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The EU is displaying exactly the kind of political leadership we need in this topic: pro-consumer, pro-environment, and firmly against planned obsolescence. Rem

The EU is displaying exactly the kind of political leadership we need in this topic: pro-consumer, pro-environment, and firmly against planned obsolescence. Removable batteries were the industry standard in the early days of mobile phones, and it worked perfectly. We only lost that standard when Apple’s 'walled garden' mindset infected the rest of the industry. The amount of avoidable e-waste generated since then is unfathomable: We are talking about mountain-sized piles of discarded electronics, much of it exported to Africa and Asia. There, people (often children) burn those pieces to extract the remaining rare earths, inhaling toxic fumes in the process, while the remaining hazardous garbage is buried and left to poison the groundwater. It is an absolute moral failure that our society, and politicians beholden to Big Tech lobbyists, let this go on for so long in the name of pure profit for a few big companies at the expense of everything else.

atoav 8mo ago
This is the role we need governments to take. If you want your government to work like a corporation for some reason, why not go to a country where the govnment is weak and corporations bribe it instead? Would give you some good image how well that works. But I get it. This ideology has more to do with how much money these types can then extract from a government and if implemented fully you would have some sort of neo-feudalism where everybody needs to pay them to even exist. But that is not a real utopian vision of something that moves humanity forward (quite literally the opposite).
mytailorisrich 8mo ago
Re. mobile phones it is because it allows sleeker and thinner design, and IMHO it wasn't that common to replace batteries, anyway. But, really this is a non-issue because if you need a new battery for you phone, including iphone and samsung, just get it replaced. That's not super common to need it (again) but there is no issue having it done. I had it done before. So overall I am skeptical that it will make a difference or that people will keep devices like phones longer because of this new mandate. I also doubt that the EU Parliament has data on this because many of those new regulations seem very hand-wavy to me and usually presented as obvious.
- Greenpants 8mo ago
  People choose the path of least resistance. If you can quickly swap out an old phone battery with one you can purchase in a store, it's as easy as doing groceries. If on the other hand you need to hand off your phone to a third party for repairs, and require people to make a backup of important data, maybe factory reset just in case, get a replacement device for the time without it, tell people you'll be unavailable for a bit... It's a big enough hurdle for people to think "well, guess it's a good enough excuse to upgrade to a new model". I've heard the latter too many times in my surroundings purely due to battery life issues.
- linohh 8mo ago
  The point being made is that if batteries can be replaced without specialized tools and training, the chances of that being done could be higher, potentially leading to longer usage time and reduced e-waste.
  - mytailorisrich 8mo ago
    Obviously. I understand the stated aim. My point is that things are rarely obvious. As you say, it "could". It is not obvious that it will make a difference and it might also increase the materials needed on both phones and battery. I think the EU and European countries have much bigger fish to fry, including with regards to the environment.
    - vanviegen 8mo ago
      > I think the EU and European countries have much bigger fish to fry, including with regards to the environment. Yes. And they should fry those too.
  - peterfirefly 8mo ago
    Consider that modern Li-ion batteries are better than older Li-ion batteries (and much better than nickel-metal-hydrides). The need for user-replaceable batteries in modern phones is on par with (or realistically a lot lower) than the need for user-replaceable screens.
243341286 8mo ago
How do you make a phone with replaceable battery to also be water resistant?
- vanviegen 8mo ago
  Just tight fitting casing with some rubbery edges, nothing special. Just look at smart phones from ~10 years ago.
  - peterfirefly 8mo ago
    But we also want devices that are thin and lightweight. Watertight battery compartments are super easy (barely an inconvenience) if you "just" make the device thicker and heavier.
- Reason077 8mo ago
  It’s pretty difficult to do that. iPhones are known to potentially lose some of their water resistance after a battery swap, as it’s hard to guarantee the replaced waterproof seal is as good as the factory one. The EU battery regulation has exemptions for IP67-rated devices which retain 83% of original battery capacity after 500 charge cycles, which most modern smartphones will qualify for.
- sschueller 8mo ago
  It is doable and with all the amazing achievements this is the thing that is too hard to get working? Also all new foldables are not water proof (yet). Your MacBook isn't water proof either yet the battery is also permanently glued in. Why?
  - stefanfisk 8mo ago
    MacBook batteries have not been permanently glued in for quite some time. Replacement requires some disassembly but is perfectly doable for most techies. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Late+2020+Battery+Replacement/142559 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Late+2020+B...
nephihaha 8mo ago
