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European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

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Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#261

Post by tyfon »

noirbot wrote: post #136
Dylan16807 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which could make for a really interesting experiment - how many people would buy the EU replaceable battery edition of the phone vs. importing/traveling to a non-EU country nearby to buy the other version. Assuming everything else is close enough. I know there's an ocean between me and the EU, but importing a phone becomes significantly more difficult than it needs to be based on which cellular frequencies are supp…

Sure, but I'm thinking about stuff like just going to Nordic countries or even the UK. A lot of Europe isn't that far away from a country that doesn't follow EU rules. I was under the impression that you could, for the most part, buy a phone in the US and use it in the EU anyway these days?

Here in Norway (one of the two nordic countries to be not in the EU, the other is Iceland), we adopt more regulations from the EU via EØS (EEA) than most EU countries.

So we're basically part of the EU without the voting rights and toll union benefits..

Besides, our governments and most of the people cross "isle" are very much into the green/circle economy thing. It would get adopted from the EU even without being part of EØS I think.

Personally I think it would be great to be able to have a phone longer, I absolutely hate throwing out working hardware like the 2010 mac pro I used to have but apple decided not to support any more. The funny part is that someone has now made a hack/patch so it runs the newest os x anyway [1]. It was never the hardware that was the issue, just lack of support from apple.

[1] https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/MODELS.ht...

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#262

Post by anigbrowl »

dang wrote: post #99

Is this rule enacted now or was this just a vote? That's the important detail for whether this counts as SNI or not ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... ).

Notwithstanding occasional repetition, I think you should let voting and depth of discussion determine whether a report is significant or not. Even when factual or procedural changes are small, a well-written report might provide worthwhile new analysis or perspective on legislative prospects.

To be sure, some time and attention is wasted on repetitive discussions that restate the same issues with breaking any new conversational ground. But complex problems often require multiple attempts at a solution.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#263

Post by MostlyStable »

thatwasunusual wrote: post #161
MostlyStable wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in my experience, it's the charge port that goes. My last two devices, each of which I had for 3 years, the charge port failed before the battery did. I just finished fixing my current one. Although I did decide to do a battery replacement anyways while I had the device open. But that was just because of how hard it is to open them at all. My battery health monitoring app said it was at ~80% health still. And while t…

> in my experience, it's the charge port that goes. I have had this problem on a regular basis with all of the iPhones I have owned, and the problem has never been that the charge port is dead, but that dust and/or lint has gathered in it. The solution is very simple: use a tootbrush or similar, preferably something plastic that won't break, BUT NOT ANYTHING METALLIC, to dig out the dirty stuff. Problem solved.

Sometimes it's been lint, and I've been able to clean it out, but eventually cleaning it out stops working.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#264

Post by numpad0 »

phan wrote: post #215
JohnFen wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This makes it very difficult to build in replaceable batteries! Except it doesn't. The last two waterproof phones I had had user-replaceable batteries, a USB port, and even a headphone jack. What it does is add a few dollars onto the BOM.

You must be joking if you think its just a BOM adjustment and a small cost... way to oversimplify the actual implementation

Yeah, more like $200 on price and added trait of overheating.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#265

Post by javajosh »

deelowe wrote: post #120
surgical_fire wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Please, EU: bring a law that forces manufacturers to release their drivers / firmware whenever they stop updating a digital device. I wish I could upvote this more. It's a crime how I had to throw away in the past perfectly usable devices because they were forced into obsolescence.

I don't see how this would work given modern supply chains. It can be extremely difficult to track down all of the owners of a particular IP and when you do, many of them may not even exist any longer making it near impossible to get any sort of permission to do something like this.

The normal neoliberal solution is to wait for a new company with a new design to meet the demand for repairable, open devices. This is already happening, and I am convinced will eventually replace ALL proprietary blobs and silicon. This is especially true as the barriers-to-entry keep lowering. The only way this won't happen is if government and the tightly coupled industrial interests prevent it by fiat. This is more likely than you think, since control of these devices is far, far more important than most people realize. Smartphones are crucial for the tracking and control of both large populations and also problematic individuals. In theory they could lead to perfect law-enforcement, which should terrify everyone. Letting the space open up is to give up central authority's invaluable tactical and strategic advantage over distributed authority.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#266

Post by cududa »

COGlory wrote: post #246
cududa wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already sell Android phones like this. They're cheaper than iPhones and have more features, like FLIR cameras. Why not just buy this instead of forcing your preferences, which, clearly the majority of people don't agree with, or they'd buy these phones. https://www.catphones.com/en-us/cat-s62-pro-smartphone/

Because it's about preventing eWaste, not forcing preferences.

