Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027

ecopv-eu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 560 posts

Re: Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027

#461

Post by poisonborz »

elzbardico wrote: post #229
poisonborz wrote: post #187

Classic EU move, the last-minute 1000-cycle exemption undercuts the entire regulation.

Looks like saner minds prevailed. Almost nobody needs or wants that. Having to pay a street corner repair shop to replace a battery only after 3 or 4 years of usage is completely worth a price to pay for having thinner batteries.

HN / pro user forums alone are a massive indicator of the need for this. Same argument could be made in the form of almost nobody needs or wants "thinner batteries". Not many are going for the street corner for this, and it is insane that people are throwing away 2-3-4 year old perfectly capable high end devices. Not just because of battery but lack of support and closed ecosystem. The industry is incentivised to go towards unrepairable throwaway products you are forced to renew. The madness needs to stop.

Re: Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027

#462

Post by microtonal »

amarant wrote: post #377
kube-system wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An operating system is only part of the software you might need to update or secure on a phone (as is the case with many other devices).

Indeed! The law needs to include firmware in some way. I'm not smart enough to come up with how exactly it should be dealt with, but it does need to be dealt with. Currently Qualcomm decides when your phone stops getting updates, pretty much regardless to who actually made your phone. Shoutout to fairphone who actually updated the firmware themselves, surely a loss leading project, but a very respectable dedication t…

Shoutout to fairphone who actually updated the firmware themselves, surely a loss leading project, but a very respectable dedication to end users.

I am not sure how much of a shout-out they deserve. For example, Fairphone 4 is still supported until this year. They ship with firmware from 2023 and with a kernel patch release from 2024. Every one of their phones is full of holes because their software lags so much.

Even on their most recent model, they are frequently more than a half year behind firmware updates, ship 1-2 year old kernels, and are late with major Android releases (meaning you miss out on security patches not classified high/critical).

Good examples of software longevity are iPhone, Google Pixel, GrapheneOS, and to a lesser extend Samsung flagships.

Re: Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027

#463

Post by exe34 »

al_borland wrote: post #407
exe34 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worse than I thought: https://support.casio.com/en/support/answer.php?cid=00900101... "• To maintain water resistance, have the gaskets of your watch replaced periodically (about once every two or three years)."

It seems like the same can be true for the glue used on the iPhone. > Splash, water, and dust resistance are not permanent conditions and resistance might decrease as a result of normal wear. Liquid damage is not covered under warranty, but you might have rights under consumer law.[0] If a gasket has a predictable life, there could be a warning after that period that the water resistance may be compromised and to rep…

I have had blackview "rugged" phones before - the only reason I had to give up on them was that they never update the OS and I couldn't get Lineage OS on them.

These things _do_not_break_. Once I rashly dropped mine on a concrete floor to show off to a friend. I regretted it immediately, thinking oh no, I didn't have to take it that far... it turned out it was completely fine. I washed it with soap when I got mud over it. It also weighed a ton in my pocket.

Re: Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027

#464

Post by [deleted] »

0xffff2 wrote: post #409
criddell wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure the loophole exists? AFAIK, this is the regulation: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1542/oj/eng I don't see that exemption listed. The other ones are, but not that one.

Take this with a mountain of salt since I've not at all an expert, but with a little help from AI, it seems like the exemption lives in 2023/1670 [0]. The LLM claims that this and the regulation you link are interconnected, with the recital of 2023/1542 explicitly linking them. 0: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

[deleted]

Re: Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027

#465

Post by Dylan16807 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #453
GuB-42 wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also a rugged phone. So if you want to make a fair comparison with an iPhone, you have to put the iPhone in a case, resulting in a similar weight and thickness.

The distinction, though, is that you get to make that choice as the consumer. You can carry the phone with no case, or you can put a very rugged case on it, or something in between.

> The distinction, though, is that you get to make that choice

From the narrow point of view of "this option or nothing", yes.

For the more general purpose view of "imagine a non-rugged version", such a phone would have a lot less of a size/weight penalty.

Re: Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027

#466

Post by isodev »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #438

Can I play devil's advocate for a moment? Imagine that Apple decides to protest this new rule. They say: We will stop stelling iPhones in the EU. However, you can buy from non-EU countries (US, Canada, AUS/NZ, UK, etc.), and we will ship to you, or you can use a third party shipper. I know, I know, HN crowd loves to play legal games like this ("this one weird trick...") -- they rarely work in the Real World. Real leg…

This is not possible. Any product sold in the EU, regardless of where it is shipped from, must comply with EU rules and standards (e.g., safety, environmental, digital market rules…). Customs can and do block non-compliant imports.

If Apple wants to keep any of their other services and products, they will also be subject to consumer protection regulation meaning they can’t geoblock consumers and they have to ensure their unsafe products don’t end up with EU citizens.

Re: Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027

#467

Post by lostlogin »

SoftTalker wrote: post #456
arendtio wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what exactly is a charge cycle? I mean, the effect on a battery being loaded from 0% to 100% and drained to 0% again is vastly different from a battery being charged from 40% to 50% and being used until 40% ten times in a row.

And how many people have the free mental space to manage the charge capacity of their phone? I plug mine into the charger when I go to bed, and unplug it in the morning when I start my day. I don't have time to think about phone charge levels much beyond that.

The will mange it for you - the iOS setting app has options to do this.

Re: Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027

#468

Post by anonymars »

matchbok3 wrote: post #403
anonymars wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False dichotomy. The question isn't whether you can make money with a replaceable battery, but whether you can make more money by selling specialized service (or an entirely new phone) than a battery. What else are people going to do, not buy a phone? Switch operating systems entirely? This whole thing becomes more obvious in the Android world, where models with various features do exist, but only in certain markets…

People can, and do, switch OSes. Or use a flip phone.

This seems akin to suggesting that if people didn't want touchscreen-only cars they could just ride a motorcycle

Re: Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027

#469

Post by extraduder_ire »

tremon wrote: post #291
badsectoracula wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately it is from 2022, meaning no OS upgrades. I think the next mandatory laws EU should pass is that manufacturers should either allow people to upgrade/replace the OS by themselves or provide mandatory upgrades for the next decade (i don't care how the manufacturers handle it, that's up to them, but the easiest way out of such a law is to allow people upgrade/replace the OS by themselves).

The regulation already mandates an OS upgrade period, but the period depends on how long the manufacturer keeps selling the model: software updates must be provided for five years from the day when the manufacturer stops selling the product. From Annex II B, section 1.2: > (6) Operating system updates: > (a) from the date of end of placement on the market to at least 5 years after that date, manufacturers, importers…

> There's some weasel wording there ("if they provide ..."), so I'm curious how the courts are going to interpret that clause.

Motorola already seems to be testing this interpretation of the law.

https://www.androidauthority.com/motorola-eu-software-update...

Re: Removable batteries in smartphones will be mandatory in the EU starting in 2027

#470

Post by scottbez1 »

illusive4080 wrote: post #314
criddell wrote: post #297

I wish the EU would tackle standardization of tool batteries. It's so stupid that every brand has their own battery system.

I wish they would stop trying to over regulate everything. If you want to use your tool battery in another brand just get an adapter.

I wouldn’t recommend this outright without recommending some research first. Some brands put the over-discharge protection into the tools instead of the batteries, so using one of those batteries in other tools may permanently kill the battery pack.
Post reply on HN