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The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

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Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

#311

Post by M2Ys4U »

sroussey wrote: post #148
rlupi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-9-2023-0237... > (11) This Regulation should apply to all categories of batteries placed on the market or put into service within the Union, regardless of whether they were produced in the Union or imported. It should apply regardless of whether a battery is incorporated into appliances, light means of transport or other vehicles or otherwise added to products or wheth…

So do EVs need replaceable batteries? Telos can longer integrate them into the structure of the car?

No, The rules around replacing batteries (article 11) only apply to portable batteries and LMT batteries, and not to SLI, electric vehicle or industrial batteries.

The relevant terms are defined in article 3:

>(9) ‘portable battery’ means a battery that is sealed, weighs 5 kg or less, is not designed specifically for industrial use and is neither an electric vehicle battery, an LMT battery, nor an SLI battery;

> (11) ‘light means of transport battery’ or ‘LMT battery’ means a battery that is sealed, weighs 25 kg or less and is specifically designed to provide electric power for the traction of wheeled vehicles that can be powered by an electric motor alone or by a combination of motor and human power, including type-approved vehicles of category L within the meaning of Regulation (EU) No 168/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council (43), and that is not an electric vehicle battery;

>(12) ‘starting, lighting and ignition battery’ or ‘SLI battery’ means a battery that is specifically designed to supply electric power for starting, lighting, or ignition and that can also be used for auxiliary or backup purposes in vehicles, other means of transport or machinery;

>(13) ‘industrial battery’ means a battery that is specifically designed for industrial uses, intended for industrial uses after having been subject to preparation for repurposing or repurposing, or any other battery that weighs more than 5 kg and that is neither an electric vehicle battery, an LMT battery, nor an SLI battery;

>(14) ‘electric vehicle battery’ means a battery that is specifically designed to provide electric power for traction in hybrid or electric vehicles of category L as provided for in Regulation (EU) No 168/2013, that weighs more than 25 kg, or a battery that is specifically designed to provide electric power for traction in hybrid or electric vehicles of categories M, N or O as provided for in Regulation (EU) 2018/858;

Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

#312

Post by scarface_74 »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #302
scarface_74 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/samsung-galaxy-s5-smart... > After every charge and boot sequence, the phone reminds the user to preserve the IP67 rating by securing the back cover and making sure the USB flap is closed. This reminder gets old fast, but is necessary considering how rushed and absentminded people can be On top of that, to get a reputable battery for it that includes NFC support (because the NFC w…

> > After every charge and boot sequence, the phone reminds the user to preserve the IP67 rating by securing the back cover and making sure the USB flap is closed. This reminder gets old fast, but is necessary considering how rushed and absentminded people can be So because some people are absent-minded and don't pay attention to what they do (and it's not like you need to take off the cover every day and twice on Su…

> So because some people are absent-minded and don't pay attention to what they do (and it's not like you need to take off the cover every day and twice on Sunday), we should all suffer the consequences? Don't quite like that mindset.

So people aren’t intelligent enough to choose phones with replaceable batteries and the EU should regulate it.

But people should be intelligent enough to deal with badly designed phones that if you don’t do things just right you lose water resistance?

Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

#313

Post by tticvs »

layer8 wrote: post #170
tomjen3 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as it has any impact on weight, battery size, water tightness or make the device bigger its a deal breaker for me.

Sounds like you’re incredibly lucky that current products just happen to barely not exceed your deal-breaking threshold. A few years ago you wouldn’t have found any products meeting your requirements.

If you'll recall a few years ago these products did not exist, largely because miniaturized battery technology wasn't good enough

Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

#314

Post by vladvasiliu »

scarface_74 wrote: post #312
vladvasiliu wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > After every charge and boot sequence, the phone reminds the user to preserve the IP67 rating by securing the back cover and making sure the USB flap is closed. This reminder gets old fast, but is necessary considering how rushed and absentminded people can be So because some people are absent-minded and don't pay attention to what they do (and it's not like you need to take off the cover every day and twice on Su…

> So because some people are absent-minded and don't pay attention to what they do (and it's not like you need to take off the cover every day and twice on Sunday), we should all suffer the consequences? Don't quite like that mindset. So people aren’t intelligent enough to choose phones with replaceable batteries and the EU should regulate it. But people should be intelligent enough to deal with badly designed phones…

The issue is that the choice is vanishing, and the point of this thread is that it's likely not because of valid technical reasons (you could already get slim and waterproof with a removable back several years ago).

