as long as you have proper thermal management and your usage patterns are not outliers.
Focusing on being able to upgrade battery (and to be clear - upgrade, not replaced/repair) is solving 1% problem.
I still drive the car I bought 20 years ago. How long should the useful life of a car be?
Given the huge environmental cost involved in manufacturing a car, 20 years seems fair.
I’m still driving a 26-year old Nissan Micra – though it’s now on its last legs: the Irish climate isn’t kind to steel and we’ve had to have the under-carriage re-welded three times in the past five years. :(
You bought a car with some range, you are fine with it. Why you have to replace it with longer range?
Should I be able to eventually replace gas tank with the larger one in my ICE vehicle?
> Should I be able to eventually replace gas tank with the larger one in my ICE vehicle?
FWIW, that is actually a thing you can do. It is mostly done for SUVs and pickups since the primary use case for the extra range is off-pavement driving and the upgrade is simpler.
Batteries degrade, you know.
Yes, which is why they are replacable, and Hyundai is bound by law to keep making batteries for OP's Kona for a good while even after the production stops.
That will probably come when EV marketshare is higher and innovation plateaus. I definitely appreciate the phone thing as someone typing from an iPhone SE. I also think phone batteries degrade faster than cars, right? I think my phone is from 2022 and I’m definitely starting to feel it.
I don't see how that's even remotely comparable. It's not like you can replace the battery in your phone with a larger one. You will be able to buy a new battery for your car, that's already guaranteed in the EU - but it will be the same capacity as what you got.
I don't know why is this even an argument really, like.....in a petrol car, do you expect to be able to fit it with a bigger fuel tank after 10 years? or a more powerful engine? Until very recently even software updates to the infotainment weren't really a thing, if you wanted a newer interface you had to change the entire car(I'm not saying this was a good thing, just that generally the expectation is that the product will work the way it was when you bought it).
it's all virtue signalling. Always has been.
It's not for me at least. Nobody can prove their inner intent to you but most people will know from themselves that their actions are sometimes misunderstood (especially when something worked/came out badly) but that they genuinely mean well
Disagree. I want a replaceable battery in my phone. They can get to extensible memory next. And it's not because you don't care about something that you should remove this freedom from me. And don't tell me that the market will self regulate in the best interests of the consumer or other nonsense like that.
Seems to me like the top goal should be: you can easily replace the most-likely-to-break parts (screen, back, battery, etc) in any local independent repair shop, with genuine parts that have low markups.
I'm confused why that still isn't the case today given all the EU headlines we've seen over the years.
>The regulation states that batteries must be removable using ‘commercially available’ tools
This is doing a lot of work here. There's enough wiggle room for this to be absolutely meaningless. Anything short of I can slide off the back cover and maybe unscrew two or three screws to replace the battery means that a lot of people are going to end up not being able to replace the batteries.
The rest of that same sentence, " – and that if specialised tools are required, they must be provided free of charge when the phone or tablet is purchased," seems to mitigate that concern, no? I suppose it hinges on what the test for a "specialized tool" is.
EU regulatory bodies haven’t been as blindly sycophantic towards megacorporations in terms of allowing them to skirt by rules set forth by their legislatures, so I would be more optimistic than if this were a development in US law.
Well yes, that's where the innovation happened. Collecting fines based on regulation without innovation is easy street.
You can buy a soldering kit for 100$ USD. That doesn't mean normal people are going to be able to use them.
I'd rather force larger companies to offer battery replacement at cost + shipping.
I have no real interest and opening up my own devices and messing with batteries, but I have no problem paying the manufacturer $100 for service.
In that context it seems like "specialized" means "not commercially available", no?
Toss: "technically you can purchase a new phone with non-specialist tool 'cash' so we feel no need to provide anything at all"
Specialised as in created specifically for swapping battery of that specific phone? As in you cannot do it with a generic commercially available tool (e.g. a screwdriver)
Quote from https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:C...
--- start quote ---
Article 11 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542 states that a 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.
Guidance on tool types can be drawn from standard EN 45554:2020e (2). In the context of the assessment of a product’s ability to be repaired, reused and upgraded, this standard uses the following classification groups: (i) basic tools (including those provided with the product as a spare part) or no tools; (ii) product-group specific tools; (iii) commercially available tools; and (iv) proprietary tools.
