It took a decade, but the EU has finally achieved what no other major union of countries has done: mandating a single universal connector. As the world's largest single consumer market (500 million people), this decision sets a global standard, with the rest of the world following suit.
The delay was largely due to intense lobbying from manufacturers, especially Apple, which profited significantly from licensing their proprietary Lightning port.
Next up on the EU's list for 2026: Easily Changeable Batteries (you know, what every cell phone 20 years ago had before Apple).
I’m happy to have batteries glued to my smartphone (replaceable, but only in the sense the main logic board is replaceable) if it saves even a few % in weight, rigidity or how waterproof it is. The times when phones had battery hatches were the dark ages. I used 2-3 batteries in every smartphone I used and the replacement was always cheap ($50 or so). That’s enough. Adding the possibility to user-replace it for half that by adding some design compromise like a hatch wouldn’t be interesting to consumers. For every battery replaced, how many screens are replaced? 3? Yet no one seems to be talking about making it easier for end users to replace screens?
Waterproofing being a problem was always a myth. The Samsung Galaxy S5 was IP67 certified and had a removable battery.
I think this removability is part of a broader push for the EU to become a circular economy - at the end of life of the phone the user would discard the device and battery into separate bins.
That is at least the official goal regarding EV batteries and there are efforts underway to make it happen.
The real next step is standardizing battery sizes. Think of all the other gadgets that have replaceable batteries. (Eg. Power tools)
Most of those batteries are standard at the wholesale level. But a thin plastic layer added to house the battery makes it proprietary due to the connection interface. And now it’s a world of incompatible batteries and price gouging for replacement batteries.
50 is not cheap. There are a lot of phones not worth a $50 repair. They work just fine if it wasn't that they need to be charged often. Disposal is also a problem. They have their own bin here.
FWIW it took me 15 minutes to replace the screen on my Pixel, took some basic tools but it's a reasonable tradeoff for waterproofing. The battery seemed like an easy swap as well, though I didn't need to at the time. Smartphone repair kits should be sold right along the phones.
It makes it sound like you don’t care what the downside exactly is, which in turn makes you sound very proselytic and not interested in any discussion.
Yes replaceable batteries make your phone thicker, ok. The upside outweighs this downside by a far margin for me.
The reason it does not exist is definitely not because people do not want it, it’s because it ensures a higher revenue to smartphone constructors, it is basic capitalism (and I don’t mean capitalism is bad, it just will always tend to maximise profit, it’s its nature)
Finally, it is less wasteful to be able to replace components.
And to add an anecdote: replacing my battery on my iPhone was so complicated that the apple technician broke the screen (it was replaced free of charge) and it cost me 50% of the residual value of my phone. Wasteful and expensive, in summary. Replaceable batteries would solve this.
Apple profited from their phones, nothing was close to as good as lightning when it came out. They showed the world how nice it would be with a simple reversible charger.
Thankfully usb c is standardized but it wouldn’t have happened nearly as quickly without Apple.
How is Europe the largest single consumer market at 500 million people? Are you unaware of China, and also India? What am I missing? Even if you measure in economic size and not population, you’re still wrong.
I’m also curious, how and when will it be decided that it’s eventually time to move onto a new/better standard? If the law came into force 20 years ago, would we still be stuck with the standard of that time? Who decides when a new standard is worth upgrading?
I think part of the delay is just that USB-C didn't really take off for cheap devices until like 2018.
Before that there was no connector that was suitable for a universal charger, we barely even knew if dynamic voltage negotiation was going to be safe or not(I remember thinking it was going to try devices with bugs).
MicroUSB was craptastic, barrel jacks aren't voltage standardized in practice, but pretty much every average consumer adores USB-C. It's like a shining example of what tech can be.
If you made a law requiring any other connector, people would probably be angry. We could probably learn to live with a barrel jack, but most likely wrong voltage connection accidents would have happened at least occasionally.
Every battery is changeable.
The fact that you can't replace them without a screwdriver and a heat gun doesn't make them irreplaceable.