And Apple charges $80 for a battery replacement. I think legislation would be much better served at driving that cost down.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#267

Post by 2-718-281-828 »

ephbit wrote: post #243
unglaublich wrote: post #7

The problem is not really the battery anymore, it's the software mainly. It's all closed source and is often deprecated before the hardware is dead. Then the manufacturer makes it hard to unlock bootloaders; keeps drivers closed source and effectively bricks the device. For recurring sales are the backbone of modern economy so we must force obsolescence. Why would you want to replace a battery in a useless device? Pl…

> Please, EU: bring a law that forces manufacturers to release their drivers / firmware whenever they stop updating a digital device. I don't see much hope of such a thing being decided soon, if ever. The incentives for politicians are mostly not aligned in this direction. The much more realistic path towards having devices/software that can be used for more than 3-5 years is IMO if more people started supporting pro…

> The much more realistic path towards having devices/software that can be used for more than 3-5 years is IMO ...

i used any and all of my smartphones that long. no problem.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#268

Post by lagadu »

smn1234 wrote: post #105
vineyardmike wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd much rather be able to swap a charged battery for the drained one in my phone especially in circumstances when I'm in a foreign country and dependent on my phone I don’t deny that this is a valid use case for you, but I’ve absolutely never been in this position. I carry around a battery phone charger in situations where I’d depend on my phone. If you squint, yes that’s pretty similar, but the big difference is…

Carrying around bulky power banks or worse, chargers to then tie you to sit close to an outlet and wait for the battery to charge, is not entirely ideal when you're on the go, foreign or domestic. It's also less anxiety-inducing to not have to worry about where will I get my next charge and how long will it interrupt my plans for.

I agree with your point completely but that use case is an edge case, would it be worth it regulating all phone design in order to address such a specific scenario?

Such use cases are normally handled by creating specialty products.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#269

Post by johnfernow »

tallowen wrote: post #4

I wish there were better approaches to solving the problems around replacing batteries. This solution has downsides in terms of size (extra material required to surround the battery) and waterproofness. I like the features that will have to trade off against replaceable batteries. I wish there were more opportunities for creative solutions to ewaste rather than the specific outcome being regulated.

The Samsung Galaxy XCover6 Pro has an IP68 rating (same as Galaxy S23 and iPhone 14) and has a replaceable back (and Samsung sells official OEM batteries for less than $50.) It also has a headphone jack, and is only 1mm thicker than the S23 Ultra.

https://www.samsung.com/us/business/mobile/phones/galaxy-xco...

Unfortunately, replacement parts are hard to come by for the Galaxy XCover6 Pro (Samsung doesn't sell them, iFixit doesn't sell them, and I can't even find certain parts from random sellers online), so it's arguably less repairable than other mainstream phones. An iPhone's battery is significantly more difficult to replace than that of the XCover6 Pro's, but if the screen, camera, speaker, port, buttons, etc. break on an iPhone, it's at least possible to replace them, unlike the XCover 6 Pro, so it's not the device for me and hard for me to recommend to others, as even if one doesn't do repairs themselves, with a more mainstream phone they can pay someone to repair their phone (either at an Apple Store if an iPhone, or some mobile repair shop for popular Android phones.)

I don't drop my phone often, but I've still had an optical image stabilizer that shook the camera violently, a vibration motor that worked sometimes, and a mute switch that worked sometimes, so replacement parts are very important.

But even still, the Galaxy XCover6 Pro is proof that you can have a waterproof phone with a headphone jack and replaceable battery that isn't very thick. If they sold replacement parts and committed to as many years of OS updates as Apple, I'd strongly consider it for my next phone.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#270

Post by anigbrowl »

dang wrote: post #260
officialchicken wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the rule can not be enacted since it has not been fully adopted - the final (multilingual) text has to be added to the European Council Rules via the plenary voting procedure. This rule will come into effect following that vote.

Thanks - I appreciate the help. Do you know if the final vote is just a formality or if there is a real chance it won't pass? Most proposed bills / votes don't end up resulting in much so we tend to downweight those threads on HN and wait for the thing to actually happen ( https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... ).

The downside of this is that discussions are more likely to end up as purely reactive toward change that has already occurred, and disgruntlement among the losers over what feels like a fait accompli can poison discourse. Discussion of legislative issues prior to passage leaves open the possibility of organizing/lobbying for or against a given proposal, should an informed consensus emerge among those discussing the issue.
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