The concept of commercially available tools mentioned in Article 11 comprises the categories of basic tools or no tools and of commercially available tools as per EN 45554:2020e.
The concept of specialised tools laid down in the Regulation refers to product-group specific tools that are not available for purchase by the general public but are not protected by patents either. Article 11 requires that any such specialised tool that might be necessary to have a portable battery removed and replaced is provided free of charge with the product into which the battery is incorporated.
As per EN 45554:2020e, proprietary tools refer to tools not available for purchase by the general public, or for which any applicable patent are not available for license under fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. Such tools should not be needed to remove portable batteries
--- start quote ---
(I fully expect literally no one on HN to spend even a second looking for and reading the relevant texts, and complain about the law being vague or impossible to implement or something)
I did actually look for the text for several minutes but couldn't find it anywhere. Thanks for doing what the news apparently couldn't.
> without requiring […] thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product.
No heat or solvents required. Sounds good.
Maybe. Maybe not. If my local phone and phone accessories shop can do it for little money in 15 minutes then the current calculus changes for a heck of a lot of people.
Isn't that already the case though?
No. I can't find a legit battery for my Samsung phone, only forgeries and "compatible with"s. Local repair shop said they could put a new OEM battery into this 4yo second-hand phone
So I pay them and they do it. The result:
- back cover becomes rather loose while it's warm e.g. from fast charging or a hot day out. No longer waterproof
- the battery is no better than the original and is (2y later now) degrading faster than the original. If you ask a lot of it, the last 35% are gone within minutes. I think it's a knock-off battery but that the repair person doesn't know that
If there had been commercially available repair parts and tool access, neither would have been a problem and I could just have done it myself
My mom has the same model and sent hers in to the manufacturer for a battery swap. Took a while and cost half the price of the phone (since it was a 2yo second-hand at that time). That could have been much faster, even if the manufacturer is free to set the same steep prices
A colleague got their phone back from Google for some repair last week, I don't remember if screen or battery swap. He asked and they said it wouldn't be reset. He put a sticker on it not to wipe the device. They wiped the device. He's now trying to piece together what's in various backup files that Android allows making. Fun fun fun. Also not necessary if you, or your techy nephew, can just do it at home
---
The requirement for commercially availability of repair is so much better than the current state of what repair places can/are offering
I think the supply chain is pretty broken. I had just about the same experience as you with an iPhone 7 a few years back. I booked my replacement through Apple's website, so I was pretty confident I wouldn't get scammed. The new battery started bulging in less than two years, to the point that there was a serious gap between the screen and the body.
It was clearly worse than the battery that came with my refurbished (!) phone, which never did that; it just couldn't hold a decent charge anymore. I won't even go into the absolutely ridiculous experience I had with the repair shop, like not honoring booked times and whatnot and having me wait in line for ages, both to drop off and pick up my phone.
My current phone has lost some of its battery health as reported by the OS, but still gives me over a day of use, but when the time comes to fix it, I'll go directly to Apple.
Same with laptops btw. I once caught a seller where the webpage and sticker said 5200 mAh but acpi -i reported 4400 mAh. They provided a replacement free of charge, presumably their supplier scammed them in turn (it was a small local webshop), but that replacement also wasn't great even if now the chip reported the expected capacity. Never once have I had good experiences with replacement batteries, I really wonder what they do with the originals to make them so vastly superior
Also quite noticeable that the laptop battery market became much smaller once the batteries became an internal component (around 2015) that you can't see without opening it up completely. These also used to be behind a slider or two
People don't dare unscrew electronics, even if it's about as trivial as replacing a light bulb in a fixture that requires removing a screw. With phones having the battery inside as well now, not above the sim tray for example, I wonder how much such legislation is going to help the average person
Last time I checked I’d have to leave my phone for a couple of days and the glue factor meant they wouldn’t guarantee it would come back perfectly. My assumption is this might make it a more trivial change.
I don't see what change they can make, at least to an iPhone. The glue is necessary for water resistance.
There were models that were both waterproof and not glued (the only tools needed for a battery swap were the replacement battery and opposable thumbs). I never had/tested one myself though, this is just going off of the manufacturer's claims and IP (ingress protection) certification
I used to have a Galaxy S5, the model that usually comes up in these discussions. Now, I never went and threw it in a swimming pool, or pressure washed it, or whatever other ridiculous test you may come up with. But I did attach it to my motorbike's handlebars and rode around under heavy rain on more occasions than I care to remember.