You're also unlikely to fix the TV, but you have no questions about it.
This is stating the obvious without addressing the point. It is implicit that we are discussing user replaceable batteries. Your average user does not own a heat gun or the knowledge of how to use it to replace their own battery. Removing the requirement for the majority of users to have to take their phone to a technician to do the replacement will undoubtedly result in less eWaste. To the best of my knowledge, my TV does not contain a consumable battery which is core to its primary function. Sure the display panel and other components may have a finite lifetime but these are long enough to not be considered consumables by either consumers or manufacturers like batteries are.
A battery is a 'consumable component'. The closest thing to a consumable component in a TV is capacitors, which can live as long as two or three decades.
Those changeable batteries were horribly unreliable! I've had over a dozen different brand of phones and eventually they all started to black out occasionally when the connections got corroded or otherwise loosened up. I really hope soldered batteries stay an option or I will be buying my phone outside the EU.
Outside the EU, in many cases, device batteries will also be user-swappable.
Companies like Apple greatly prefer (well, when they're not petulantly trying to show the EU who's boss) to ship one design to the whole world. It's a nuisance to have separate design processes, manufacturing processes, marketing materials, etc.
This is why, once it became affordable, the entire industry started making auto-switching power supplies.
Unless hardware manufacturers finagle a way to continue selling soldered batteries in the EU, user-swappable batteries will become the norm again.
> profited significantly from licensing their proprietary Lightning port.
How significant? Doubtful it moves the needle for Apple.
People often forget Lightning is much superior to microUSB which was the alternative at the time (also mechanically superior to USB-C), and that Apple was instrumental in widespread USB-C adoption by taking a heat for the longest time on their butterfly MacBooks.
And yes, while I am happy with USB-C today, I totally believe mandating it does stifle innovation. Imagine if we mandated microUSB in 2010.
* The connection interface was superior to USB-A Micro/Mini in both size and reliability - and this was the contemporary connector in 2012.
* They had undergone a physical connector change only once, and it was not received well by vendors.
* USB-C was not anywhere near ready for the iPhone 5, and the 40 pin would not do well in that type of device.
* USB-C and Lightening are comparable on size and reliability (saying nothing about speed) - so even after USB- started gaining adoption there was not a strong incentive to switch over. It wasn't superior.
* USB-C charging only would be fine, but people would expect drivers for storage, HDMI, radio docks etc. Easy to undersell this effort in hindsight.
I also doubt that it was a profit motive.
let’s not forget that Apple themselves helped design USB-C and pushed for it to be the standard. I guess they couldn't wait for it to be ready, and given the iPhone 5 came out in 2012 and the first commercially successful USB-C devices came in 2016 I guess they were right.
> People often forget Lightning is much superior to microUSB which was the alternative at the time
At the time, yes. But not for years now. Apple could've changed the path by opening this as a standard but choose not to.
> Imagine if we mandated microUSB in 2010.
Apple would include an extra/expanded connector like a number of other device producers. Then they'd talk to the other large companies about moving to a new standard just like the currently introduced law proposes. This is not a "you must use usb-c" law, but rather "you must figure out how to get along" law.
Also, this pretty much happened, just without regulation. EU at the time effectively said "figure it out, or else" and microUSB became a standard for years. Now they felt like they need to push harder.
This is a step in the right direction but still doesn't address my biggest concern with e-waste - the battery.
Because almost none of the electronics you buy come with a replaceable battery, the second you buy something and use it on a regular basis it's destined to die and be thrown out within the next 4-8ish years due to the battery degrading and becoming increasingly more dangerous to keep around. Something that might be in perfect working condition and could be used for another 10 years has to be thrown out because of one single component.
I understand that batteries come in all shapes, sizes, capacities, yada yada, but imagine if we had standard rechargeable batteries like we have standard non-rechargeable batteries and things were built in a way where you could easily replace batteries like we could on phones a decade ago. You would double or triple the lifespan of a ton of things.
