It had been in the works for a while, but now it has formally been adopted. From the article:
The regulation provides that by 2027 portable batteries incorporated into appliances should be removable and replaceable by the end-user, leaving sufficient time for operators to adapt the design of their products to this requirement.
GDPR
forcing usb-c
forcing removable batteries
The EU sure is handling tech laws and tech giants a fuck of a lot better than the US is. Damn.
Jealous.
Well yeah, the US is set up for giant corporations to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible regardless of how much it will fuck over the customer, bonus points if fucking over the customer doesn’t include immediate proof of physical harm to said customer.
Wait until you hear about another awesome thing they’re trying to do: chat control
The real danger behind Chat Control and similar measures, is that countries won’t even have to utilize parallel construction anymore. No longer will dragnet surveillance mostly target the big guys. They’ll be able to basically automate prosecution of any crime that they desire.
Think about how many little slices have been taken out of our freedom pie over the last 10 years. How many similar dystopian laws have passed despite our outrage?
Technology is outpacing our ability to protect ourselves, and countries will keep pushing boundaries until nothing is left sacred.
Oppression never sleeps.
Technology is just a tool though. It could equally be used to stop tax evasion entirely, and all sorts of crime by tracking transactions and abolishing cash. Location monitoring for evidence, etc.
Like surveillance isn’t a bad thing when your house is burgled or you get mugged.
The real issue is that the politicians are often the ones doing the tax evasion, fraud, etc. in the first place, and they don’t care about violent crime that only affects working class areas.
Did you really just try to spin transactional and location tracking as a good thing?
How is it that some of the safest countries are also the most privacy respecting?
That’s disgusting.
Yay! Very awesome indeed. /s
Yeah, that is so unfortunate. As someone who really wants to move to Europe someday mainly because of their excellent regulations regarding tech, Chat Control has certainly made me rethink that decision, though not really cancelling it outright.
Not hard when you start saying “corporations are people too” and then let them donate all the money to the people making the laws.
The concept of corporate personhood is way older than you think, it goes back to at least ancienct Rome around 800 BC. Other countries have that as well, eg. the German constitution says very explicitly “Fundamental rights shall also apply to domestic artificial persons insofar as the nature of such rights shall permit.”. That’s not really the issue, the actual issue is the extreme reliance of political campaigns on donations coupled with the exorbitant costs of political campaigning in the US.
Citizen’s United is very often misrepresented as being about corporate personhood, when in fact this concept isn’t even referenced in the ruling at all. Instead the ruling says that political speech rights aren’t contingent on the identity of the speaker at all. Even if you abolish corporate personhood (which would bring a whole host of other issues with it because for example corporate property ownership hinges on the legal person concept as well) that still wouldn’t overturn Citizen’s United.
With a bit of luck, complaince in the EU will become the norm and we will get these globally.
The EU are fighting this fight for everyone.
What’s GDPR?
Data privacy to protect individuals. Quick summary here: https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/General-Data-Protection-Regulation-GDPR
We should have that in America
California has a similar law, the CCPA.
I recently learned about this. Funny thing, some parts of it are almost a copy paste of the GDPR.
The good news is that GDPR protects you somewhat regardless of where you’re from and who you are. If a company fucks with the privacy of an EU citizen living in the USA they are still on the hook, so companies generally adopt the measures (e.g. the ability to request and delete all your data) globally. You can even just get a VPN and set it to somewhere in the EU.
But please make it more readable and short please. This document is awful to read
Legalese is actually a good thing because it covers every possible situation and reduces the number of loopholes. We have people like LegalEagle to break shit down for us into plain English. If we write the laws themselves in plain English then corporate lawyers will argue, successfully, that there’s a loophole that lets them violate the spirit of the law, or the government will apply the law in situations where it wasn’t meant to be applied in order to fuck over innocent people.
In France we had something in our constitution once that ruled that trying to abuse the laws was prohibited and judges were instructed to apply the law in a fair way, not in the most technically correct way
it’ll just mean that multiple BOMs have to be designed for any given product - it may lead to fewer products being available, over time. or perhaps the reverse - I guess we’ll see in ~3.5 years
I’m honestly not sure how much of a win GDPR is. If you consider the number of seconds people have collectively spent clicking mindlessly on “accept cookies” dialogues, it’s one of the worst wastes of people’s time ever.