It was often drenched to the point that the map on the screen was basically illegible without stopping and wiping off the water. But it never skipped a beat. Basically, I was the limiting factor and would eventually give up and find some hotel with a hot shower to pass the night.
Glue is not required. Gaskets and other methods exist.
So why can't I buy the glue?
If it is a special glue that needs to be heated (or something), I should be able to make/buy an oven the does the cure procedures.
Necessary? Gaskets and o-rings haven't been invented yet?
Why waste space for gaskets and o-rings when you can already get the battery changed out while you wait with glue? Glue is clearly the superior method, which is why almost the entire market has adopted it.
Heat pads exist even in the most basic repair shops. It's not advanced technology, no need to over-engineer it.
They have, and people preferred smaller phones.
People didn't prefer shit. This is a supply-driven market, vendors put out whatever they want, and we deal with it.
Did you forget how to not buy things?
And then they got larger again.
Due to the things inside them that people did want.
> They have, and people preferred smaller phones.
Are these smaller phones in room with use right now? Where can I buy an iPhone 8-sized iPhone? Or an iPhone 4-sized iPhone?
The only ones who "preferred" "smaller" aka thinner phones are Apple with their psychotic "it's thinner again" yearly presentations.
My last phone was all glued and the entry point was the screen. The repair guy said there was a 50% chance the screen would break in trying to unglue it so it was not worth the try. It was a shame, it was a decent phone killed prematurely by a faulty battery.
There are a number of phone designs that require special heating apparatus and very careful prying tools to get the back case off. And then extremely careful application of new glue to reassemble. Basically the whole thing is glued together at the factory. Google "phone heating pad for repair" for some examples...
That reads true. While replaceability is definitely a good thing, but whether it will end up being a good thing for the average user (and not lead to some further price hikes in the EU market) remains to be seen.
I presume it means "don't even try doing the printer ink DRM thing".
better than glued.
Heat guns and pryers are commercially available. I don't think this will change anything there.
You're wrong about that:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47835530
Thanks. I couldn't find the text for the life of me. Glad to be wrong.
Also Stanley's Fubar and CAT 797 trucks are commercially available, doesn't mean I will need one of those to change my phone battery :)
And Pentalobe screwdrivers are also commercially available now, so Apple doesn't even have to include one...
And lose water resistance…
This is excellent news. Now make them have user-unlockable and user-relockable bootloaders...
I still sometimes miss the Samsung Galaxy I had that had a microSD slot, a removable battery, and a headphone jack.
Phones have lost so much in a decade.
I have a Samsung Galaxy from 2022 that has exactly that and it's still supported by manufacturer. Unfortunately it's a Samsung Galaxy Tab Active4 Pro.
I dont care about replacing the battery but doing a 'battery pull' is very useful sometimes. Esp when Android locks up.
This might be shifting us closer to worse overall design/performance to accommodate swapability. The pouch cells are very fragile, with the phone itself being the physical protection for the cell. If end users begin to handle these, you likely have to add additional packaging to the cell which increases the overall dimensions or reduces total capacity to maintain the same size.
Maybe it's for our own good, maybe we have to suck it up and lose a little capacity to meet sustainability goals. Or maybe this won't do much for the environment.
I am not sure people actually care that much about dimensions.
Most phones today only look thing on promotional material. With the massive camera bump that is sometimes thicker than the phone itself, and the way most people use cases, in the end, you have quite a brick. Also a glass back panel, which to me is one of the worst materials for that purpose, but it looks good on the store stand.
So to me, a removable battery will not affect the phone dimensions as much as it will affect the look, which may piss off the marketing guys, and I take it as a positive!
Seriously, bring back the removable plastic back covers, plastic may look cheap, but to me, it is the best material, and if you put on a case, as most people do, you won't even see it!
Obviously it helps with the design to embed. But it's also obvious so hard to replace batteries are by design to make those phones throw away after the 1000cycle or whatever batties last.
A good middle ground would have been to enforce an easy to replace specification..but then we are up to interpretation.
This won’t do much for the environment.