The thing that really annoys me is that batteries in most phones are indeed replaceable, but so many people just trash their phone when the battery life gets bad. Sure, many/most of these phones don't have a user replaceable battery, but even for high-end phones you can get the battery replaced for under $100 (and that's on the high end; for many you can get it done for half that).
I don't know if this is an education problem or what. Maybe manufacturers make it less obvious that you can get batteries replaced, because doing so would hurt sales of new phones. I dunno.
Sure, in an ideal world standardized batteries would be available off the shelf, and regular people could replace theirs with standard or even no tools. But honestly, I don't think the world we live in is that terrible when it comes to this.
I could have had someone replace the battery in my Moto G%+ a couple of years ago. But it would have cost at least 800 NOK (about 80 USD). Instead I bought a Moto G30 for 1 200 NOK (about 120 USD) which has a better camera, faster processor, and more storage space.
Mobile phones haven't yet reached the point of diminishing returns on power, cameras, etc., so it doesn't yet make economical sense for an individual to keep the old devices working. I have kept the Moto G5+ and I use it as an internet radio and to listen to podcasts so it isn't a complete waste. Unfortunately the battery is now in such a poor state that I have to keep it on a timer to cut off charging frequently to avoid overheating.
Android could of course make batteries last longer by giving the user control over the charging regime.
I am going to say something that I haven't found anywhere but it has been my experience with every single battery replacement I ir somewhat close had.
The new battery, even if it's Samsung original, it isn't as good as new, it is better than the old one, but not anywhere close as first day phone.
Why? No idea. I imagine that although the battery is new it was built circa when the model was in production and somehow that has affected its capacity.
So you get a phone, you pay 60/80 euros, and you get maybe, two hours more of battery when a new phone would give you 6 or 7.
For a 4-5 year phone "under $100" still might be more than the phone is worth.
And then there is the other problem that an old enough phone is no longer getting software updates, including security updates either.
Yes, it is still probably less than buying a new phone but you don't know how long it will be before another component dies. If replacing the battery gives you another 4-5 years it might be worth it, but if something else is going to break in a couple months, probably not.
I think this is indeed a problem of awareness - and I'm sure you're right that companies wouldn't go out of their way to let users know they can do so - but also one of trustworthiness: I think a lot of people don't trust third-party repair shops because they feel it's sketchy or unsafe in some way. If phone manufacturers were like, "Here's a list of our trusted third-party repair shops and the parts they can fix" I imagine a lot more people would get their stuff repaired.
Apple have already been taking steps to comply with this, with new “electrically-induced adhesive debonding” glue used to secure the iPhone 16 battery, instead of the problematic "stretch to remove" adhesive strips.
Apparantely this makes it significantly easier to change the battery compared to previous models:
Standardized and widely available batteries would also be a huge step forward. Like the old nokia phone batteries that you could pick up anywhere.
Recently I started buying gadgets that have 18650 batteries, seems about the only standard around, but trying to buy the batteries has been a challenge. I even tried a couple European Amzn stores, but they only seem to have third party suppliers. It put me off from buying the MNT Reform even though I love the concept.
And the 18650 USB torch I bought has some stupid propriety magnetic connector on one end, so I'd say any such legislation should include both ends of these charger cables.
Huh, I've heard about this for a while but for some reason thought it was strictly regarding phones, maybe because they've been making the biggest headlines about it. Looking forward to it then.
I'm going to assume something got lost in this game of telephone because this otherwise sounds like an oxymoron: Of course a "portable" battery would be removable and replacable.
Removable batteries are a trade-off. They improve repairability and device longevity, but they increase manufacturing costs, reduce the effectiveness of waterproofing, and increase customer support issues. Battery contacts can degrade or become loose, causing phones to power off unexpectedly when handled roughly. Customers buy cheap 3rd party batteries and then complain to the phone manufacturer when battery life is poor. In some cases, 3rd party batteries malfunction and damage the phone (or even cause injury), and the customer blames the phone manufacturer. Samsung and Apple don't want to see news articles about their phones blowing up, even if it's obviously not their fault. And yes, they do tend to sell more phones if they use integrated batteries.
