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.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Yay! Very awesome indeed. /s
That’s disgusting.
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.
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.
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.
Dude it’s just as easy to wrap it in aluminium foil and call it a day
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
Thank God!
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.
Why isnt this common sense? Why is modifing the things i own illegal now?
Because you don’t really own the product. You get a license to use it with some major caveats - Including no modification/reverse engineering etc.
Great! This “water-resistance” bullshit is the biggest bigtech scam ever, it’s insane how they almost killed repairability in the name of “water-resistance”, that scam should have never been allowed.
I am pretty sure there were water resistant S class Samsungs with snapon back covers. Around 5th/6th generation.
There were, I had every odd Samsung flagship phone since the S3, and two of them (S5 and S7 or S7 and S9) were waterproof with removable backs to change the battery (and SD card)
I love water resistance. You don’t need to get rid of water resistance for removal batteries, we had both, together, at the same time, before. Samsung s5 active.
My phones are constantly wet (not like that, degenerates) and IP68 has saved me more money than repairability.
I never had to change my phone because of something other than the battery
Lack of security updates would be a big one. With Android products that has been my most common reason to switch. With Apple, its usually battery and/or wear & tear.
With Android you can just flash a custom ROM. Phones from the last 5 years even have treble support, meaning you can flash a generic ROM on any phone.
Not if you need to use apps that require Safetynet
there are workarounds , gpay works great on AOSP rom
It does until it doesn’t. Joy to one morning discover I can’t pay for my bus ticket, while I’m already on the bus.
Stuff doesn’t just stop working on its own
Magisk and Safetynet do.
time to move to the EU
But where though? UK’s gone to shite after Brexit, and all other countries, generally speaking, need you to be proficient in their local language for you to live a decent life, and I ain’t got the time/patience to learn another language at my age.
im in germany since 6 years , dont know 1 word of german and life is good.
If it makes your life better, you can say “Guten Morgen”, which means good morning. Now you know 2 words.
nah i dont want to give people the wrong impression, but thanks!
I have seen countless videos on tiktok of people being against this move, and my question is why? why wouldn’t anyone want to be able to extend the life of their expensive devices, why wouldn’t people want easily repairable batteries that take less than 5 minutes to swap out?
the only argument ive seen against this is “OOH BUT BUT BUT THE AESTHETICS OF THE PHONE” who cares? function should always be over looks. and if anything it will end the trend of phones being glassy slabs and bring some innovation and new designs to the table. which will be interesting to see.
who cares?
I do. I still think it’s a good idea to have swappable batteries, but I indeed do care about how it looks.
Problem with legislation like this is it frequently doesn’t take into account that companies like Apple can be devious assholes. Every loop hole has to be anticipated and covered before it can be exploited.
Yeah I agree with this on principle, but as it is it basically means we will have USBC forever because nobody is going to take market risks on pushing a better standard. It works because USBC is good, but imagine if the EU did this kind of thing with the previous gen mini connector?
Same thing here. I prefer the form factor, ergonomics and long term waterproofing which comes with current trends. Yes I know it’s possible to get IP ratings with removable batteries, but those seals fail much more quickly than fully sealed designs, and they always fail at the worst time. I suspect will happen is that this will have the opposite impact, and we will generate a lot more water-damage e-waste again.
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Is it possible, by having a removable battery, our phone won’t be as water resistant as it is now? I love that my phone is water resistant. I have a couple of water related accidents of my phone for at least two times. One happened on a not water resistant device. If I can choose between removable battery and water resistance, I’d choose water resistance all the time. I am changing my phone every 2 years anyway.
There are, and always has been, waterproof devices with replaceable batteries. Phone manufacturers love that they can lie and say that a removable battery affects waterproofing. By making the battery hard to remove, and some other tricks, they make the phone less repairable. They then can convince consumers that they need to replace their phone every 18-24 months.
The only reason to replace your phone every two years is that you want the new shiny. All other reasons are artificial, marketing garbage created by manufactures who profit off of creating e-waste.