Even today, phone batteries get replaced until the phone is no longer able to run today’s software.
I recently swapped a broken display + the battery of a smartphone. It's definitely possible with recent devices (although apple might be different).
You need some skill and patience to cut it open etc. without damage, so most people should probably go to a repair shop.
I know a common refrain with my friends is "IDGAF about an extra few centimeters, give me an audio jack". I think consumers are down for thicker phones if they get something for it. In this case, a phone that lasts longer
I'm pretty sure most companies optimize for what the consumers actually want.
People say that but then they don’t buy the phones.
There is a difference between revealed and stated preference.
Where in the market can I buy a thicker phone with a 3.5mm jack that has comparable features to those of best sellers? How can I reveal a preference that isn't offered.
You assume that everyone needs more battery life. That need is highly variable based on different use and access to chargers.
They (Samsung, Apple, etc.) should never have been allowed to glue it behind the screen. Threaded fasteners and a silicone gasket cover is good enough for 99.999% of the public use-case.
Will this affect the water-resistance of current iPhones? I thought that was why the batteries are not easily replaceable by users, because of the seals/gaskets.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dyL6hMZvWQ
There are multiple watches, cameras, etc., with a lot of physical buttons even, all with replaceable batteries and weather-resistant (or even better, water proof). This is a bad excuse.
Most wristwatches provide much stronger water resistance while still being very user serviceable with a $20 watch tool kit. Whatever the phone makers are peddling are mostly excuses.
water resistance + easily battery exchange for repairs is very viable (AFIK always had been, too.)
like this law isn't about users causally replacing batteries like on very old phones
but about an repair shop easily and without risk of breaking your phone being able to replace it without only holding on your phone for idk. 10 minutes
So that you can just drop by (once they have the replacement parts) wait a moment and have a new battery.
This means in the worst case something like needing to a add a bit of additional seal/wax/glue or similar to improve sealing is very much fully viable (Id the sealing agent is generally buy able.)
It just is something you have to design in from the get to go. And it's easier to not do so at all. And maybe if you obsess if your phone is 1/10mm smaller or not that gets in your way too. And not doing so is more profitable as people will buy successor products more likely, even if just very slightly more likely.
But in general? That really isn't the problem.
Also even if it where the problem. What is better? Having a less waterproof phone, but not needing to buy a new one for another one or two years or having to buy one now?
Galaxy S5 worked quite well. IP67 and a removable battery.
While I'd be perfectly content with an IP67 iPhone with interchangeable battery, the current iPhones are IP68 which is a significant step up in dust/water ingress protection. IP68 devices generally require a sealant, IP67 normally doesn't, making it easier to do a battery hatch etc.
IP68 doesn't require a sealant if you just use enough pressure. Phones are just too thin to screw on the back plate and use a proper gasket. Which is stupid in the first place because most people then go and put a bulky cover on them.
and applying a sealant isn't per-see the problem either
iff
- it's generally commercially available
- and re-applicable after replacement with just generic tools
- and removing the battery doesn't risk breaking your phone due to physical strong binding glue being used as sealant etc.
As a dump example you can design the phone as a sealed unit with the battery department being "outside" the seal. Then have the battery also sealed and apply a bit of "sealant" (wax?, glue?) on the electrical contacts braking the seal on both sides. As the battery and battery compartment back have to only be waterproof and not "rigid" this probably fits "just fine" into most phones (except the most over the top slim ones).
Which is probably more the actual problem. Thinks like phone makers over-obsessing with making phones slimmer on a sub 1mm standard ... and then people anyway putting "thick" cases on the phone to protect it...
Awesome!
And next, hopefully, replaceable software.
Which will do much more for phone longevity.
How about computers to have replaceable SSDs? There's no point you can exchange the battery when the hard-soldered SSD dies first. (I had more dead SSDs than batteries)
At least there's a choice there. I've never bought a computer with a soldered-on SSD.
And get rid of soldered RAM while we're at it as well.
This should be mandatory, although I never had a computer where the SSD was not replaceable.
Some were a bit of a pain in the ass to replace though.
Recently replaced the battery and charging port of my Fairphone. 5 screws, two plucked components, done. Hopefully this means that soon you won't have to buy a specific company's phone for this marvelous experience.