Rather than mandating a specific solution, a better strategy would be to tax electronic waste so that manufacturers have more financial incentive to make phones that last longer. It might also be helpful to limit the liability of anyone who sells phones with removable batteries, or have more standards for battery manufacturers, as most malfunctions will be due to 3rd party batteries.
Most phones don't have battery that is removable. But they are indeed serviceable. The battery alone is generally about 10 to 20 usd. And depends on where you are, add the service fee. Your phone is again good for 2 or 3 years. It's really just a tiny portion of new phone consider high end phones today went up to 1000~1500 usd range.
The official vendor normally have an artificially high service fee because they want you to buy a new one instead which is much more profitable. But servicing it in third party vendors isn't that expensive.
Before the iPhone came we actually had replaceable batteries on most phones and it worked really well. Battery contacts degrading is definitely not a problem for a phone that has a lifetime of maximum of like 7 years.
Yes waterproofing becomes harder but it is not impossible.
Manufacturing costs are also not an issue since most phones have margins beyond 300%.
Many repair shops will put old or cheap batteries in your phone. Even if they buy an expensive one they don't necessarily know what it is.
There are a lot of waterproof connectors on the market. They pretty much all work but if a standard is chosen it will absolutely be one that works.
I've used a good few battery powered tools, even cloths. If any manufacturer made [say] a drill with a glued battery I wouldn't use it if you paid me for it. You just walk to the charger, swap the battery and get back to whatever you were doing. There is nothing special about phones that deserves special consideration.
I wonder if the battery can be smaller if you can easily bring a few extra. My cameras have very small ones 700mah-ish specially when compared to the size of the camera. It is never a real issue. Just bring more batteries. Say phones have 4-5 times the mah and last 8 to 30 hours. You could slide on a battery with a bump and get 60 hours or a slim one with only 4-15 hours. That will eventually outperform the degrading cell.
I don't know where innovation is at but I imagine we could see new batteries with much better size to power ratio. If you already have the newest phone it would be a no-brainer.
well, batteries must be also certified. so yeah if you buy black market discarded faulty batteries on random site, you can expect a problem. of course catching all these sellers of crappy fake certified batteries becomes the responsibility of market regulator, but that is their job as far as i can tell.
> You would double or triple the lifespan of a ton of things.
Until they get dropped in the toilet.
Phones have gotten more waterproof as the batteries have gotten more permanently secured (not to mention induction charging). It's not a spurious correlation.
I'm not denying that there are some trade-offs, but I'm also not strictly speaking about phones here. Think electric toothbrushes, trimmers, Bluetooth speakers and the other endless amounts of electric things with rechargeable batteries that don't have the space constraints of a phone.
EU cant deal with single use e-cigarettes!
Just think about how much e-waste they generate, for years nothing has been done about it.
On the contrary: when recently Polish government considered banning them, they have stepped down because it would require notifying the EU(also "lobbying" aka corruption. One person present at the meeting when the matter was discussed couldn't recall on whose behalf he was there, but treated to sue if called a lobbyist).
You have the money. Buy things with replacable batteries. Fairphone 5, Google Pixel, Saksung Galaxy Xcover. These are all good phones. Encourage your friends to get them too. Let's make it the norm. Boycott locked-down unfixable hardware.
Often for me not the hardware was the bottleneck but the software - I had some old phones which became unusable because half of the essential software would not work anymore on the outdated android versions - same with iPhone, it gets updates for some years but if I can’t use e.g my banking app the phone is useless - these ungodly apps are half the reason I am forced to use this machine in the first place…
The problem is the same as with "compact" phones - there are only few models so the choice is very limited and they are usually "so-so" (or have other issues).
The problem is, as always, with marketing - it's easier to sell "this is newer/better because <x> parameter is higher" [1] so we have gigantic phones with more megapixel cameras and higher waterproof rating though I'd argue that more people would be affected by dying battery than by lack of waterproofing… (no data to back it though). Anecdotally I were changing all my previous phones because the batter was dying and never in 20 years had issue with phone being sumberged...
