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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

#131

Post by noirscape »

palata wrote: post #72
jacquesm wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a mystery at all. Planned obsolescence is a thing and manufacturers have all kinds of perverse incentives to ensure that your perfectly serviceable phone gets traded in for a newer model.

I like to call it "premature obsolescence". I don't believe that the manufacturers actively try to make your old phone get slower. Rather the opposite: they don't try to keep your old phone working. The devs probably have the latest phone, and write code that works well with them. This code can be inefficient, as long as it works well on the newer phone, even if it makes older phones slower. Maybe I am being pedantic…

There's some degree of active involvement with this. I've long suspected Apple to do this for example. The best version of iOS for any iDevice is usually the one just before the one that they use as the hard cutoff point.

Granted, my big example of this is quite old (the iPhone 4 would run iOS 6 really well, while on iOS 7 it was a glitchy, slow, battery-draining mess) but it does seem to be a common trend (my last Apple phone, the iPhone 5 ran quite well on iOS 9 but would just have a complete breakdown if you installed iOS 10).

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.

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

#132

Post by noirscape »

_gianni_ wrote: post #71
f6v wrote: post #28

I 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?

game changer "I don't care about cookies" https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...

Better gamechanger: https://consentomatic.au.dk/

I don't care about cookies takes a very secondary approach to tracking privacy - if it can't figure out the cookie form, it'll just agree to whatever is being asked of it.

Consent-O-Matic will leave the window up if it can't figure it out so you can reject them yourself.

Edit: IDCAC also has been bought by notorious crapware antivirus scanner manufacturer Avast, so that's another reason to stay away from it.

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

#133

Post by cbg0 »

f6v wrote: post #124
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because most people won't: - it's expensive - it takes their phone away If changing the battery is a one hour cheap deal, a lot more people may do it. And I am very happy about those EU initiatives: this way I know what sites are tracking me and how much. This tells me which sites values annoying me with their banner so they can sell my data. Have you noticed there is no banner on Hacker news despite the fact that: -…

> Because most people won't: > - it's expensive > - it takes their phone away Ok, people don’t go to shops to replace battery now? “oh, it’s 99$ to replace the battery? I’d rather pay 1000$ for a new iPhone!” That’s a bit silly.

Most people don't have a $1000 iphone, which is even more problematic, because if you have a cheaper $3-400 phone, that $99 replacement would be very expensive.

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

#135

Post by theshrike79 »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #39
f6v wrote: post #28

I 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?

Because most people won't: - it's expensive - it takes their phone away If changing the battery is a one hour cheap deal, a lot more people may do it. And I am very happy about those EU initiatives: this way I know what sites are tracking me and how much. This tells me which sites values annoying me with their banner so they can sell my data. Have you noticed there is no banner on Hacker news despite the fact that: -…

Expensive? It’s like 50-70€ to swap an iPhone battery and you get a warranty for the battery.

There’s no way a user-swappable battery will be cheaper than that.

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

#136

Post by benj111 »

madeofpalk wrote: post #67
jacquesm wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is going to meant that Android can't take advantage of the high end features of the new phones that are being released That's perfectly ok, what you don't have you can't use. > and that old and slow phones are going to get updates that makes them run even slower. It would be up to the manufacturers to ensure that this is not the case. One way to do it would be to reduce bloat. > To top it of, it is not like manu…

Maybe it'll play out differently on the low-end, but on the high-end it seems there's been some "soft collusion" where one manufacturer raised prices, and others saw that as a signal they can also raise their prices.

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.

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

#137

Post by tzs »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #39
f6v wrote: post #28

I 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?

Because most people won't: - it's expensive - it takes their phone away If changing the battery is a one hour cheap deal, a lot more people may do it. And I am very happy about those EU initiatives: this way I know what sites are tracking me and how much. This tells me which sites values annoying me with their banner so they can sell my data. Have you noticed there is no banner on Hacker news despite the fact that: -…

In the US having a battery replaced at a shop is cheap and you can probably find a place that will do it in less than an hour. There are a few nationwide chains of third-parties that do it, plus numerous independent local repair places.

As far as HN goes it is not clear whether or not they are covered by GDPR. Yes, the site is viewable in Europe and people there can make accounts. But that's not sufficient.

GDPR asserts extraterritorial jurisdiction when you are either (1) offering goods and services in the Union or (2) monitoring the behavior of data subjects in the Union that takes place in the Union.

One of the recitals clarifies that the mere availability of a site to Europeans does not necessarily mean it is offering goods and services in the Union. The site has to envisage serving people in the Union.

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

#138

Post by cbg0 »

systemtest wrote: post #12

It is interesting that the EU only wants to regulate markets that they are not participating in. They don't make smartphone anymore so any regulations isn't hurting them. It would be admirable if they held the same standard for vehicles, including brands from the EU.

> the EU only wants to regulate markets that they are not participating in

This is incredibly inaccurate, there's tons of regulations in the EU for just about anything produced or imported here. One big example: cars, which the EU produces quite a lot of, see EURO emission standards for a specific example.

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

#139

Post by leptons »

f6v wrote: post #28

I 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?

I want to be able to change the battery far more often - possibly every 8 hours if I'm using the phone a lot during an off-road adventure or other adventure where having a charging device isn't a great solution. When I used to travel a lot I had a smartphone with a replaceable battery and I carried several replacement batteries. Going from 5% battery life to 100% battery life in the few seconds it takes to change the battery was a very useful thing when I wasn't able to charge the phone easily. And no, battery charging bricks are not convenient. They are way more bulky and take far longer to charge the phone than popping in a fully charged battery.

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

#140

Post by leptons »

theshrike79 wrote: post #135
BiteCode_dev wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because most people won't: - it's expensive - it takes their phone away If changing the battery is a one hour cheap deal, a lot more people may do it. And I am very happy about those EU initiatives: this way I know what sites are tracking me and how much. This tells me which sites values annoying me with their banner so they can sell my data. Have you noticed there is no banner on Hacker news despite the fact that: -…

Expensive? It’s like 50-70€ to swap an iPhone battery and you get a warranty for the battery. There’s no way a user-swappable battery will be cheaper than that.

Back when phones had replaceable batteries they were nowhere near 50-70€. Half that, if that much.
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