Don’t get anoyed at gdpr for that. Websites could perfectly operate with those banners being non-intrusive, they choose not to.
I feel like they make them as annoying as possible on purpose so that:
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You learn to just click “accept” since that’s always available and clearly visible (Vs 3/4 clicks and finding the dark grey over light grey text at font size 6)
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People develop the same opinion as the previous comment “stupid GDPR is just annoying because extra clicks” and making sure they never get the support for it in the US.
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Laws should be evaluated according to their consequences, intended and unintended. If a law starts from the purest of intentions, and ends up annoying literally billions of people forever, it’s still a problem.
Accepting cookies is not a GDPR regulation. It’s the cookie law, which is a lot older than GDPR.
GDPR was a mistake
I’m an EU citizen and I strongly approve of GDPR. Out of curiosity: are you an EU citizen?
I don’t live in the EU and am supportive. It pushed a lot of companies to implement mechanisms that should’ve been there in the first place.
I am not.
Better go back playing StarCraft, my man
wc3 has better maps
I’m curious why you think it was a mistake.
The power was always in the client’s hands.
Care to elaborate on that profound statement?
You can just not accept cookies.
Yeah… After the GDPR became a thing
? You know Firefox can just deny them
Uh huh. Considering you don’t live in an EU country, and by your statements I highly doubt you’ve ever interacted with GDPR in any way especially on the business side… It’s safe to disregard your fortune cookies.
Lol
lmao, even
The real issue nowadays is the software, although this is still a good step.
But being stuck with no software updates after 2-4 years still renders them unusable (when also locked down).
They should be forced to provide open bootloaders, firmware and kernel drivers once the devices reach end of life. Maybe even include hardware details and schematics, etc. for full repairability.
The efforts of devices like the Framework laptop and Steam Deck should be commonplace. It’s insane we put some corporation’s patents and trade secrets above the environment.
While they have other not-friendly practices, Apple does well on the software side. The iPhone 8, going on 6 years old this September, is still running the latest version of iOS.
I’ve been away from Android for a while now. Is it still the case that there is a lot of fragmentation and updates end prematurely? Or is there another OS / software you’re thinking about?
Android/Google tried to make this a bit easier through Project Treble, which is like a “core” of android that can be easily updated, then vendors build their modifications on top of it. It’s pretty widely adopted now, but that doesn’t stop companies from deciding they don’t want to support hardware from three years ago even though it is still compatible with the latest Android core.
Samsung offers 5 years of support nowadays. The other big manufacturers tend to be lacking in this regard however.
Iirc Samsung is 5 years security, 4 years os updates. Pixel line is 5 years security, 3 years os.
But Samsung releases just before a new Android version comes out, so phones launched in the same year get the same last update
I could apply that argument to Pixels. S23 has been available since February, and the Pixel 8 still hasn’t been released. Right now, both are running Android 13, yet the Samsung is getting an extra OS update
Fairphone 3 is aiming at 7 years on Android https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/fairphone-3-gets-seven-years-of-updates-besting-every-other-android-oem/
If you don’t buy no-name brand phones, you will get at least one major update. Even chinese brands such as xiaomi will provide updates. You can also install generic LineageOS image if your phone can be unlocked some way, official or not. It works on most devices.
But many smart TVs become useless very quick. When I was using 2015 phone in 2020, TV newer than that already loaded the lightweight Google version for unsupported browsers and vast majority sites/apps became unavailable. It used browser that was already 2 years old when it was released and never released an update to it. But when there was root vulnerability, they released a fix after long time of being basically unsupported.
oh man, I’d kill to know how to hack my fucking samsung tv. I don’t use it’s useless “business” smart functions, but every time i turn it on it nags me with that terrible menu. and there’s no way to turn it off because they completely fucked it up by pushing ads through that menu.