Those are just dumb trends :/ I would love for a phone that has lumia design - it was polycarbon/rubbery, had easy access to battery and yet was super sturdy and I didn't feel the need to buy yet another cover because, to bump the margins, whole effin world is going "premium".
Same with cars so you have less and less choice for a normal sized city-car and everything has to be "crossover" or "SUV"... ffs...
Which devices don’t have replaceable batteries? No iPhone had a battery that couldn’t be replaced for maybe 10% or the purchase cost or so. Why do people consider a smartphone with a degraded battery ”e-waste”? Just go have the battery replaced?
I'm kind of annoyed none of the articles I've read about this have mentioned the agreement the European Commission made with several smartphone manufacturers back in 2009, which came into effect around 2011: that's when (most of) the manufacturers agreed to ditch proprietary connectors in favor of (micro-) usb.
Sure, it wasn't a law. And we went from micro-usb to usb-c, but I've read so many articles claiming "the end of a drawer filled with different chargers is here!", when that basically already happened over 10 years ago.
Recently bought an ipad mini 6th gen and I notice that although it seems to have a USB-C charge port, if you use a regular old USB-C to USB-A cable and wall-wart it only charges to 75%. You have to use the apple-supplied USB-C (at both ends) cable to charge to 100%. Not sure what is going on there exactly but it seems like malicious compliance.
Or as this hasn’t been widely reported something else is going on…
Try different chargers, there’s a lot of defective hardware out there. Also it’s at 80%, but there’s a setting on iPhones and possibly iPads etc that avoids charging to 100% to preserve long term battery life if you’re going to leave the device plugged in long term.
I don’t know about iPads, but my iPhone shows a message when the delayed charge thing is active. I think it’s even one of those always on notifications you can’t swipe away.
Its not the setting. It charges fine to 100% with the same wall-wart and a tiny usb-a to usb-c adapter then the apple cable. But not happy with my regular usb-a to usb-c cable (that works fine with everything else). Or any of the other cables in my house. A message pops up about non-compatible cable. I suspect the ipad has been designed to be deliberately fussy. I'm in europe, if that makes any difference.
I charge my iPad Mini with a variety of chargers, all the way to 100%. None of my cables are from Apple, only some of my (USB-C) chargers are not from Apple.
Are you sure it is because of the cable? By default Apple devices only charge to 80% when you plug them in and then do the final 20% later around when they anticipate you are going to unplug it.
Its not that. It shows a message about 'non compatible cable'. And when I use the apple cable it quite happily charges to 100% with no quibbles. And the non apple cable is a good quality one that works fine with everything else. I suspect the ipad has been designed to be deliberately fussy.
It’s likely that your wall-wart doesn’t provide enough watts to fully charge your iPad mini, and/or that there’s some reason the USB-A side of that cable isn’t adequate for what the iPad mini needs.
If you want to test, consider trying with a non-Apple wall-wart for which the rated wattage is equal to or greater than the one which Apple provides with your iPad mini and which uses a USB-C connection rather than a USB-A one. If it comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable, use that, otherwise get one that supports USB-C PD and enough watts to match the iPad mini’s needs.
Agree. I bought a "Chargie" just to get this feature, and it doesn't work with my wireless chargers worth a darn. I would pay at least $40 x 5 units for chargers that reliably stop at 75% with no software required.
I have a number of quality, 3rd party USB PD rated cables which work without issue on iPhone 16, iPad Mini 6g, MacBook Pro. Both with and without 1st party chargers. Admittedly the options for consumers in the USB-C space are a confusing mess, but I’ve never had problems with stuff from brands like Ugreen or Anker where USB-PD support is specifically advertised.
I don’t believe it’s the cable as much as the charging brick that is causing that. I have that issue with a MacBook Pro, using the Apple provided cable plugged into a usb-c port on my power strip. If I use the power brick, it charges fine.
No because they're not portable, don't use it for charging, and are not included in the list of devices that it applies to. Even a cordless phone is not considered portable because you can't use it very far from the base station.
