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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

#241

Post by vel0city »

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've got a little 2_000mAh 3.7V (7.4Wh) USB battery pack here that was vendor swag from a conference, a probably 3.7v? 10_000mAh () that I'll then assume is ~37Wh. and a Canon NB-13L 3.6V 1250mAh (4.5Wh battery pack) for my camera.

For mm^3/Wh, the results are:

Small vendor swag power bank: 96 x 21 x 26

52_416 / 7.4

7,083 Canon battery: 42 x 30 x 9

11_340 / 4.5

2,520 10,000mAh dual USB power bank: 139 x 22 x 60

183_480 / 37_000

~5 By volume / energy, the big power bank wins by a mile. And tbh its not that huge, similar footprint to my phone and about twice as thick. Plus, it can power two devices at once, which can be pretty handy. It has a bit over twice as much power as my phone's battery. This logically makes some sense, as phones these days are pretty much a battery and a screen with a small logic board tagging along for the ride.

If I'm on the go, I'd much rather have a large battery bank that provides a good bit of flexibility rather than a battery that only works with a single device. This one battery pack can charge my phone, my camera, my wireless mouse, my keyboard, my headphones, my e-reader, and then all the same list of stuff for my spouse. If I got a fancier one, it could even provide extra juice to my laptop. If I only had a battery specifically made for my phone, I'd only be able to swap out my phone battery and all of the rest of my devices would need their own batteries or just be left dead.

On top of that, if I wanted to then charge that battery outside of the phone I'd have to lug some specific charger for that model of battery. Meanwhile if I bothered getting a newer USB-C power pack the same power cable that charges my laptop and my phone and my headphones can also recharge my spare battery along with all the rest of the devices I mentioned. I'm much happier having a 10,000mAh battery pack in my backpack to recharge when needed than needing to think about having a few different batteries around and their related chargers to keep track of. Once this one dies I'll probably

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#242

Post by FemmeAndroid »

gbear605 wrote: post #224
arcbyte wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2010 you start a company, wholly owned by you. In 2011 you obtain a patent wholly owned by the company. In 2012 you fail to pay the franchise tax and filing paperwork for your company so the state dissolves it. You don't care because you aren't making money. In 2013 another company starts making a product that infringes on your patent. You are the defacto owner of the patent. This is because you were the owner of…

The purpose of a patent, generally speaking, is to encourage innovation by giving the creator legally protected time in which they can exclusively use that innovation. If they don’t use the innovation but someone else wants to, society is improved by dissolving that patent, even if the owner could theoretically be traced to some person.

The patent renewal system is the attempt to solve this. In the case that the patent isn’t wanted, or the patent owner goes out of business, the patent owner won’t pay the annual renewal (in most countries; the US is once every 4 years) and after the (usually) 6 month grace period, the patent is public.

The invention as disclosed and documented in the patent is free to the world.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#243

Post by ephbit »

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 projects like postmarketOS, fairphone, shiftphones, Librem, (mntreform for laptops) and other such croud-funded and more open/free designs.

Once such devices/OSes work good enough to be usable in day to day life without serious hassle/disappointments, more people will actually use them and a community can grow, allowing the products to mature.

I think a very good example (in software) is the f-droid app store that has reached a sufficient level of maturity that many people now use it exclusively (instead of the Google play store).

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#244

Post by therealchiggs »

JohnFen wrote: post #193
nickff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I don't think replaceable batteries or USB-C requirements restrict the industries ability to move forward. " Compelling the use of USB-C will cause stagnation in connector innovation; there's no point in trying to to create new and more durable/water-proof/wear-resistant/faster connectors. The requirements for replaceable batteries may cause stagnation in other innovations; if we imagine that there'd been similar…

> The requirements for replaceable batteries may cause stagnation in other innovations What conceivable stagnation could requiring replaceable batteries cause?

How can we know?

This is part of the challenge with these regulations - by definition we're defining a framework based on existential knowledge.