The thing with older iPhones, running new iOSes, is that they’re intentionally slowed down (by the software) or as I’d like to call it, underclocked. That also could render them useless, even with new iOS, and even if there were removable batteries.
The intentional slowdown was directly related to battery life. They got sued over it. But if you put in a new battery, performance returns to previous levels.
Apple even tells you in your battery info settings page whether you are running with “Peak Performance Capability”.
Apple is one of the worst offenders. When they sunset a device they force blanket app incompatibility on it, rendering it unusable. It can be a perfectly good device, fully working, but all apps (already installed apps too!) will start suddenly requiring a new iOS version which isn’t available for that device.
It’s up to individual developers what the minimum OS version they support for their app is. If you have previously downloaded an app and the minimum version is raised above the version you are running on your device then you can still download the most recent version that supports your device
Yeah, what happens is that it takes effort to keep supporting multiple OS versions. iOS has a history of users being like 90% on the newest OS every time there’s a major update, so a lot of companies only support one previous version beyond the current.
Android is a different matter. It has always been a fragmented mess and new OS adoption has always been very slow (it’s faster nowadays though). Because of that Google maintains a set of libraries that make sure Android features work the same way across multiple versions, which eases the burden on developers.
The problem is all of these apps are using proprietary APIs to communicate to centralized backends, which then deprecate the APIs and the old versions cease to work. Back when software was largely communicating over standardized protocols it was feasible to run an old version of software for years after it had been stopped being maintained, but protocols don’t make money, APIs do.
I developed and shipped iOS apps, and what you wrote is actually incorrect.
Apple does not allow developers to put on the app store applications built targetting an iOS version below a certain point.
Also Apple controls the build environment for applications which are listed on the App Store: you have to build and push the app for the store on Xcode (contractually and enforced cryptograhically) and it even has to be running on a Mac computer (contractually).
So it’s not up to individual developers what the minimum OS version they support for their app, at least not if they want to be able to distribute it via the App Store (which is the only way they can be distributed for non-rooted phones).
Absolutelly, lots of devs just go along with the Xcode defaults (which by the way, are a soft push by Apple) and build against a very recent iOS version, but those who want to support really old iPhones aren’t allowed to.
By “worst offenders” do you mean “industry leading”?
Lol only for smartphones, and I don’t think that’s something to be proud of. When it comes to computers, you’ll get 10+ years out of Windows and basically indefinite from any major Linux distro. A Mac will only get 5-8 years of updates and it’s a huge issue because things like your browser won’t be maintained either, which makes the computer quickly become useless. Hell Apple actually charges $20 just to install old versions of macOS for old hardware.
Pretty damn sad that people have set the bar on the floor for phones
Ok chief.
Drop a look at FairPhone, they provide 7 years software support for their devices and make sure all the materials are fairly sourced. No Apple-like child labor and suicide workers.
only 2 models and the “cheap” one is more than I paid for the last two phones I had, combined. what percentage of the market do they have?
I am not sure about the percentage of the market. It’s a standard Android without the bloat so compatibility is there. Price is not that expensive when compared to industry leaders but even if you do consider it expensive that’s the reality of the matter when you want to buy a device which is made with materials whose production didn’t exploit child labor or someone’s misery.
Company has a fairly clear goal and is focused towards that. They want to reduce waste by allowing device to be disassembled and repaired at home, while at the same time providing spare parts years after device production has ended. And along the way make sure materials and labor are all fair trade and fair employment. Take a look at their “our mission” and “our impact” pages. They list every supplier for each of the parts and materials. They even offer recycling your old devices for you.
One step at a time, easy to get people behind something like batteries, as it’s a common point of failure on phones. Then we go after their shitty software practices.
There are open source operating systems that are Android based which will update to the latest versions and fix bugs and suchwell beyond the manufacturer’s support, lineageOS for example.
A tricky part is that some apps detect an unlocked bootloader and brick themselves, which effectively makes it impossible to use those apps on such devices. And while I don’t think rooting is a strict requirement for installing LineageOS based off a quick search, rooting also has this problem (and at least last time I installed a custom OS many years ago, I recall either having to root or thinking I had to root).