The Fairphone 5 is only IP55 rated (dust protected, and water droplet resistant). Most flagship phones are IP68 rated (fully dust sealed, and water submersible). IP68 phones are sealed with a single-use adhesive gasket, and replacing battery requires breaking (and replacing) this seal. If the seal is improperly applied, the phone is no longer protected from dust or water.
This is good. I recently had to replace a generally working phone because the battery was dying and there was no cost effective & reliable means of replacing.
A proper gasket and screws needs to be the standard solution here.
It seems like the whole world could massively benefit from this much like the other great innovation out of the EU -- the Common Charger Directive (aka USB-C).
Gigaset makes IP68/MIL-STD-810H smartphones with removable batteries and sold the battery for 30€, don't fall for the "but watterproof".
Neat. That may allow repurposing phones as mini home servers too.
Lithium batteries in things running 24/7 unsupervised always makes me a bit nervous
I hate to say it, but the lack of removable batteries serves a purpose. It wasn't done just because 'screw consumers'.
It was done because:
* It makes phones massively easier to waterproof
* It allows for larger batteries
* It allows for more compact and lighter phones
Consumers, based on what they buy, have shown again and again that they want these features.
It also simplifies manufacture and lowers costs, which everyone likes.
I like removable batteries. If I had the option, I'd get a phone with that feature. But I know that I am certainly in the minority, as is almost everyone in this thread.
It's also worth pointing out that these days, battery and software have advanced to the point where degradation is quite slow in many cases. The phone will often outlive its useful life due to specs rather than battery.
They need a standardized battery. Something with common terminals and width available in a range of thicknesses and lengths would be ideal.
Next: replaceable storage? Since flash-based storage is widely known as a consumable that tends to fail first.
What percent of iphone users would take a sleeker, slimmer phone over a replaceable battery?
Considering that this, and other, regulation is officially aimed at reducing e-waste, the EU should commit to publish independent data on the amount of e-waste and phones replacement rates now and every year afterwards in order to measure the real world impact.
Too often, including in HN comments, those regulations are presented as "obviously" good policies. Well, data are better than assumptions.
I don't know if this is standard, but at least for some previously enacted electronics regulations I know they look into the real-world effects. I think I was looking for information on how they calculate the battery life for the new smartphone energy labels (which videos should be played at what screen brightness; is the browsing test over WiFi or the LTE/NR modem; etc.) when I found some document about how much energy they're expecting to save with this regulation. It showed a base path of expected energy consumption development, and then how the regulation is expected to modify that
Edit: not the one I saw before, but found a similar document via https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu -> policy making -> "EIA reports and related analyses" -> 2025 overview report https://circabc.europa.eu/ui/group/418195ae-4919-45fa-a959-3... -> see e.g. the graphic at the top of page 79
The shaded area is the effect that they think is attributable to regulations, e.g. -2.2TWh electricity per year in the category of phones and tablets when comparing 2010 and 2030
As another example, for "Servers and data storage products" they expect almost no change due to regulation: the consumption is expected to go from 48 to 67 TWh (2010 till 2030) and that it would have been 70 TWh without regulations. If I'm reading it right, this small improvement would be due to the 2019 "information requirement ... including the maximum allowed operating temperature for the equipment ... to stimulate data centres to choose equipment that supports higher operating temperatures, to enable further reduction of the cooling load."
Page 42 shows that they also take into account 'additional acquisition costs' (how much more expensive devices are because of this, I think that means?), but that this added expense is well below the energy costs that would have been incurred otherwise. Of course, that's what I'd say too about my regulations :) but I don't know of another information source for this so this is the best info I have atm
This is amazing news.
However, doesn't Apple already provides this? You can go to store and switch your battery for like 60 EUR or so.
So this means no iPhone Air 2 in Europe? I can hardly see Apple wiggle around the special tools requirement when these batteries are glued and sealed shut in the devices.
[edit] didn’t see the fine print with the cycles requirement etc. so it seems Apple etc is still safe.
I thought USB-C was already required.
They should extend the principle to laptops, obviously.
I think most (all?) would already comply. What laptop do you see as not having a user replacable battery? Even MacBook can be swapped out pretty easily [1].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgTon2jqI-A
MacBooks are not easy at all. I did it twice and it's an annoying, dangerous mess (danger of tearing the battery open). Apple won't even bother with it. If you want an "official job", they will just replace the whole top shell including the keyboard, because they can't be bothered to remove the glue. And of course it's expensive because of that.