What about batteries that can also be panes of glass that act as the display? What about ultra low-power devices that are powered kinetically by typical human movement or magnetic perturbations?

None of these currently exist in a commercially viable form, but if we regulate based on our current view of technology do we run the risk of making these innovations more challenging to bring to market? That's the challenging balance that needs to be considered.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#245

Post by COGlory »

Moldoteck wrote: post #194
upon_drumhead wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you purchased a fair phone? They exist promising that exact product and yet I've never come across a single person that actually purchased what they claim to want. Personally, I love the thin phones. I'd pay extra for it. It feels better and is easier carried. And the large screen makes it easily readable for my poor eyes.

I would have bought a fairphone in a second if they had camera performance similar to pixel 2/3 or 7. And no, gcam port is not a solution sadly( as usual- people want both nice software and hardware and fairphone has nice hardware but software isn't that good

I'd buy one, even with poor performance, if it was available in the US.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#246

Post by COGlory »

cududa wrote: post #162
candiddevmike wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I blame Apple for everyone's obsession with size. Or really, thinness, as everyone seems to have pop tart phones as thin and fragile as glass--with such a large phone, what value does thinness really add? I'd rather have a less delicate, easily serviceable, thicker phone.

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.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#247

Post by ulfw »

seszett wrote: post #110
ulfw wrote: post #64

So how come they aren't making car (EV) batteries replaceable? Ah yes. Europe still has a car industry whereas there is zero phone or computer industry left.

> So how come they aren't making car (EV) batteries replaceable? I don't think 500 kg batteries can ever be easily and quickly user-replaceable, no matter what the EU mandates. You should complain about the laws of physics (or the weakness of humans) rather than make this ridiculous comparison.

And yet Nio is doing it already.

How "ridiculous"!

https://www.nio.com/nio-power

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#248

Post by fragmede »

arcbyte wrote: post #167
burntwater wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the owners/companies no longer exist, then I would think the IP should be free by default. Perhaps that's another law to work on...

In 2010 you start a company, wholly owned by you. In 2011 you obtain a patent wholly owned by the company. In 2012 you fail to pay the franchise tax and filing paperwork for your company so the state dissolves it. You don't care because you aren't making money. In 2013 another company starts making a product that infringes on your patent. You are the defacto owner of the patent. This is because you were the owner of…

So hire a PI. If someone doesn't want to be found, that's one thing, but if they're just out there, living their lives normally, that's not insurmountable.

In reality, it's a bunch of work which costs money, and if you don't have to spend that money, why would you?

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#249

Post by horsawlarway »

robertlagrant wrote: post #234
gbear605 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of a patent, generally speaking, is to encourage innovation by giving the creator legally protected time in which they can exclusively use that innovation. If they don’t use the innovation but someone else wants to, society is improved by dissolving that patent, even if the owner could theoretically be traced to some person.

Society is not improved if a beaurocrat can nullify people's inventions. Who decides what "using" is? Why do we need to pay taxes to employ those people? We have patent law, which is already a lovely gravy train for the state.

> Society is not improved if a beaurocrat can nullify people's inventions. Who decides what "using" is?

This is reversing the natural order of things. That bureaucrat isn't nullifying fucking ANYTHING. That bureaucrat is artificially limiting who is allowed to create/use a thing.

The natural state of the information is: "Use this - it's free". The whole of humanity might exist because mirror neurons literally go: "Hey - I can do that too!".

It's only when you add a monstrously complex and entirely artificial patent system on top of things that it gets complex.

So we're ALREADY deciding who is allowed to use things, and it's already artificial and bureaucratic.

All this does is fucking stop making it worse. And patent/copywrite is already so god damn egregious as a system. I'm firmly in the camp of "nuke it from orbit". It's time to try something other than this hideous abusive system.

Re: European Union votes to bring back replaceable phone batteries

#250

Post by ilyt »

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.

Then you don't get to sell your e-waste in EU. That's enough motivation for them to do.
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