Your information is a few years outdated. lineageOS neither comes rooted, nor does it offer a native way to root anymore. Magisk became a thing with a whole community around it. It’s an unlocked bootloader hider, root manager (and hider), and a system patcher, all wrapped up in one tool.
With Magisk, you give root access to the apps that need it, hide root ability from apps that require non-root devices (those apps do that by pretending to need root). Also, the Magisk app can rename itself, which is important as some apps check against the name itself.
The future challenge is with Google trying to force hardware identification (Apple style). I have not been following developments regarding that though, since as others mentioned, my X years old phone is still serving me perfectly, and I have no intention to upgrade any time soon.
Assuming someone makes a ROM for your device. This is often the case if you go with one of the most popular models but less popular devices might simply see no development effort – if the developers can even get their hands on the drivers and other necessary parts to build Android for that device.
It’d be great if manufacturers had to release all of the stuff necessary to run AOSP on their devices but I doubt it’s going to happen.
Also sucks because, since they don’t update the software. Then they develop always on the recent or latest hardware (which requires less optimizations) and we end up always stuck in terms of performance and battery life.
Both Samsung and Apple offer 5+ years of software support nowadays. It seems unreasonable to expect much more IMO. Devices don’t stop working after no longer receiving updates, and there is also the option of jailbreaking/installing custom ROMs for those who really care.
They should be forced to provide open bootloaders, firmware and kernel drivers once the devices reach end of life.
How would you propose it?
You wouldn’t be able to say “smartphones” as not all run Android obviously. Limiting legislation to Android specifically would make no sense either, OEMs may just do hard forks then (ahem, HarmonyOS).
Why not force Apple too?
Well, these goals are about sustainability of batteries and electric related “stuff” in general not just phones. Phone affect us the most in terms of everyday life and addiction but in terms of long term impact to the environment and what we need to focus on the most that’s a harder nut to crack b/c we don’t know how growth will happen moving forward. So I think this makes sense to have a broad/sweeping legislation that covers lots of mediums and has different targets depending on the size/usage of the “thing”. Obviously removing a battery from a car is not the same thing (in terms of complexity or even ‘need’) as removing a battery from an electric scooter.
EU is the only government body in the world that does something meaningful for the average consumer.
This is great. Now the producers of smartphones will have to make their design around this!
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Right. Technically, iPhone X batteries could be considered “replaceable”. Practically, when I did it, I had to purchase an $80 kit with tools, then take on substantial risk that I’d break it irreparably(say 20%), and put in a solid 4 hours of effort to do so.
Valuing my time at $20/hour, and the phone at $800, that’s $80 + $160 + $80 = $320.
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Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those batteries are readily removable and replaceable by the end-user at any time during the lifetime of the product. That obligation shall only apply to entire batteries and not to individual cells or other parts included in such batteries.
A portable battery shall be considered readily removable by the end-user where it can be removed from a product with the use of commercially available tools, without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless provided free of charge with the product, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product.
Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those products are accompanied with instructions and safety information on the use, removal and replacement of the batteries. Those instructions and that safety information shall be made available permanently online, on a publicly available website, in an easily understandable way for end-users.
without requiring the use of specialized tools
That’s a big one. Nice to see it covered. Negates any silly “well you just need to buy our $200 disassemble kit” nonsense you know would have been there otherwise
I can’t see anything that would force them to change the status quo.
Boom, $20, every tool needed. Hits the commercially available clause. You don’t have to have a heat gun (it certainly helps). If people want to fight it, then you’re going to have a weaker screen because the glue loosens easier with heat because the alternative is a glue that is weaker at regular temps. IP ratings are included now, they’ll be a price point after this if that issue is forced. Should it be? No, removable batteries with IP68 are made right now, but when has a manufacturer ever needed a halfway decent excuse to raise prices?
Edited: spoke before I researched. Don’t be like me.
So, this would cover screens as well? (that is what apple does (at least in the u.s.) to their laptop screens.)
“Impede the replacement of” and “compatible battery” has a lot of room for interpretation. I hope they’re defined explicitly somewhere, or else we’re going to find implementations that effectively restrict non-OEM batteries while still adhering to the letter of the law.
