It's official: Smartphones will need to have replaceable batteries by 2027

Battery shape (and connector) will sadly still be a thing for a long time, and usually it's for engineering reasons, so I don't really think it will be possible to standardize it

Well battery shapes will be custom, but the regulation does include demand to offer said batteries as spare parts.

shall ensure that those batteries are available as spare parts of the equipment that they power for a minimum of five years after placing the last unit of the equipment model on the market, with a reasonable and non-discriminatory price for independent professionals and end-users.

This being EU, EU will actually even police that reasonability clause via consumer protection agencies. You might not like the still probably pretty hefty price, but outright monopoly price gouging will not be allowed. Atleast not with in EU jurisdiction. Also makers will tend to gravitate to number of pretty standard battery sizes and geometries. Simply out of economies of scale. If you have to offer the batteries available as spares. You don't want to offer 150 different battery models on you warehousing and supply to your retail stores. You want as few as possible. Maybe say 5 different sizes or maybe couple ten different kinds on the biggest makers with the largest product range. Cheaper to buy more of similar batteries from battery supplier, than have custom module developed for each new phone model. Well unless one is apple and only has couple new models per year. They probably will have now just little bit different optimized shape battery for each models, but they also have the scale per model to make sense for that.

also:

Software shall not be used to impede the replacement of a portable battery or LMT battery, or of their key components, with another compatible battery or key components.

Meaning companies can't use software locks to deny third party batteries. Since the language says compatible battery, not replacement battery. Which wouldn't make sense anyway, since replacement battery would be the one the OEM offers. Ofcourse I'm sure there will be lot of hurdur by makers over "don't use third party batteries, those aren't as safe" and "well but that isn't compatible". However as one remembers during the early 2000's and upto mid 2010's there was a very healthy both OEM and third party replacement battery market. As with that experience, yes shoddy batteries from non-reputable people can be problem. However in this basic consumer electronic safety regulation (aka you can't just shovel anything to the market with utterly nuts unsafe circuitry in the first place) and the market itself handles it. Again it will be found out over little time, which makers are the reputable ones with the good batteries with all the proper safeties and good production quality. Reputable big chain electronics dealers then focus on only offering the established reputable third party batteries and parts out of their own reputation (You sold me a shoddy battery. It burst and ruined my phone. I'm never buying from this phone store ever again). Plus same with the actual makers with stuff like offering extensive warranties, warranting the replacement of the device, if their battery messes it up and so on.

This is all "we have already been here" ground except instead of the T9 numpad on the phone front, there is now a whole front covering touch screen on it's place.

Proposed and introduced legislation, but not ratified?

The political analogy might be a bill that's been passed into the parliament, but the governor-general/president hasn't signed it yet.

as an American, bless the EU, they're carrying America with stuff like GDPR

hungarian here, i'll try my best but please keep on overpowering us when we inevitably fail

Vote in what exactly? I’m lost.

Not having SD card is real painful.

Xperia phones have headphone jacks and SD cards. Pretty sure you can install lineage on them as well.

Your force open drivers would be really cool.

I pretty much stopped using my phone for audio when they got rid of the headphone jack.

Wireless headphones still aren't great and most are uncomfortable. It's super annoying keeping them charged and they are so expensive when you consider how short their lifespan is.

I'm not a fan of xiaomi (even though it's my daily driver), but most of their phones fit your needs. In the past I used redmi note 4, note 9 pro and now note 10 pro and they've all been great.

Custom roms community really is something.

I think laptops are also covered.

Try everything that uses a battery

And electric cars. I wish you could swap a battery out at a gas station as easily as I can swap out a propane tank.

There's no need. Battery tech has advanced substantially. There is no reason phones shouldn't last all day and then some, then when the battery becomes shitty, replace it instead of massive e-waste. We're lucky the EU exist.

It's kinda annoying and sad to see that EU have to make bills these days for basic things that android had a decade ago.

Because the EU is such a massive market, EU law tends to bleed out. It’s expensive to keep different SKUs for different regions, so compliance tends to seep out.

I’d expect at least some of this to have an impact outside the EU.

I remember smartphone days of old when you could buy additional battery packs, extended ones and huge lemon ones or something that would give you like 10,000 milliamp hours. Good times!

In my Android experience if you have an unpopular/old phone, years later many of the new batteries you buy aren't much good. That or the radio frequencies change and you need a new phone for that. But still 4-5 years on a phone should be doable.

Do you still have different charger plugs for each phone?

a lot of industries seem to solve problems well initially, then backtrack and make their product purposefully shitty in order to capture more revenue.

Yeah those old Nokia's are notoriously flimsy because of the removable batteries 🤦‍♂️

I get what you're saying, but removable batteries and flimsy plastic backs don't have to go hand in hand. The LG V20 had a metal back and a removable battery

The Galaxy Xcover pro has a good durability, is IP68 and has a removable battery. It's a matter of willingness.

Gee, I can't understand how my lgg3 is still in one piece, what with that replaceable battery making it so flimsy.