Honest question: do you know of any high-end phone with a replaceable battery? I know iphones don't have them, the Galaxy S line has lost it starting with the 6. The Asus Zenfone doesn't have it. Sonys don't. One Plus doesn't. I'm not famialiar with lower-end models, but I know the Galaxy A33 doesn't have a removable battery either.

And this is also spreading to other electronics, such as laptops. My 2013 MBP had a glued battery. I was able to change it after like 20 minutes of scraping that crap. That laptop was thicker than my current "ultrabook" which has a screwed battery pack (though it says it's not user replaceable - since it's new I didn't try to take it out yet, so I may be in for a surprise). There was ample space in the MBP for a bunch of screws under the back cover, and it wouldn't have interfered with aesthetics or anything else.

Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

#315

Post by fulafel »

pizza234 wrote: post #37
bjackman wrote: post #4

I think this is fantastic news. It will be interesting to see how it affects the amount of phones that get discarded. I think the next bottleneck is likely to be software longevity. This has improved a lot lately! But basically I think phones have now reached a place like laptops and desktops where HW capabilities are stable, and there's no good reason for devices to be obsolete in 5 years any more. I wonder if regul…

In my experience, the current bottleneck with (Android) phones is that the get very slow without any apparent reasons after a few years. I've had multiple reports of acquaintances complaining about their phones getting slow after a few years, and I've always assumed that they were just full of apps... until it happened to me. I can't find an unambiguois explanation; my guess is a mix of CPUs deteriorating over time d…

One contributor is that most models get a mid life major Android version update after 2 ish years and those don't work as well as the launch versions. It's unlikely to be hardware problems you suggest. Flash ftl slowdown due to filling up or fragmentation from use might contribute though.

There are some jank debugging tools on Android (eg system tracing found under dev settings), would be interesting to see what they report on a fresh vs slowness afflicted device.

Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

#316

Post by jeroenhd »

pizza234 wrote: post #309
jeroenhd wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think this at well, but then I removed all of the useless apps I'd gathered over the years. The improvements were almost instant. Installing apps doesn't have a noticeable impact on general system performance, but install enough of them and you'll find everything mote sluggish than you remember. My phone feels as fast as the day I bought it, which so far must've been about four years ago now. It came out wi…

Regarding my own case, it was a Google Nexus 5X. Performaed a factory reset, but the phone is still super-slow. 100% sure that this is not perception. I'm talking about seconds-long delays. Regarding the acquaintances, I don't remember (or know); I think a couple of them were old Samsung Galaxy S models. Again, factory reset didn't help. I guess that as parent posted, this problem affects some models more than others…

I believe several generations of Samsung devices have a hardware issue with their flash storage that will make the storage slow down to a crawl before bricking itself. The problem only appeared a few years after release and it doesn't seem to affect every device either. Google and Samsung were most commonly affected if I recall correctly.

My old tablet suffers from the same problem. It's quite frustrating to use because of it, but luckily I'm only planning on using it for postmarketOS and that can boot from the SD card slot.

Other brands didn't have this problem and the problem has since been rectified in the Pixel/Galaxy lines. I suppose some very cheap devices may still be using trash flash storage chips, but it's no longer an issue with Android phones from the past few years.

Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

#317

Post by scarface_74 »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #314
scarface_74 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So because some people are absent-minded and don't pay attention to what they do (and it's not like you need to take off the cover every day and twice on Sunday), we should all suffer the consequences? Don't quite like that mindset. So people aren’t intelligent enough to choose phones with replaceable batteries and the EU should regulate it. But people should be intelligent enough to deal with badly designed phones…

The issue is that the choice is vanishing, and the point of this thread is that it's likely not because of valid technical reasons (you could already get slim and waterproof with a removable back several years ago). Honest question: do you know of any high-end phone with a replaceable battery? I know iphones don't have them, the Galaxy S line has lost it starting with the 6. The Asus Zenfone doesn't have it. Sonys do…

That’s just the thing, there are valid technical reasons.

Apple alone sells 200 million phones a year. If even five percent of people don’t secure the battery properly or the battery cover isn’t reliable after repeated removal - which happen to older phones back in the day - it affects a lot of people.

There weren’t that many reports in the west for instance about the physical home button being unreliable. But that did become a problem in places like China where older iPhones are bought and sold in the refurb market to a point where they were turning on accessibility options to have a soft home button on the screen to keep wear and tear down on the home button.