I won't name brands, but there are lots of low cost "tablet with keyboard" laptops with glued battery. Just a couple of months ago I had to ditch one.
Anyway, if most comply, why not make it mandatory? Or are these kind of directives only aimed at picking fights with manufacturers?
Note that I am not suggesting that all laptops should have USB-C chargers, that's a separate directive. I mean user replaceable batteries available for at least 5 years, without requiring major surgery to replace.
Hopefully the EU can get the battery situation to mirror the charging cable situation. IE force them all to adopt an industry standard.
Dude I dream of a day where there will batteryless phones with no requirement to charge. That would be pure bliss.
Well, 9 more months until I’m going to replace my iPhone 12!
As a non-European I want to say: thanks EU
They’re just going to change the software for thebattery so that it only charges to 80% capacity so that it meets the requirement of 1000 cycles no one is actually getting replaceable batteries. Edit: commercially available tools. All right so you just sell that tool on your shop.
Hot swap batteries! Who's going to offer THAT first?
> The move comes amid EU-wide efforts to cut the continent’s carbon footprint and tackle mounting waste [...]
...
> [...] if specialised tools are required, they must be provided free of charge when the phone or tablet is purchased.
So if a family buys several phones and tablets that all use the same specialized tool to change their batteries they end up with several identical specialized tools?
From a reducing waste perspective wouldn't it be better to just require that the tool be available for free for some reasonable amount of time such as however long the manufacturer is required to support the device?
I understood that the move to non-replaceable batteries was at least partially driven by water resistance
*Edit. Not sure why people are downvoting. I didn't make a positive declaration. HN didn't used to be this way for completely milquetoast comments.
It probably makes things easier, but its unlikely that the industry that found a way to make foldables waterproof couldn't figure out a way to put rubber gaskets on battery covers. And in fact, they did, there were several devices introduced in the transition period that had both features.
Rubber gaskets wear out. Best practice is to replace them every time you open the cover. We can put them in, but the replacement battery better come with the gasket because you can't safely replace the battery without a new gasket.
Galaxy S5 was IP67-rated (1 metre depth, 30 minutes) and had a user-replaceable back cover / battery
Also a notification LED, OLED screen, bezels to pick the device up by, headphone jack, unlockable, a continuous light sensor... peak smartphone, save perhaps for the meager 200 Hz accelerometer refresh rate (modern phones have 500 Hz usually, I have no idea what for but I personally love toying with FFT plots)
If the headphone port flap was perfectly sealed….
*charge port flap
Waterproof phones all still have charging ports and no flaps. Not sure how but that seems to be solved. Maybe that one part's connectors are encased in glue?
Yes and don't forget consumer preferences. This is Hacker News where they are still clamoring for a "small smartphone" because everything else is too big. Shocker, small phones don't sell. Neither do bulky ones when compared to sleek iPhones.
Haven't modern smartphones had non-replaceable batteries long before they had any kind of water resistance ratings?
Not sure if I should be repeating the same answer below each instance of the question but here goes: See the Samsung Galaxy S5 for example as having a good waterproofing rating and user-replaceable battery
Anything except full support of the EU during European hours gets downvoted
Every post about the EU here gets absolutely flooded by negative comments of people who tell me that whatever the EU proposed won't work, governments shouldn't do these things, the proposed legislation is ineffective, it doesn't go far enough, they're just trying to extract money from our successful American companies, and so on and so forth. It's just a neverending diarrhoea of anti-government anti-European underbelly sentiment.
That sounds like seeing a pattern where there is none (apophenia). Do you have examples of posts that wouldn't be downvoted outside of times where Europe/Africa is awake, or that weren't only because it was posted outside of said hours?
I hope someday EU will implement requirements for phones -> You must be able to flash any firmware (OS) on your phone, without any restrictions.
This is much more important, than batteries.
Awesome! hopefully apple will just stop selling their filth here entirely.
This is idiotic. What's next, disallowing unified memory or SoC with packaged memory? These people think they know better than world experts on these matters.
Have they researched durability with replaceable batteries and can promise us phones won't break more often?
Don't remember that being necessary to taketh away, and now that they're required to giveth it back we don't want it anymore?!