It's almost as if I'm imagining it being able to turn on because it fell apart when I sat it on the table three years ago.

Good thing it broke back then! Otherwise, I might have spent tens of dollars on replacement batteries each year!

Not to mention all the tablets that broke because they were flimsy with replaceable batteries. The galaxytab 2 and 3 alone would have blown up from materials fatigue if I'd replaced those batteries over the years. Whew, what a relief I don't have to have them in use as digital picture frames like I would have otherwise.

My Galaxy S5 never felt flimsy. It was even highly waterproof for the time because it had a COVER for the USB Port attached to the phone! It even had a gasp HEADPHONE JACK!

Of my last three phones battery has not been the issue I disposed. Mostly it is they grind to halt software wise as they fail to cope with newer apps expectations for storage or ram, I change my phone every 3 to 4 years.

Give me a phone with a removable battery in the style of the HTC Sensation 4G. Sexy, metal, easy to open and swap the battery. It was an incredible device that I remember using fondly.

Flimsy? have you tried the LG V20?

You mean like this?

https://youtu.be/-5BPL4Nm1q0

Doesn't Apple already do this? All of the parts on an iPhone are serialized so that any unofficial replacement part causes the device to freak out.

Apple is already ahead on the evil train.

Well some sneaky legislative aide in EU already thought about that.

Any natural or legal person that places on the market products incorporating portable batteries or LMT batteries shall ensure that those batteries are available as spare parts of the equipment that they power for a minimum of five years after placing the last unit of the equipment model on the market, with a reasonable and non-discriminatory price for independent professionals and end-users.

Software shall not be used to impede the replacement of a portable battery or LMT battery, or of their key components, with another compatible battery or key components.

apple does this but, it's outlawed by the same regulation that this is. Batteries must be easily accessible and there must not be software restrictions for them

I mean, I use a fairphone (with removable battery) and in a normal day it can go a whole day without going below 20%. And even if I don't comsider ot too much of a hassle bringing an external battery for recharge with me when I know I'm gonna use it a lot or will not have time to recharge during the night.

If we are gonna get removable batteries there needs to be a standard battery format so that each company won't have its own special battery design. One battery design for all devices. This way the battery will work in whichever phone you put it in.

sure, but we're at a point with battery chemistry where that no longer really matters that much. the fairphone 4 is already at 3900 mAh and with both phone electronics constantly getting smaller and battery chemistry improving, it's highly likely that this year's fairphone 5 will not only crack the 4000 mAh barrier but fly past it. with a modern mid-range soc (which is really all you need to have a smooth experience outside of games) it' more than enough to get you through the day with a good margin to spare. and that's already a user-servicable design that no doubt guided eu legislature on this issue.

Do you think this mandate will also impede ip68/etc water resistance certifications?

Waterproofing will also become more difficult

How much time do you think it takes to design a new phone?

A week, because a car takes 5 years and a phone is 1/250 the size of a car?

Replacement battery: one million dollars

Lol spot on

Yes, we had this ability all the way back in 2012 on the Galaxy S3, which had NFC and Wireless Charging built in to a user replaceable battery pack. It was available on many phones in that era and could easily be brought back if we gave up some "thinness" that we have now.

I can't think of any reason a battery being removable would impact its ability to wirelessly charge (though it would still need to be in the device to do so).

you could easily add a charging coil in the back of the phone and just have some contacts

my fairphone 4 already has a pair of contacts on its back, with accompanying pogo pins in the body, although i think that's just for an nfc antenna. still, the same system would totally work

If companies are smart, they will develop that feature and market the heck out of it as a selling point

4 years since the last update on my phone, I really don't see why I would change unless core apps like Firefox were to stop working.

Exactly. I don't even keep a phone for longer than 3-5 years. The batteries on my last few phones were still great when I traded them in.

Not if done correctly. There were some early Samsung's that did it with rubber o rings on the back that helped keep the water proofing.

Not really. Expect in that obviously many of the exact current water resistant phone design can't be used. Since those don't have replaceable battery. However already at this very moment there is smart phones on the market with both replaceable battery and water resistance. Like Samsung Xcover6 pro . Not that it is the only one, but example from the major brands instead of the more niche rugged phone specialist brands. In fact in my experience in the rugged phone market replaceable battery is quite common (and thus apparently desired by customers) feature. I assume on the rugged phone user segment liking the ruggedness of "I can continue the lifespan with new battery" and even "Well I'm going to middle of no where wilderness, spare battery might not be stupid idea".

In opposite to the hurdurhurdur can't make water and dust resistant phone with battery covers. Yes we can. We figured this out by early 2000's. Touch screens on the other side of the phone taking place from the old numeric T9 pad doesn't change the design fundamentals of the back of the chassis. Rigid enough cover plate with rigid enough pressure applying latching combined with rubber seal designed and molded to seal the desired areas will do the job exactly 2027 as well as those did in 2002.

