No more waterproof phones I guess. This saddens me. I find it very useful when driving my bike outdoors with it being mounted to my bike.
The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
211–220 of 334 posts
Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
#212No more waterproof phones I guess. This saddens me. I find it very useful when driving my bike outdoors with it being mounted to my bike.
Yeah, I honestly don't see the advantage.
What I would ask is that companies that create phones without replaceable batteries, should provide replacement by a reasonable fee (let's say no more than 9% the cost of the phone).
Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
#213No more waterproof phones I guess. This saddens me. I find it very useful when driving my bike outdoors with it being mounted to my bike.
Contrary to how this bill is usually portrayed in the news, this bill allows for using screws and gaskets. Those are enough to make a phone waterproof.
Lots of other waterproof equipment achieves Ip68 with only screws and gaskets. I don't see why phones should be any different.
Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
“ They were IIRC also caught red-handed a couple times deliberately releasing updates to older iDevices that would just wreck their battery life and have a few lawsuits pending about that.” Are you going to just drop an inflammatory statement like that and not even try to provide any information to back it up?
Is google down or something? https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-pay...
That has nothing to do with "wrecking battery life" though. They added a fix to prevent the device from turning off early due to battery brownouts at lower states of charge. It did result in reduced performance (and they got a lawsuit cause they weren't open about why/how they did it) but this wasn't causing excessive battery drain.
Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
#215No more waterproof phones I guess. This saddens me. I find it very useful when driving my bike outdoors with it being mounted to my bike.
No. There are already phones that can do this. For example the Samsung Xcover 5.
Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
#216I don’t know. I already have to click cookie buttons on every goddamn web site I visit, it’s annoying as hell. These EU initiatives can be a bit pointless. Battery needs to be replaced like once every 2-3 years. Why change the device design to make battery user-replaceable when I can bring it to the repair shop?
> Battery needs to be replaced like once every 2-3 years.
Having a replaceable battery is a godsend when you're traveling. Changing the battery in my Fairphone 4 takes less than a minute.
I also live in a small village without a repair shop (closest one is probably a 1-2 hour drive away). What a shitty option.
Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would be interesting if a side effect of this proposed legislation, Android manufacturers stop pumping out new models as aggressively. It would make sense if that's how it turned out, because these manufacturers would effectively be crafting their own support nightmares by continuing to put out new models at a high cadence. This in turn should make for better parts availability since the window that any given mode…
Or it actually accelerates the model pumping. If the software has to be supported for 5 years after it’s last on sale there could be a perverse incentive to roll SKUs like crazy even if there are not any actual changes so you only have to support for the shortest possible time.
That would still effectively be 5 years of updates which is a hell of a lot better than what most manufacturers currently offer.
Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. Although there wasn't any cover on the headphones jack, and apparently newer phones can have waterproof open ports. Engineering excellence or not, the fact is that that old phone was both weatherproof and had an easily replaceable battery.
Don’t you think “only if the port was covered” and if the battery and the cover were put back just right are big caveats?
I don't know what you mean by "just right" for the cover. I just clipped it back on, without taking any special precautions, and it seemed fine under heavy rain. Granted, I didn't try throwing it in a pool, though, so I don't know if it would have survived that.
Furthermore, the port cover was just in the way if I didn't clip it back in, so I always did, and, as above, never had any issue.
While I agree that I much prefer not having an USB port cover, I think that's pretty much a solved issue, seeing how my iphone 7 didn't have one and survived just fine in a downpour.
My point is that it is absolutely possible to have an easily replaceable battery while keeping the phone waterproof.
Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
The second proposed legislation from the article seems to require that at least 5 years of updates must be provided after the device was last sold. This is far more than many low-end and mid-range Android phones, moreover many Android phone manufacturers start counting after the device was released, not last sold. Interestingly, they also seem to put upper bounds on how quickly these updates should be rolled out. Eg.…
It would be interesting if a side effect of this proposed legislation, Android manufacturers stop pumping out new models as aggressively. It would make sense if that's how it turned out, because these manufacturers would effectively be crafting their own support nightmares by continuing to put out new models at a high cadence. This in turn should make for better parts availability since the window that any given mode…
Fantastic point. Chinese manufacturers pump out SKUs like crazy - several new models every six months or so.
Of course, it might turn out as theluketaylor says but I doubt it
Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the low end, surely you'd get more standardisation. Same processor, screen, Bluetooth and mobile chips. So that from an update pov it's easy. They can always differentiate with cameras, batteries, cases etc.
So a communist phone for the lower class? That’s the not-nice way of saying the same thing. I’m not sure if I am for or against that without more thought.
Standadized parts are an idea from the industrial revolution, not communism.