Now do screens.
and software.
Damn, recently I had a phone with a battery that wasn’t properly glued and it would turn off when shaken. I hope this doesn’t become the norm from now on.
Never had this issue with several cellphones I had in ye olden times when all cellphones had removable batteries. All it takes is a properly designed connector.
Yeah, none of my Nokias with a removable back cover and battery had that issue. What you realistically might've had was instead that you dropped your phone on the floor and the battery came flying out.
Behold: the widget of the future.
A spring.
I am simply not a fan of this type of legislation. It reminds me of CA bullet button. I also don’t quite understand the purpose. Official retail cost from Apple in the US ~$120. Third-party you can usually get it around $60. Sure the battery does not have quick accessibility but I can replace it pretty cheaply.
Agreed. This rule will likely be irrelevant in 5-10 years when battery technology improves, and it has such a huge carve out (batteries that maintain 80% capacity after 1000 cycles are exempt) every phone manufacture can get around it. Phone makers can meet this regulation by artificially limiting battery capacity through software to protect battery health. Or they could put in a 10,000 mAh battery and only allow the user to use 8,000 of it, and use the rest as buffer.
A better example is the EU cookie consent law. The intent was to make websites stop using cookies, but what resulted was websites didn't change anything except put up annoying consent banners, and made the internet experience worse.
If the battery lasts 10 years basically then that's fair, but ease of repair is very useful.
$60 has different value in other parts of the world.
Phone manufacturers should be able to seal their phones to prevent unwanted substance egress and to compete on aesthetics. They should also make the seal breachable with consumer-grade hand tools like a hairdryer, suction cup, and plastic wedges.
The inside of the phone should use standard screws and securing mechanisms, and batteries should not be glued to the phone.
I actually really like what Apple's been doing with its new batteries by sealing them in metal. That way if a user is being careless and accidentally slips a screwdriver under the back of their phone, the risk that they puncture their battery and start a fire is greatly reduced.
It secures the most dangerous component of your device in a way that makes it easy for anyone to remove and replace safely. I'm sure Apple has a robot to rip the battery out of its case at its recycling plant, and if the phone gets dropped in a lake or something, if that battery eventually catastrophically fails, at least it's wrapped in a suit of armor.
Yikes, I don't live in the EU, but I absolutely don't want this. Maybe I'm mistaken and they could have achieved the same with removable batteries, but my phone is completely waterproof, dustproof, and has survived more than a few hard drops with no case. I would definitely take that over a replaceable battery. Again, I acknowledge they might not be mutually exclusive.
As the law is written, the latest iPhones, for example, would be compliant (battery is replaceable with commercially available tools under the self-repair program), and they are completely waterproof and dustproof. Some manufacturers now use glued seals for their phones and would probably need to change their approach in design, but I think the majority would be okay with minimal changes.
Like others have pointed out, if phones can certify using batteries with 1000 cycles of charge above 80%, they'll also be exempt, so this will likely only affect very cheap models.
I don't have the same experience at all. For me, battery life is the #1 reason of obsolescence of my smartphones.
With respect, maybe read the article? You're against it, because you didn't read what is being mandated and instead just invented worst-case scenarios instead. You're against your own Strawman.
The proposal is: batteries must be removable using commercially available tools, if the manufacturer requires specialist tools then they must provide them for free.
Essentially they're banning specialized tools, and mandating that repair shops and consumers must be able to purchase replacement batteries for "at least five years."
For context the iPhone was already altered to be compliant with this law and none of the issues you raised were notably worse in the iPhone Air, or 17.
This likely will eliminate specialist software to "sync" batteries, and non-standard screws/attachment mechanisms.
> You're against your own Strawman.
> The proposal is: batteries must be removable using commercially available tools
That's exactly what he's against, plus the premise "Making batteries removable prevents them from being waterproof, dustproof, and collision resistant". Which may be true or false, but not a straw man.
It absolutely is a Strawman. There's no basis in fact for why using commercial tools instead of specialist tools would result in worse "waterproof, dustproof, or collision resistance." It is completely fictional claim invented whole cloth.
Again, multiple phones have already become compliant with this law and didn't lose or compromise any of those things.
So you OR they, will need to explain the basis for the claim, otherwise it is just a Strawman you're poking baselessly.