If your voltage matches one of the PD levels they work okay but many common voltages like 12v usually end up being very charger dependent. I've got one of the 12v pd triggers that on 9/10 of the PD enabled charges I've used just drops to 9v.
I had thought briefly that something like this should exist, but then dismissed the thought, since such devices would be too much to hope for in the current environment of corporate enshittification. Slight amount of faith in humanity restored.
I agree. I have decided to just never buy another thing that cannot be powered by Type C or C13/14. Maybe exceptions for PoE, I guess, if I had to use an ethernet cable on it anyway.
The European Commission has a section in the Q&A about that[1] where they say that the charger side of things will be regulated in the Ecodesign Regulation.
Ecodesign will regulate things like power delivery, which includes charger and PoE efficiency and characteristics.
And remove the need for cookie warnings on official government websites. Like, why are you using tracking so invasive that it needs the warning, on a government site.
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The delay was largely due to intense lobbying from manufacturers, especially Apple, which profited significantly from licensing their proprietary Lightning port.
Next up on the EU's list for 2026: Easily Changeable Batteries (you know, what every cell phone 20 years ago had before Apple).
I think this removability is part of a broader push for the EU to become a circular economy - at the end of life of the phone the user would discard the device and battery into separate bins.
That is at least the official goal regarding EV batteries and there are efforts underway to make it happen.
Most of those batteries are standard at the wholesale level. But a thin plastic layer added to house the battery makes it proprietary due to the connection interface. And now it’s a world of incompatible batteries and price gouging for replacement batteries.
Yes replaceable batteries make your phone thicker, ok. The upside outweighs this downside by a far margin for me.
The reason it does not exist is definitely not because people do not want it, it’s because it ensures a higher revenue to smartphone constructors, it is basic capitalism (and I don’t mean capitalism is bad, it just will always tend to maximise profit, it’s its nature)
Finally, it is less wasteful to be able to replace components.
And to add an anecdote: replacing my battery on my iPhone was so complicated that the apple technician broke the screen (it was replaced free of charge) and it cost me 50% of the residual value of my phone. Wasteful and expensive, in summary. Replaceable batteries would solve this.
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Thankfully usb c is standardized but it wouldn’t have happened nearly as quickly without Apple.
What, China doesn't exist? India too?
I’m also curious, how and when will it be decided that it’s eventually time to move onto a new/better standard? If the law came into force 20 years ago, would we still be stuck with the standard of that time? Who decides when a new standard is worth upgrading?
Edit: I see now others mentioned China already.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_mar...
Before that there was no connector that was suitable for a universal charger, we barely even knew if dynamic voltage negotiation was going to be safe or not(I remember thinking it was going to try devices with bugs).
MicroUSB was craptastic, barrel jacks aren't voltage standardized in practice, but pretty much every average consumer adores USB-C. It's like a shining example of what tech can be.
If you made a law requiring any other connector, people would probably be angry. We could probably learn to live with a barrel jack, but most likely wrong voltage connection accidents would have happened at least occasionally.
Unless they happen to be LTO but that would make a phone like three times bulkier.
If a TV has something like flash memory wear issues, it absolutely should make the part that wears into a microSD or m.2 card.
Companies like Apple greatly prefer (well, when they're not petulantly trying to show the EU who's boss) to ship one design to the whole world. It's a nuisance to have separate design processes, manufacturing processes, marketing materials, etc.
This is why, once it became affordable, the entire industry started making auto-switching power supplies.
Unless hardware manufacturers finagle a way to continue selling soldered batteries in the EU, user-swappable batteries will become the norm again.
How significant? Doubtful it moves the needle for Apple.
People often forget Lightning is much superior to microUSB which was the alternative at the time (also mechanically superior to USB-C), and that Apple was instrumental in widespread USB-C adoption by taking a heat for the longest time on their butterfly MacBooks.
And yes, while I am happy with USB-C today, I totally believe mandating it does stifle innovation. Imagine if we mandated microUSB in 2010.