I have such mixed feelings about the EU right now. This battery initiative is definitely a good idea, but I am not onboard with their constant attempts at censorship.
- peterfirefly 8mo ago
  The problem is the member states -- and the voters in the member states. The EU is only a coordination mechanism for those states. It's nothing like the federal layer of the US, or the federal layer of Germany for that matter. Many member states want censorship. Many MEPs want censorship.
  - nephihaha 8mo ago
    The political class is a law unto itself wherever they are. Of course they want censorship... They can't have people exposing their stupidity and corruption.
- progfix 8mo ago
  What do you mean exactly with censorship?
  - peterfirefly 8mo ago
    [flagged]
    - misnome 8mo ago
      Lol why is it always such a predictable list of gripes
      - peterfirefly 8mo ago
        So I am not wrong but you don't like it?
        8mo ago
peterfirefly 8mo ago
> Removable batteries were the industry standard in the early days of mobile phones, and it worked perfectly. Phones back then were bad (so accommodating replaceable batteries was easy), and batteries degraded quickly (so it was a necessity). Modern phones are smaller, need to be more water proof, stuffed to an unimaginable degree with components -- and modern batteries last a really long time. I am not so sure it's a good idea to force them to become consumer replaceable again. My iPhone SE (1st gen) ended up being pushed apart from the inside last year because the battery had swelled up. I could have had it replaced but the CPUs were a bit too weak for the modern world and the RAM too limited. A fresh new battery would not have upgraded the CPUs or the RAM. Li-ion batteries have improved since 2016 so I expect the battery in my iPhone 16e to outlast the useful life of the CPUs and RAM in it. > extract the remaining rare earths More for the gold, I believe. There are youtubers who do it semi-professionally and are remarkably transparent about how they do it. It looks like the only really toxic fumes they contend with are a tiny bit of sulphuric acid vapour from their electrolytic baths. I don't think we should ship the trash to Africa or poor parts of Asia. I don't see how replaceable batteries would have prevented my iPhone SE from becoming trash or have prevented my iPhone 16e from becoming trash in the future. Or preventing them from ending up in Africa/Asia, for that matter. Edit: had accidentally written "back" in the first line when I meant "bad". Edit 2: used the past tense by mistake ("expected the battery in my iPhone 16e").
- jszymborski 8mo ago
  Tell that to my Pixel 6a which hardly holds a charge over a day.
  - peterfirefly 8mo ago
    I don't know what's wrong. Maybe an app that runs too much when it shouldn't? I know that the Facebook app used to be a battery killer roughly a decade ago. The battery on the Pixel 6a should be good enough to make the phone run a whole day with no problem. It's almost exactly the same size as the battery in my iPhone 16e that has excellent battery life.
Reason077 8mo ago
Removable batteries were standard in the early days of mobile phones (and laptops) out of necessity: batteries in those days just weren’t very good. They didn’t last long, took hours to charge, and wore out relatively quickly. You’d carry a spare battery around and swap over when your first one ran out. Now days, there is much less need for that because a charge lasts much longer, and if you do run low you can fast change in 30 minutes or so. Not buying extra spare batteries for every device means less e-waste, not more!
- vanviegen 8mo ago
  I remember early cell phones (not smart phones, mind you) having weeks of standby time, or something like 20 hours of talk time. These had replaceable batteries. I don't recall people carrying spare batteries being a thing..?
  - peterfirefly 8mo ago
    Some of my early phones had spare batteries. They most certainly did NOT have weeks of standby time or 20 hours of talk time. We are talking late 90's. Later, as phones and batteries got better, the spare batteries became unnecessary. They still degraded fast enough that there was a market for replacement batteries and they could indeed easily be replaced. We are talking things like the Nokia 3310. Even later, the need for user replaceable batteries pretty much disappeared. These days, it is entirely gone.
  - adrianN 8mo ago
    You can in fact still buy those kinds of phones and they still have removable batteries.
  - Reason077 8mo ago
    Standby times were indeed great in those days because those phones weren’t doing very much when they were idle. (Weeks may be an exaggeration, though!) You might also be misremembering talk times, unless you had a phone with an exceptionally large battery. A typical device like the Nokia 3210 had 3-4 hours talk time, which is far less than modern smartphones.
xnx 8mo ago
> We only lost that standard when Apple’s 'walled garden' mindset infected the rest of the industry. You're really grasping here. Is it possible that non-removable batteries offer a better tradeoff of capacity, size, weight, durability, water resistance, and safety? > The amount of avoidable e-waste generated since then is unfathomable: Equally possible that removable batteries would generate more waste in the form of extra packaging since it is very rare to replace phone batteries. We also now have a defacto standard in the form of magsafe batteries.
- fsflover 8mo ago
  > Is it possible that non-removable batteries offer a better tradeoff of capacity, size, weight, durability, water resistance, and safety? I guess the burden of proof is on you here.

