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There's an exception for batteries that "retain at least 80% of its original capacity after 1,000 charge cycles." Coincidentally, iPhones and probably other flagships already qualify for this exception.
Huh, my iPhones have never come close to this. They are always under 80% capacity before 1000 charge cycles.
While sounding nice in theory, these sorts of regulations will certainly curtail innovation while providing very, very little value elsewhere. If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't.
Which flagship phones with replaceable batteries can customers buy? Samsung was the last major brand in the US to have one, and they made the choice to remove it.
Most of the Kyocera Duraforce line has this ability.
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i’m ok with this and an $80 battery replacement in exchange for better waterproofing
Timex has been making iron-man watches held together with Philips-head screws that can withstand 100 meters of water pressure since the mid-1980s. Waterproofing is no excuse for this nonsense.
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My low-cost plastic Casio watch based on a very old design is waterproof and battery can be swapped out by undoing 4 philips screws, no glue. Its buttons can also be operated under water while staying waterproof. What is this whicraft?
I get it for watches, but I've never understood the mass-market need for a waterproof phone, outside of a few niche hobbies. Are people showering and swimming with their phones or something? Or dropping them in their toilets? The wettest my phone has ever been in 8 years is in my pocket while it's raining.
Most of these metrics are entirely orthogonal to what any real person wants from a phone, but that's an irrelevant detail to marketing types
I never put my phones in my back pocket nor do I wear butt hugging leggings, so having a thick phone stick out my ass and make it look bad isn't on my list of worries. I end up purchasing thick waterproof cases for these slim phones anyways.
What's most confusing is the premium phones lack replaceable SD cards and batteries - it's like they are trying to take the worst ideas from the Apple ecosystem and simply don't understand why some people use Androids.
Surprisingly, it's the cheaper models that carry replaceable SD cards and batteries - I would have imagined the opposite!
I often go on trips and hikes with poor cellular coverage and having some SD cards with useful information or being able to swap them out as the camera gets full is really helpful. Attaching drives over the USB port isn't really practical.
When I do have cellular coverage, I might have to rapidly download a LOT of data, which overheats the phone and discharges the battery. With a replaceable battery, this isn't even an issue.
The benefits of replaceable batteries cannot be overstated when you're not on the grid or take great care of the phone where they last more than a few years. I can have a few batteries charged, during the day using solar that I can then just swap them in as evening sets in, instead of having to plug the phone into a powerbank and pray it doesn't shut off as I keep using it.
While sounding nice in theory, these sorts of regulations will certainly curtail innovation while providing very, very little value elsewhere. If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't.
> "If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't." For that to happen there obviously needs to be a supply worth writing home about. Furthermore, speaking purely for myself, a removable battery is not a must but a nice-to-have. A lot of slabs that have removable batteries are out of the game for entirely different reasons.
Not really. If there’s no supply, it’s probably because the manufacturers did a market analysis and decided it’s not even worth it to offer that. So either their analysis is extremely wrong and it actually would sell, or the consumers don’t want to buy it that bad.
While sounding nice in theory, these sorts of regulations will certainly curtail innovation while providing very, very little value elsewhere. If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't.
I ran my LG G5 with replaceable batteries from 2016 through 2021, at which point there were no affordable replaceable-battery phones left. I bought quite a few replacement batteries, even trying aftermarket batteries with varying levels of success after the OEM LG ones were discontinued.
That is, of course, a problem for manufacturers that want to sell a lot of phones.
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That had me thinking as well. What if the manufacturer says that to get to that number you are only allowed to charge it to 80% ever? My iPhone pro battery is at 92% at 417 cycles over 20 months.
Do what EVs do: make 100% on the display not 100.0% electro-chemically and 0% not be 0.0% chemically. This is a serious suggestion, as I think it’s actually net beneficial for the consumer.
Playing fast and loose with the numbers, I'm sure that if 100% on the display was 80% in the battery and 0% was 20%, you'd have an amazing number of charge cycles. You could program that 40% of unused capacity to be reduced as the battery ages very slowly, and by the time the used capacity is only at 80% of its original revealed capacity you're at many thousands of cycles. But you'd have a phone or car that weighed 40% more and cost 40% more than one that had no buffer and ran at the bleeding edge on day 1.
Absent breakthroughs in battery chemistry, this basically regulates the amount of buffer capacity that manufacturers are required to include in their ~~lies~~ marketing materials.
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There is not waterproofing, on any phone. Yes, when you buy it, no after 3 years when the glue that waterproofs no longer sticks due to ageing.
"Yes, when you buy it, no after 3 years when the glue that waterproofs no longer sticks due to ageing." My 2014 Kyocera Duraforce Pro is STILL waterproof and I use it for underwater photography incessantly.