Lightening was most likely a combination of:
* The connection interface was superior to USB-A Micro/Mini in both size and reliability - and this was the contemporary connector in 2012.
* They had undergone a physical connector change only once, and it was not received well by vendors.
* USB-C was not anywhere near ready for the iPhone 5, and the 40 pin would not do well in that type of device.
* USB-C and Lightening are comparable on size and reliability (saying nothing about speed) - so even after USB- started gaining adoption there was not a strong incentive to switch over. It wasn't superior.
* USB-C charging only would be fine, but people would expect drivers for storage, HDMI, radio docks etc. Easy to undersell this effort in hindsight.
I also doubt that it was a profit motive.
let’s not forget that Apple themselves helped design USB-C and pushed for it to be the standard. I guess they couldn't wait for it to be ready, and given the iPhone 5 came out in 2012 and the first commercially successful USB-C devices came in 2016 I guess they were right.
At the time, yes. But not for years now. Apple could've changed the path by opening this as a standard but choose not to.
> Imagine if we mandated microUSB in 2010.
Apple would include an extra/expanded connector like a number of other device producers. Then they'd talk to the other large companies about moving to a new standard just like the currently introduced law proposes. This is not a "you must use usb-c" law, but rather "you must figure out how to get along" law.
Also, this pretty much happened, just without regulation. EU at the time effectively said "figure it out, or else" and microUSB became a standard for years. Now they felt like they need to push harder.
Because almost none of the electronics you buy come with a replaceable battery, the second you buy something and use it on a regular basis it's destined to die and be thrown out within the next 4-8ish years due to the battery degrading and becoming increasingly more dangerous to keep around. Something that might be in perfect working condition and could be used for another 10 years has to be thrown out because of one single component.
I understand that batteries come in all shapes, sizes, capacities, yada yada, but imagine if we had standard rechargeable batteries like we have standard non-rechargeable batteries and things were built in a way where you could easily replace batteries like we could on phones a decade ago. You would double or triple the lifespan of a ton of things.
I don't know if this is an education problem or what. Maybe manufacturers make it less obvious that you can get batteries replaced, because doing so would hurt sales of new phones. I dunno.
Sure, in an ideal world standardized batteries would be available off the shelf, and regular people could replace theirs with standard or even no tools. But honestly, I don't think the world we live in is that terrible when it comes to this.
Mobile phones haven't yet reached the point of diminishing returns on power, cameras, etc., so it doesn't yet make economical sense for an individual to keep the old devices working. I have kept the Moto G5+ and I use it as an internet radio and to listen to podcasts so it isn't a complete waste. Unfortunately the battery is now in such a poor state that I have to keep it on a timer to cut off charging frequently to avoid overheating.
Android could of course make batteries last longer by giving the user control over the charging regime.
The new battery, even if it's Samsung original, it isn't as good as new, it is better than the old one, but not anywhere close as first day phone.
Why? No idea. I imagine that although the battery is new it was built circa when the model was in production and somehow that has affected its capacity.
So you get a phone, you pay 60/80 euros, and you get maybe, two hours more of battery when a new phone would give you 6 or 7.
And then there is the other problem that an old enough phone is no longer getting software updates, including security updates either.
Yes, it is still probably less than buying a new phone but you don't know how long it will be before another component dies. If replacing the battery gives you another 4-5 years it might be worth it, but if something else is going to break in a couple months, probably not.
Apparantely this makes it significantly easier to change the battery compared to previous models:
https://www.macrumors.com/2024/09/11/apple-makes-iphone-16-b...
Recently I started buying gadgets that have 18650 batteries, seems about the only standard around, but trying to buy the batteries has been a challenge. I even tried a couple European Amzn stores, but they only seem to have third party suppliers. It put me off from buying the MNT Reform even though I love the concept.
And the 18650 USB torch I bought has some stupid propriety magnetic connector on one end, so I'd say any such legislation should include both ends of these charger cables.