atoav 8mo ago

This is the role we need governments to take. If you want your government to work like a corporation for some reason, why not go to a country where the govnment is weak and corporations bribe it instead? Would give you some good image how well that works. But I get it. This ideology has more to do with how much money these types can then extract from a government and if implemented fully you would have some sort of neo-feudalism where everybody needs to pay them to even exist. But that is not a real utopian vision of something that moves humanity forward (quite literally the opposite).

mytailorisrich 8mo ago

Re. mobile phones it is because it allows sleeker and thinner design, and IMHO it wasn't that common to replace batteries, anyway. But, really this is a non-issue because if you need a new battery for you phone, including iphone and samsung, just get it replaced. That's not super common to need it (again) but there is no issue having it done. I had it done before. So overall I am skeptical that it will make a difference or that people will keep devices like phones longer because of this new mandate. I also doubt that the EU Parliament has data on this because many of those new regulations seem very hand-wavy to me and usually presented as obvious.

Greenpants 8mo ago
People choose the path of least resistance. If you can quickly swap out an old phone battery with one you can purchase in a store, it's as easy as doing groceries. If on the other hand you need to hand off your phone to a third party for repairs, and require people to make a backup of important data, maybe factory reset just in case, get a replacement device for the time without it, tell people you'll be unavailable for a bit... It's a big enough hurdle for people to think "well, guess it's a good enough excuse to upgrade to a new model". I've heard the latter too many times in my surroundings purely due to battery life issues.
linohh 8mo ago
The point being made is that if batteries can be replaced without specialized tools and training, the chances of that being done could be higher, potentially leading to longer usage time and reduced e-waste.
- mytailorisrich 8mo ago
  Obviously. I understand the stated aim. My point is that things are rarely obvious. As you say, it "could". It is not obvious that it will make a difference and it might also increase the materials needed on both phones and battery. I think the EU and European countries have much bigger fish to fry, including with regards to the environment.
  - vanviegen 8mo ago
    > I think the EU and European countries have much bigger fish to fry, including with regards to the environment. Yes. And they should fry those too.
- peterfirefly 8mo ago
  Consider that modern Li-ion batteries are better than older Li-ion batteries (and much better than nickel-metal-hydrides). The need for user-replaceable batteries in modern phones is on par with (or realistically a lot lower) than the need for user-replaceable screens.

243341286 8mo ago

How do you make a phone with replaceable battery to also be water resistant?

vanviegen 8mo ago
Just tight fitting casing with some rubbery edges, nothing special. Just look at smart phones from ~10 years ago.
- peterfirefly 8mo ago
  But we also want devices that are thin and lightweight. Watertight battery compartments are super easy (barely an inconvenience) if you "just" make the device thicker and heavier.
Reason077 8mo ago
It’s pretty difficult to do that. iPhones are known to potentially lose some of their water resistance after a battery swap, as it’s hard to guarantee the replaced waterproof seal is as good as the factory one. The EU battery regulation has exemptions for IP67-rated devices which retain 83% of original battery capacity after 500 charge cycles, which most modern smartphones will qualify for.
sschueller 8mo ago
It is doable and with all the amazing achievements this is the thing that is too hard to get working? Also all new foldables are not water proof (yet). Your MacBook isn't water proof either yet the battery is also permanently glued in. Why?
- stefanfisk 8mo ago
  MacBook batteries have not been permanently glued in for quite some time. Replacement requires some disassembly but is perfectly doable for most techies. https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Late+2020+Battery+Replacement/142559 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Late+2020+B...

nephihaha 8mo ago

I have such mixed feelings about the EU right now. This battery initiative is definitely a good idea, but I am not onboard with their constant attempts at censorship.

