Laughing in Fairphone
Same! But the beauty of it is that this effectively creates a competitive advantage for Fairphone. Fairphone is already compliant, while all other smartphone companies will have to develop this from ~scratch.
You can import it! I got one in Canada using a site called Clove Technology
It’s unfortunate that Fairphone sucks in other ways (such as having limited firmware updates due to using an old SoC, as I understand it).
The main problem with Fairphone is… It won’t come to the US. However, I am very happy that this will affect Apple, because I am making the switch from Android to iOS. I know that Apple won’t be stupid enough to have two separate plants, one to make EU Compatible phones, and one to make Global phones.
The costs for such a thing would be inordinately high even for Apple.
It’ll be interesting to see what Apple does, between this and the USB-C mandate.
Considering they currently sell multiple phone form factors, they may just decide that the EU gets more expensive phones with removable batteries and USB-C, and the rest of the world continues to get what they’ve got.
Also, I’ll be interested to see how “removable” gets defined. I’ve replaced iPhone batteries, so they’re technically removable.
Or, Apple might claim that their MagSafe battery packs make them compliant.