As said all it takes is a redesign job with the battery swapping idea being kept in mind from start on the chassis design. Maybe it means couple mill thicker phones, since the phone isn't a single glued together slab from front display glass to the back cover glass, so it isn't rigid by being single monolith resign block essentially. However as far as the massively bulky thick rugged phones, all phones aren't headed there. That is about impact resistance instead of water or dust resistance. Thick layers of metal and rubber both to withstand and to soften impact.

No, we have ip68 smartphone with removable battery.

That was my thought, you can’t maintain the size with a user replaceable battery. A lot of people would rather have a bigger phone with a removable battery but not everyone.

It would have to be personal imports. Since the regulation concerns not just the manufacturer, but Any natural or legal person that places on the market product (that phrasing appears lot on the regulation 😆). So for example importers and distributors. A retail electronics shop is responsible to make sure they don't offer on sale any new product with no replaceable battery. Obviously to their own amount of reasonable amount of responsibility. Retailer isn't responsible to go check the product in detail for all the nitty gritty technical compliance, but they have to do due diligence from the manufacturer or importer on "and this product you offer us does fulfil EU regulations. You do have the spare batteries in offer like regulation demands, you plan to honor the 5 year offer period of spare batteries" and so on. Can't be knowingly importing or retail selling non compliant products.

You had IP67 water resistant phones with removable batteries back in the day, no reason why that design can't come back.

Galaxy S5 still have (IP67 iirc) water resistance with removable battery

It might be harder to pull that off without making the phone thicker in the process, but still possible.

It still is a thing like the Samsung Galaxy Xcover Pro (IP68).

You had IP67 water resistant phones with removable batteries back in the day, no reason why that design can't come back.

Yes.

There is no way most people can replace there smartphone battery with current designs.

Can't say I ever had that problem. I had several phones with slide-off battery covers, and none of them ever broke. Besides phones, numerous AA-battery-powered devices over the decades (Game Boy, etc) had slide-off or clip-on battery covers that, for the most part, worked fine.

So yeah, bring back the slide-off battery covers. They were great.

Want to replace the battery on your 2 years old smartphone that is perfectly good, but the battery doesn't last as long?

Just grab a heat gun and melt the glue around the screen. With a suction cup, pull the screen apart and pry around the perimeter to separate the screen. This might end up in your display cracking if you apply too much force. After the screen is successfully separated unscrew a large number of screws of all shapes and sizes and make sure not to mix them when you put them back together after you're done. Carefully disconnect the tiny flat cable connectors. Then you need to separate the battery itself. It has two pull tabs that makes a satisfying noise when pulled, in order to release the glue. But especially if you're not experienced these are likely to tear, leaving the battery attached. Don't try to pull the battery away as it may result in damage to the battery and turn it to an instant spicy pillow or twist the frame of the phone making it wonky. You can use isopropyl alcohol to weaken the remaining glue in order to free the battery. After it's removal, put the new battery in it's place. Make sure all the alcohol had evaporated. Then put the phone back together pretty much as you took it apart. Make sure not to forget any screws or mix between them. Then glue the screen back together with a strip of glue. If you used to have water resistance it is now likely compromised.

That's what it means to replace the battery in some phones. This shouldn't be legal.

I'm very annoyed at how battery degradation makes devices obsolete more quickly. I don't think it's that hard to create an easily serviceable battery, it's just in the company's best interest to not have that. Having the battery deeply integrated with the device, is basically an easy and perfectly legal way to create planned obsolence. Maybe phones will get bulkier, but I honestly doubt it will have a serious effect. IP-ratings might suffer, but I'd wager that a global reduction in e-waste is more important.

As to Apple pulling out of Europe, I don't think so. Given the reluctance with which companies pulled out of Russia, which has an economy the size of Italy, I think they'll find a way to adapt.

E-waste and Li-ion battery component shortages are gradually becoming a global problem. So ofcourse Governments will have to intervene at some point.

This law exists to force manufacturers to create a circular economy for batteries. A “circular economy” refers to a manufacturing model in which the resources put into it are recycled or reused as much as possible.

This regulation is not about apple. Smartphones from other manufacturers do exist.

I really don’t think they should be dictating how companies must design their products.

Like say telling to automakers they must include this design feature called seat belt and this another design feature called airbag? Also EU isn't dictating anything about the design. They are giving regulation on minimum technical features. How to design within that minimal technical requirement is free for the maker to decide. Just as say there is minimum technical regulation about safety of electric appliances in general.

Again poor, poor companies being told by the regulation they can't use their favourite "design feature" of "exposed uninsulated power wirings " on their products.

Regulations have existed and will exist. Companies operate at the please of society offering them a market to operate in. Offering such things as contracts needing to be honored, people not just being allowed to steal their property, enjoying the protected relative piece of national military keeping the mongol horde away and so on. In exchange the businesses shall play by the rules society sets.

This matter was decided by the duly elected representatives of the EU citizenry (directly as the European Parliament and more indirectly the national democratically elected governments in the Council. Well except maybe governments of Hungary and Poland.... ... ...). This is the will of the European society, so this stands.