peterfirefly 8mo ago
The problem is the member states -- and the voters in the member states. The EU is only a coordination mechanism for those states. It's nothing like the federal layer of the US, or the federal layer of Germany for that matter. Many member states want censorship. Many MEPs want censorship.
- nephihaha 8mo ago
  The political class is a law unto itself wherever they are. Of course they want censorship... They can't have people exposing their stupidity and corruption.
progfix 8mo ago
What do you mean exactly with censorship?
- peterfirefly 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - misnome 8mo ago
    Lol why is it always such a predictable list of gripes
    - peterfirefly 8mo ago
      So I am not wrong but you don't like it?
      - 8mo ago

peterfirefly 8mo ago

> Removable batteries were the industry standard in the early days of mobile phones, and it worked perfectly. Phones back then were bad (so accommodating replaceable batteries was easy), and batteries degraded quickly (so it was a necessity). Modern phones are smaller, need to be more water proof, stuffed to an unimaginable degree with components -- and modern batteries last a really long time. I am not so sure it's a good idea to force them to become consumer replaceable again. My iPhone SE (1st gen) ended up being pushed apart from the inside last year because the battery had swelled up. I could have had it replaced but the CPUs were a bit too weak for the modern world and the RAM too limited. A fresh new battery would not have upgraded the CPUs or the RAM. Li-ion batteries have improved since 2016 so I expect the battery in my iPhone 16e to outlast the useful life of the CPUs and RAM in it. > extract the remaining rare earths More for the gold, I believe. There are youtubers who do it semi-professionally and are remarkably transparent about how they do it. It looks like the only really toxic fumes they contend with are a tiny bit of sulphuric acid vapour from their electrolytic baths. I don't think we should ship the trash to Africa or poor parts of Asia. I don't see how replaceable batteries would have prevented my iPhone SE from becoming trash or have prevented my iPhone 16e from becoming trash in the future. Or preventing them from ending up in Africa/Asia, for that matter. Edit: had accidentally written "back" in the first line when I meant "bad". Edit 2: used the past tense by mistake ("expected the battery in my iPhone 16e").

jszymborski 8mo ago
Tell that to my Pixel 6a which hardly holds a charge over a day.
- peterfirefly 8mo ago
  I don't know what's wrong. Maybe an app that runs too much when it shouldn't? I know that the Facebook app used to be a battery killer roughly a decade ago. The battery on the Pixel 6a should be good enough to make the phone run a whole day with no problem. It's almost exactly the same size as the battery in my iPhone 16e that has excellent battery life.

Reason077 8mo ago

Removable batteries were standard in the early days of mobile phones (and laptops) out of necessity: batteries in those days just weren’t very good. They didn’t last long, took hours to charge, and wore out relatively quickly. You’d carry a spare battery around and swap over when your first one ran out. Now days, there is much less need for that because a charge lasts much longer, and if you do run low you can fast change in 30 minutes or so. Not buying extra spare batteries for every device means less e-waste, not more!

vanviegen 8mo ago
I remember early cell phones (not smart phones, mind you) having weeks of standby time, or something like 20 hours of talk time. These had replaceable batteries. I don't recall people carrying spare batteries being a thing..?
- peterfirefly 8mo ago
  Some of my early phones had spare batteries. They most certainly did NOT have weeks of standby time or 20 hours of talk time. We are talking late 90's. Later, as phones and batteries got better, the spare batteries became unnecessary. They still degraded fast enough that there was a market for replacement batteries and they could indeed easily be replaced. We are talking things like the Nokia 3310. Even later, the need for user replaceable batteries pretty much disappeared. These days, it is entirely gone.
- adrianN 8mo ago
  You can in fact still buy those kinds of phones and they still have removable batteries.
- Reason077 8mo ago
  Standby times were indeed great in those days because those phones weren’t doing very much when they were idle. (Weeks may be an exaggeration, though!) You might also be misremembering talk times, unless you had a phone with an exceptionally large battery. A typical device like the Nokia 3210 had 3-4 hours talk time, which is far less than modern smartphones.

xnx 8mo ago

> We only lost that standard when Apple’s 'walled garden' mindset infected the rest of the industry. You're really grasping here. Is it possible that non-removable batteries offer a better tradeoff of capacity, size, weight, durability, water resistance, and safety? > The amount of avoidable e-waste generated since then is unfathomable: Equally possible that removable batteries would generate more waste in the form of extra packaging since it is very rare to replace phone batteries. We also now have a defacto standard in the form of magsafe batteries.

fsflover 8mo ago
> Is it possible that non-removable batteries offer a better tradeoff of capacity, size, weight, durability, water resistance, and safety? I guess the burden of proof is on you here.