Something that should never have gone away to begin with.
I really miss replaceable batteries in my phones. It was so good to just swap an empty battery out for a fully charged one. Glad to see that making a return.
I personally don’t. I’m not anti removable battery by any means but my phones battery hasn’t annoyed me to the point where I wanted to change it since I got it in 2018.
I wouldn’t worry too much either way. We won’t get back the plastic pop off backs of yesteryear. While “removable batteries” get the most clicks the rules aren’t really regulating phone design, but try to reduce e-waste and force OEMs to plan for recycling batteries. The part about removability is a soft “should”, while there are hard “must” quotas for circular battery usage and recycling. Apple will probably need to stop their practices of DRMing batteries (which they already partially did in the EU, as far as I know, I switched the battery in my old 12M, before gifting it and iOS didn’t raise any warnings about the battery). But implementation of non-binding EU rules into national law is susceptible to interpretation and OEMs will lobby heavily. IP68 rating is here to stay, so is adhesive, I can imagine you don’t need special tools, but still need to release some screws and adhesive before swapping the battery in the end.
My old galaxy s7 was getting about a half day on light use by the end. About 1 hour with heavy use. Don’t remember how long I had it, but I’m guessing about 4 years.
The USB port wore out too and wasn’t repairable individually. Repair would cost more than the phone was worth at that point.
Battery replacement and repairable design is a very important matter. Moores law doesn’t hold true anymore, and devices can stay relevant for a long time if manufacturers don’t force obsolescence
Doesn’t the steam deck already support this? It has a user accessible battery and replacements for sale
To replace the battery in the Steam Deck, you need to heat up the adhesive to allow the battery to be removed, which I believe would violate this directive. That said, it doesn’t seem like it would be too difficult for Valve to make it a bit easier in the next Steam Deck and comply.
Not really, changing out the battery takes 2 hours because you need to take out everything else first and it’s anything but foolproof.
For the record, you don’t have to take “everything else” out first. It’s actually quite accessible once removing the Steam Deck back plate, which is easily done with a Phillips head screwdriver. The bulk of the 2-4 hour estimate on iFixit is dealing with the battery adhesive. (source: I’ve opened my Steam Deck to swap the SSD, and I just opened it to attempt a band-aid fix to the right bumper after dropping the Deck directly on it while waiting for the part to restock)
It’s real great on Valve for helping furnish the parts and make it less difficult, the language passed reads as “with no tool, a tool or set of tools that is supplied with the product or spare part, or basic tools.”
Under that, Valve might already be fully compliant given that official parts are sold readily and the Deck can be opened up with basic tools. What’s most wonderful about this is how it’ll apply to phones.
After looking for a battery for a 3ds, I wonder how long they will have to make them available.
If you’re still looking, the switch pro controller uses the same battery as the 3DS
EU on a roll last view years. Wonder if there are going to be European models with replacable batteries and American without. You already see that kind of behaviour with Apple: end of this year you can side load apps in the EU but in America they are stuck with the app store (according to the rumors).
A guarantee apple trying spin it into their own decision.
Making two separate versions for the US in EU market would be really expensive so I doubt it’s gonna happen.