For example, all batteries lacking a cryptographically-verified “certification” handshake could have safety restrictions such as:
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Limited maximum amperage draw, achieved by under-clocking the SoC and sleeping performance cores.
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Lower thermal limits while charging the device, meaning fast charging may be limited or preemptively disabled to ensure that the battery does not exceed an upper threshold of you-might-want-to-put-it-in-the-fridge degrees.
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Disabling wireless charging capabilities, just in case magnetic induction affects the uncertified battery full of unknown and officially-untested components.
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A pop-up warning the user every time the device is plugged into or unplugged from a charger.
All of that would technically meet the condition insofar that it’s neither impeding the physical replacement nor rendering the device inoperable, but it would still effectively make the phone useless unless you pay for a (possibly-overpriced) OEM part.
If they explicitly defined “Impede the replacement of” as “prevent replacement of or significantly alter user experience as a result of replacing,” and “compatible battery” as “electrically-compatible battery” all those cases would be covered.
Might be a bit of cynical take, but I don’t have too much faith in the spirit of the law being adhered to when profits are part of the equation.
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I just recently replaced the screen on an iPad idk the gen but they are all about the same in the screen replacement in my experience and the screen on my Pixel 7 Pro. Both were actually shockingly easy and imo didn’t require special tools. Just need a heat gun, eyeglass screwdriver, etc. You can get the kits with all the “special tools” but really you could make it happen with a butter knife.
From what I recall they will allow screws and similar instead of just having a cover. However no security or custom screws requiring you to purchase tools to replace it. Also, no gluing and stuff like that. Fair enough I think
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In the EU that isn’t as much of an issue when it comes to Android because they mandate that the bootloader must be unlockable (compared to the US at least, cough SAMSUNG cough). So as long as the device is somewhat popular, you’ll always have updates through custom firmware like LineageOS.
Doesn’t help Apple, though they’ve been… surprisingly good with last generation updates lately? iOS 16 can be installed on an 8 year old(ish) phone.
How can the EU target only Android for this unlockable bootloader that you mention? Shouldn’t it apply to iOS as well?
It does apply to both, but there are no real OS alternatives for Apple hardware. Unlike android hardware where there are many custom roms available for most devices.
I’m curious how software can last shorter. Could you maybe give me an example ?
The only way i can think of is companies reducing software support.
It’s possible that Apple may do this, but for android - it’d just result in a thriving community for Custom ROMs.
I think that what @agilob@lemmy.world is saying, is that now that companies will no longer have the option of planned obsolescence via a shitty battery, companies will pivot into sunsetting software technologies faster, so users can keep replacing their devices at the same pace they do today.
I felt like Google and Verizon really dropped the ball with the galaxy nexus. Then again with the Moto X. Community support was mixed for the moto and better on the nexus. Which eventually led me to drop android in favor of iOS. However, none of it has compared to the level of OS support I’ve received from my Apple products.
What I really wonder is what happens to water resistance capabilities for phones that are not sealed?
It’s not just support. Companies like Google and Apple can do a lot to pressure third party developers to remove compatibility for older versions.
This includes:
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limiting compatibility for new versions of the API. So if you want to be compatible with the latest Android/iOS version, you have to drop compatibility for older versions.
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make the newest version of the toolchains incompatible with older versions of the OS.
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In Google’s case, they can mandate things like SafetyNet, which directly targets the custom ROM community.
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For example they are not provoding security upgrades. Now you can unlock your bootloader and install your own Android Rom built by yourself or fron someone else. However with Safetynet, many applications are not working if you jave unlocked your bootloader. So, you can run the latest version but without lockec bootloader, you cannot use for example some banks. They enforce you to have Google Play Services controlling your phone to have access to your money. So they can pretty easily just sop providing updates and then you sre enforced to buy a new one. The last years Samsung and Pixels are getting more than 5years of support however nowadays our devices are powerful enoughto be used for almost decade.
Apple could do this but they’d be driving away their customer base, the hardware is fine but software is really the reason to get an iphone.
I agree with all of the other regulations, but this one doesn’t seem like a good thing.