Can you imagine how much less reliable at scale a physical removable battery door will be over the five or six year possible lifetime of an iPhone? Apple claims to have over 1 billion iPhones in use.

And that’s an exaggeration. Apple has historically provided OS updates for five years and the 2013 iPhone 5s got a security update earlier this year.

I am a lot more sympathetic to wanting a replaceable battery in a laptop. While I can just click on “backup” of my iPhone, erase it before I take it in for service and restore it back, that isn’t so simple with a computer.

Heck when my work MacBook battery needs replacing, I have no idea what they are going to do since we have a four year replacement cycle. Will they ship me a replacement MacBook temporarily?

Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

#318

Post by superkuh »

kaba0 wrote: post #299
superkuh wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad food causes actual physical harm to people. This is violence. Bringing in state violence to prevent this actual physical harm makes all the sense in the world. Making a choice to buy a shitty phone with a glued in battery is not being harmed . There's no violence being done in this context. And there's no coercion involved. As for, "What violence?", how do you think laws are enforced? I hope this helps you better…

Ok, let’s look at another example: gambling being illegal for kids. There is no physical harm being done in any way here, yet the “bad, evil EU” disallows it. And sure, there is the enforcement part of each governing agency. Calling it “violence” is just click-bait headline level nonsense.

There are many regulations for minors that could never be applied to adults. Minors are not citizens with full rights; their activities are decided by their guardians and laws regulated minors infringe upon this lack of rights more often than not. That said, many governments and the DSM 5 do push the idea that gambling somehow invokes a lack of agency and control for the individual. In fact gambling disorder is the only medically recognized behavioral addiction (though it shouldn't be, this old wives tale is grandfathered in). It shows just how dangerous this kind of "they can't help themselves" thinking is in justifying bad laws that hurt people.

Pretending that laws aren't enforced with physical force just because it is abstracted away from your daily life and experience doesn't change that it is violence. The use of physical force is the one thing governments have a monopoly over and it is what makes them governments.

Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

#319

Post by mschild »

sverhagen wrote: post #291
mschild wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would still effectively be 5 years of updates which is a hell of a lot better than what most manufacturers currently offer.

Sure it would be, but I think the implied point above was that including the period the device is sold (what's that? say three years), the total support time is much closer to the ten years that was being discussed up top, and pumping out more new devices may shorten that back to closer to five years.

Of course, but any increase is an upgrade to the current situation.

Re: The EU’s fight for user-replaceable smartphone batteries

#320

Post by vladvasiliu »

scarface_74 wrote: post #317
vladvasiliu wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is that the choice is vanishing, and the point of this thread is that it's likely not because of valid technical reasons (you could already get slim and waterproof with a removable back several years ago). Honest question: do you know of any high-end phone with a replaceable battery? I know iphones don't have them, the Galaxy S line has lost it starting with the 6. The Asus Zenfone doesn't have it. Sonys do…

That’s just the thing, there are valid technical reasons. Apple alone sells 200 million phones a year. If even five percent of people don’t secure the battery properly or the battery cover isn’t reliable after repeated removal - which happen to older phones back in the day - it affects a lot of people. There weren’t that many reports in the west for instance about the physical home button being unreliable. But that d…

> Can you imagine how much less reliable at scale a physical removable battery door will be over the five or six year possible lifetime of an iPhone? Apple claims to have over 1 billion iPhones in use.

I can't, since my GS5 lived 5 years with me before I lost it, and never had any issue with water. It's not obvious to me that this is automatically an ureliable setup.

You're also talking about the refurbished marked. I actually looked at buying such an iphone and refrained, since being water-resistant is important to me because I actually do get my phone drenched somewhat regularly. None of the shops guaranteed the water resistance.

I don't doubt some phone manufacturers can and will choose to cheap out on the quality of components or manufacture so that their phone will lose water resistance if you look at it the wrong way.

But that doesn't mean it's impossible to do right, just as not having a user-replaceable battery doesn't guarantee that it won't take water.

My sealed with non-user replaceable battery iphone developed a bulge and became open to the elements when the screen started separating from the body. And it didn't just pop right out all of a sudden, the seals probably started decaying much before I noticed the screen being weird. Lucky for me, I wasn't caught in the rain during that time.

I can totally live with an alert that reminds me once in a blue moon to check that my back cover is well installed. I don't reboot my phone every day. The iPhone never reminded me to check whether, maybe, the screen was separating.

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