“portable batteries incorporated in appliances shall be readily removable and replaceable by end users or by independent operators”
Rather than mandating a specific solution, a better strategy would be to tax electronic waste so that manufacturers have more financial incentive to make phones that last longer. It might also be helpful to limit the liability of anyone who sells phones with removable batteries, or have more standards for battery manufacturers, as most malfunctions will be due to 3rd party batteries.
The official vendor normally have an artificially high service fee because they want you to buy a new one instead which is much more profitable. But servicing it in third party vendors isn't that expensive.
There are a lot of waterproof connectors on the market. They pretty much all work but if a standard is chosen it will absolutely be one that works.
I've used a good few battery powered tools, even cloths. If any manufacturer made [say] a drill with a glued battery I wouldn't use it if you paid me for it. You just walk to the charger, swap the battery and get back to whatever you were doing. There is nothing special about phones that deserves special consideration.
I wonder if the battery can be smaller if you can easily bring a few extra. My cameras have very small ones 700mah-ish specially when compared to the size of the camera. It is never a real issue. Just bring more batteries. Say phones have 4-5 times the mah and last 8 to 30 hours. You could slide on a battery with a bump and get 60 hours or a slim one with only 4-15 hours. That will eventually outperform the degrading cell.
I don't know where innovation is at but I imagine we could see new batteries with much better size to power ratio. If you already have the newest phone it would be a no-brainer.
If your phone has a hole (usually the charging port), the water will get in.
Until they get dropped in the toilet.
Phones have gotten more waterproof as the batteries have gotten more permanently secured (not to mention induction charging). It's not a spurious correlation.
That was back in 2014.
Tell that to the Ericsson t888 I washed (phone turned on) for a full cycle at 60C. After drying out for a few days it worked fine.
After checking service manual I am sure I won't be doing anything on it myself.
Sure, if battery dies, I service it with a 3rd party.
I wish I got Fairphone.
The problem is, as always, with marketing - it's easier to sell "this is newer/better because <x> parameter is higher" [1] so we have gigantic phones with more megapixel cameras and higher waterproof rating though I'd argue that more people would be affected by dying battery than by lack of waterproofing… (no data to back it though). Anecdotally I were changing all my previous phones because the batter was dying and never in 20 years had issue with phone being sumberged...
Those are just dumb trends :/ I would love for a phone that has lumia design - it was polycarbon/rubbery, had easy access to battery and yet was super sturdy and I didn't feel the need to buy yet another cover because, to bump the margins, whole effin world is going "premium".
Same with cars so you have less and less choice for a normal sized city-car and everything has to be "crossover" or "SUV"... ffs...
There is a huge diversity in phone and battery models, it is easy to find a replacement for some, difficult or impossible for others.
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Sure, it wasn't a law. And we went from micro-usb to usb-c, but I've read so many articles claiming "the end of a drawer filled with different chargers is here!", when that basically already happened over 10 years ago.
Some Flemish articles about this: https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf29062009_040https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20110208_104
Try different chargers, there’s a lot of defective hardware out there. Also it’s at 80%, but there’s a setting on iPhones and possibly iPads etc that avoids charging to 100% to preserve long term battery life if you’re going to leave the device plugged in long term.
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If you want to test, consider trying with a non-Apple wall-wart for which the rated wattage is equal to or greater than the one which Apple provides with your iPad mini and which uses a USB-C connection rather than a USB-A one. If it comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable, use that, otherwise get one that supports USB-C PD and enough watts to match the iPad mini’s needs.
A lot of phones only charge to 80% to wave battery life. You can change this setting. Spread the world.
I wonder how much they pay in tech support because of this one thing.
Honestly, we're not that great.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/108055
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I have 20 different barrel plug wall warts in a crate used for 20 different routers, switches, and other misc DC-powered products.
This legislation wasn’t primarily trying to kill Lightning, it was trying to kill the 2.1mm DC barrel jack
I had thought briefly that something like this should exist, but then dismissed the thought, since such devices would be too much to hope for in the current environment of corporate enshittification. Slight amount of faith in humanity restored.
Ecodesign will regulate things like power delivery, which includes charger and PoE efficiency and characteristics.
1 https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_...