Phones with internal batteries are arguably better for a variety of different reasons. I don’t want any more flimsy phone bodies like the old androids. As long as the phone can be easily serviced, I think that is enough.
Not sure how removable batteries make a phone more flimsy. The back might pop off when you drop it, sure, but isn’t that preferable to having it crack?
The usual argument manufacturers present is that water-proofing a phone involves having its interior be as completely sealed as possible, whereas a removable battery obviously requires that its interior be at least vaguely accessible, so it makes water-proofing substantially more challenging. Additionally, they can’t be as efficient with packing the internals tightly since the battery has to be accessible without completely disassembling the entire phone, so devices have to be a bit thicker.
I won’t pretend to have enough knowledge about device manufacturing to known just how sound those arguments are, but that’s what they say.
What about water proofing? To make it popoff I guess they have to make it thicker. No expert here though.
Samsung xcover phones have removable batteries while retaining IP68 rating.
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Waterproofing is what came to my mind.
Samsung used to make the “Active” lne of Galaxy phones which were waterproof shock resistent and had removable backs and batteries and a way for the phone to detect if the back was properly sealed.
I mean rubber seals and o-rings exist. If I remember correctly the law doesn’t demand easily swappable batteries, but rather them to be replaceable at all. So just use screws to hold the backplate in place, it could even look somewhat cool like on a Royal Oak Watch.
Most phones today are less waterproof than when they had replaceable batteries. There’s no connection between the two, it’s a red herring.
I had an LG with removable battery and a metal back. The manufacturers that said they couldn’t make a removable back out of anything but shitty plastic were blowing smoke up your ass.
I’m sure we’ll see plenty of skirting the laws around these batteries. “well actually, out barriers are removable and easily accessible if you do XYZ”
Any time there’s regulations there’s always a raft of companies saying how it’s going to put them out of business, yet they’ll all stick around and continue to make sales, almost like they need to adapt to changing environments.
I currently still own an LG G5 (LineageOS). This is what an actually removable and replaceable battery looks like and should be like. This is that same phone in water for two minutes. This phone is from 7 years ago. Only phone left on the market nowadays with those capabilities (probably even better) is Fairphone.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/shorts/DZhfH6Hn1tM?feature=share
https://piped.video/watch?v=dqXJHn-Us9U
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… so this bot is an ad?
e: weird getting downvoted for asking a question.
Its not selling anything.
Lemmy has a very foss focused privacy focused community and this is a bot which responds to YouTube links ( not privacy respecting ) with piped links ( privacy respecting ) so the people who don’t want to open YouTube due to said privacy concerns do not have to open YouTube. Similar to the reddit bots that would respond to amp links with the actual link.
Ad for a better service
lol
RIP LG phones.
I found the sounds in that video oddly satisfying.
I used to have this phone back in the day. It was cool but it ran hot as hell and I got really bad screen burn after a year or so.
Holy shit I wanted one of these so bad back when they came out. How’s the performance on lineage?
It’s pretty damn good (android 12), especially considering i got this second hand from a random guy
I don’t really like that, of the phone gets stolen it’s too easy for the thief to turn off the phone by just pulling the battery put.
You can force reboot phone with holding power button or all buttons for about 10 seconds and it will reboot. You don’t need removable battery fot that. Or you can just remove sim for example. Thiefs aren’t dumb
Samsung’s phone will just reset if do that
I can’t see any added value of having an unremovable battery that isn’t entirely outweighted by the advantage of you being able to replace it.
Giving up your right to easily replace a key part of your phone just so in the event it gets stolen a thief can’t take it out, to me feels like saying that pissing on your food so the person next to you won’t eat it while you are gone is a good idea.
Additional points:
- Any phone thief probably has the tools (or knows a guy) to remove any battery from any phone.
- In case your phone has an account lock feature, that doesn’t go by just removing the battery, they would have to do some advanced wiping, which would make having the unremovable battery useless anyways.
