Technology

European Union is doing the work the U.S. government should be.
U.S. government is too busy worrying about what people are doing in their bedrooms, libraries and doctor's offices.

Beyond being good for right-to-repair, this used to be the one way to be sure that your phone is off and is not listening to you. It's a stride on the privacy side as well.

I don't mind that my phone battery is sealed up. I do mind that I have to bring it to a specialist that might screw it up and make me pay for the privilege.

Actually, this bothers me way more with laptops than with phones. With laptops, there's no water resistance or any other reason besides thinness to seal the battery up. Particularly with business machines, the computing power will be more-than-sufficient for many years to come, yet many will end up in the trash because the battery's no longer doing its job. It's ridiculously wasteful.

Great news! No point in 5 or 6 years of software updates when the battery gives out after 3 years.

I don't even want to replace my battery. I want it to last. At least 5 years.

Bring legislation that enforces a 5 year warranty on batteries that are built-in. That would help the environment much more than being able to replace a battery every year that shouldn't fail in the first place. And yes, it's possible to build batteries that last longer. It's more effort, true. But so is building exchangeable batteries or doing an exchange. I rather shell off 50 € more for my phone when I know that the battery will make it 5 years.

Good, now add SD card please.

The EU has been good at holding phone manufacturers to account on this kind of thing, glad it's gone through. I've had at least two phones die on me through the battery breaking, it shouldn't be cheaper to just buy a new phone than get the battery replaced. So much waste.

Hoping us UK folk will see the benefit of this as I imagine it's less effort to just bring the change about across the board than to be specific about geography.

Laughing in Fairphone

It must be nice to have leaders that actually do useful things.

Any battery is replaceable if you pry it hard enough

Anyone remember the LG V10? Mine came with an extra battery and a charging dock for the external batteries. Never plugged that phone up once in 2.5 years, just took 10 seconds to swap in a full battery.

I wouldn't even care about it being super easily replaceable. It would just be nice if the phone wasn't basically filled with glue...

Yes! 🥳

This is a much bigger demand than the usbc charging. I wonder if they can actually pull it off. I’d be happy with simply the right to be able to use a fully independent 3rd party to replace a battery.

I used to have a phone with a replaceable battery and it was awesome. I would charge the other battery while using the phone all day, carefree. When it was about to die, I'd swap out the battery. It was basically like I had an instant charge of 100% on my phone. Those were good days.

Now require manufacturers to provide like 5 years of OS updates so devices aren't insecure bricks once you get updates.

OR disallow banking apps from blocking custom ROMs/root, so you can just install your own updates ROM without losing updates.

All for this. The amount of times I've needed to do a full reset that would've been so much easier with a removable battery is wild. Waiting 10 hours for it to discharge is nuts

The language in the article does seem to forget that plenty of early smartphones had replaceable batteries... Yeah, it might add some bulk, but it's not exactly going to be a major hardship.

... but it seems like a good reverse step to me. Any consumer replaceable part is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

The motherboard is so freakin' tiny compared to the actual battery, there really is no reason for it not to be swappable.

At long last. I really miss being able to swap phone batteries. Phone batteries are light, compared to external batteries.

Would this affect the waterproof ratings of phones? It would make the phone less sealed.

Man I wish the US regulatory body would throw some wrenches like this at the tech companies here. They need a wake up call, start with breaking up Meta. Right to repair is also often gutted

Hell yes! This has been a big sticking point for me since they started being removed around 2016. I hung on to my Note 4 until it was tired around 2019/2020, bought an LG V20 as it was the most recent 'flagship' still using a removable battery, then I finally crossed over to the darkside with the S21 Ultra.

Hopefully options will open up over the next few years as even if you don't want a removable battery, your preference shouldn't dictate the entire market. The smart phone market is way too homogeneous where every phone is essentially the same in a mildly different brick shape with a different logo.

Good. With this, my next phone might also last 6 years, as my last one did. I'm not so confident with my current phone, as it's exactly one of these glued shut types where replacing the battery is extremely difficult.

I'm fine with internal batteries, but please use some form of standard cell size and connector.

I wonder how something like this could affect waterproofing.

This is great news! Even better than the USB-C regulation. Changing a battery on a modern phone is a huge pita… And it’s definitely getting worse since some companies are trying everything to prevent you from doing so…

I would absolutely buy a phone twice as thick as my iPhone SE 2020 if it has an easily swappable battery. Bonus points if it is able to be used as an actual phone without a case to prevent it from dying instantly from a light breeze or some evil look by a person…