- “Oh but at least i can track them down and feel like a secret agent on a mission against the thief bad guy” 1) Dont, i dont think your phone is worth your safety. 2) they can just put it in a faraday bag as others already pointed out. Or literally a tinfoil wrap. A “faraday bag” is actually a stupid piece of radiation blocking pouch you can buy for 10 euros on amazon really.
You know what instead actually prevents your phone from being stolen? Paying attention to your pockets and avoiding to flex the latest iphone model around. I am absolutely sure “safety” and “consumer security” are points companies will bring up against user-removable batteries
Dude it’s just as easy to wrap it in aluminium foil and call it a day
Changing the battery on my laptop extended its life by 4 years. This is a great legislation.
I miss replaceable batteries, but not just for sustainability. Having a spare battery with you is much, much, much,… better than carrying a power bank + cable with you, which also can’t give your phone juice instantly. Also sometimes the batteries may randomly become universal, like the Nokia BL-5C currently used in many radio receivers.
It feels weird that governments have to force companies to give us back what we used to have.
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The Galaxy S5 had waterproofing and a removable battery, and it worked alright. They’ll just have to make sure the gaskets and latches aren’t garbage.
Gaskets brother, waterproof phones existed for a long time, they have been there since phones had SIM cards under their batteries
Look at things like mechanical watches where a watch that is rated for less than 100 meters of depth in dry test chamber is called “delicate” even though you can unskrew both the crown and the back with your hands on pretty much all of them
SIM cards are becoming one-time eSIM activation QR codes slowly. Prepaid eSIM QR codes didn’t exist in my country until PLDT-Smart introduced them, with Globe and newcomer DITO following suit soon.
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So far it’s improving due to their own MVNO GOMO PH and strong competition.
My XCover 6pro is ip68 rated and has a removable battery (and a headphone jack)
This is my concern. I typically replace my iPhone with a newer model before I need to replace the battery, but the newer waterproof ratings all of my devices are coming with are nice in case I accidentally drop my device in the tub. I understand why people want to be able to replace batteries and I support options for that, but I’m not sure if you could achieve the level of rating newer devices are with this added requirement.
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Anything is possible but it costs more money and makes the product bigger. I don’t see how consumers are going to stomach a wireless ear bud that has removable batteries when the ear buds get large, uncomfortable and expensive. I guess we will see what the market bears.
Airpods could literally just have a little threaded battery with an o-ring, as that stick part. The added expense and engineering challenges are minor. They just don’t do it because they want you to buy new ones every couple of years.
Yeah, this kinda hit me whenever my first pair of AirPods died because I was using them so much. They have such tiny batteries, so a percentage difference in total charging capacity was felt quicker. Additionally, the use-case lends to them being discharged almost completely, which hurts life further. While it’s convenient, I realized I was paying a really sharp subscription service where there’s no service from the manufacturer to continue the use of the parts and ultimately the product is designed to be landfill debris.
I switched to a wire after that.
There are lots of ideas like this when you don’t consider the battery certification process and the tons of safety standards. A stand alone battery like this requires it’s own housing (needs to be thick so you can’t crush the soft battery), certified connector for measuring it’s temperature and getting power out, include it’s PCM circuitry and be perfectly safe for whenever a customer might accidentally do to it. It’s far from from trivial. I do this for a living.
Honest question: is this different than the standards for things with non-removable batteries?
Same standards, and some extras depending on how you do it, but now the burden is on a small accessory part (the removable battery) instead of the complete system. The biggest hurdle here is the EU say it needs to be tool free and done by the customer. That’s a tremendous hurdle. Even today with cell phones that are considered repairable they require tools and don’t meet this bar.
Honestly, the EU’s where it’s at.
- Universal standards like USB-C instead of proprietary ports that cause waste
- Removable batteries
- GDPR
- Universal healthcare
- Right to repair
Invest in your people, and you’ll go far.
Just a small note, universal healthcare isn’t an EU thing and not really adopted properly across the EU’s constituent countries
I do have a card in my wallet issued by the EU that gives me the right to receive healthcare in any EU member state I visit, and I struggle to think of a EU member state that does not have universal healthcare in one form or another.
If you mean the European Health Insurance Card, it’s not the same as Universal Heathcare. If you travel to another contry that accepts it, you cannot go with any problem to the doctor, only ones that cannot wait until you return to the contry where you’re insured. Still useful to not have to have travel insurance within the EU, just might be useful to know.
You are correct, and it is indeed good to make this clear. I meant to argue that it is a bit of an exaggeration to say the the EU has nothing to do with universal healthcare. Arguably, I have more rights to health care as a EU citizen visiting another member state than a US citizen who can’t afford health insurance. Furthermore, it is unlikely that a state without socialized healthcare such as the US would be able to join the EU without reforming its public health policies.
The EHIC doesn’t cover things like a mountain rescue or being flown back to the your home country i.e. the most expensive and potentially life-ruining things, so travel insurance is still a good idea.
Barely anyone has this card. I never heard about it before
In Italy your national social security card acts as a European health card as well.
In France, where I’ve lived for 10 years, it doesn’t. But the European one is just a few clicks away on your personal online account, you just request it in a timely manner and it gets delivered at your address free of charge.
Dunno about other EU countries but I guess it’s pretty much the same.
I love clicking to accept cookies so I can see the bottom portion of a website
The issue is that they required websites to implement the banner, instead of just implementing a standard (like this one) and letting browsers handle the UI. Imagine just telling your browser once what kind of cookies you are okay with and all websites adhere…
Good example of good intentions with a bad or suboptimal outcome. I really hope we can get a standard like that eventually.
That’s such a great idea, can’t believe I never heard of it! Thanks for sharing!
Decline all. Ghostery extension will do it for you.
lol I saw someone else last year complaining about GDPR because they thought clicking cookie banners was annoying. But it’s like… don’t be mad at GDPR for making you click banners that warn you about invasive practices, be mad at the fact that the invasive practices are allowed in the first place.
I actually run a directory of companies and products that don’t use invasive tracking cookies called CookieSlayers in an effort to make people aware of better alternatives, and ultimately build a better web. Feel free to contribute to it.
Cookies are not invasive, you need them to log in to websites
First-party cookies, yes, third-party cookies, no. There are good cookies and there are bad cookies. CookieSlayers is a directory focused on good cookies.
I have all third party cookies blocked at the browser level, GDPR or no GDPR
That’s good, although it shouldn’t have to fall to you (the consumer) to do that.
It shouldn’t fall on me to click cookie banners either
Throwing some bones while preserving the proprietary nature of the USB standard, patent and IP laws, all kinds of certification required to produce stuff, etc.
They are just making the current state of things convenient, very slowly. Not addressing the root of the problem.
@AccidentalLemming the EU be saving our asses from these big tech companies
What a wonderful way forward towards right to repair.
Reversing course to what we already had in the past. Flip phones are making a comeback, removable batteries, what feature will come back next? Headphone jack? MicroSD?
eu saving the day again
Inb4 “Now announcing the iPhone/Samsung EU only model!!!”
They’re already doing it iirc, new models of iPhone might have usb-c in Europe and Lightning elsewhere. Nothing that stops you from buying European ones though, sure.
Oh shit, I had no idea.
I got pointed out from another comment that they probably ditched the idea. Nothing confirmed, but it seems so.
and they will be aaaall proprietary. one battery per phone model. and companies still will release updates that will cripple the phone every 2 years. nothing will change
Unfortunately, people keep swallowing garbage changes on cell phones. Before, phones had removable batteries, cheap screen replacements, sturdier bodies, etc. since upgrading your phone from a 512 MB RAM to a 1GB RAM cell phone actually made a difference in performance. Now, my almost 5 year old pixel 3a can do everything my pixel 7 does. Companies saw the writing on the wall and started forcing customers to upgrade by crippling phones. Again, unfortunately, many just don’t notice that their iPhone 6S, Samsung S6, Pixel 3 XL, insert_4yr_phone was the peak in needed performance and didn’t need to be replaced. By then, removable batteries are phased out, micro SD are phased out, headphone jacks are started to be phased out, etc.
Apple literally has gotten away with 3 losing lawsuits for planned obsolescence and people still try to defend them for it so… unfortunately you’re right.
