I think the policies are pretty well informed. I do think USB-C was a huge problem, and I don't think it was coming in a few years.

I'm not skeptical of replaceable batteries. I think the policy that forces them to be removable on top of working with 3rd party manufacturers is a good idea.

I don't think replaceable batteries or USB-C requirements restrict the industries ability to move forward.

Edit: You can continue to argue in this thread, but the point of this reply was simply to point out that the parent comment was all thinly veiled opinions with no substance.

> I don't think replaceable batteries or USB-C requirements restrict the industries ability to move forward.

These ultra thin foldable phones probably couldn’t exist with removable batteries. The thinness required to make it comfortable to use would be hard and so would the structural integrity with a removable backplate.

It would absolutely restrict durability since it’d make waterproof and dustproofing way more challenging, if possible at all.

Removable backs would limit wireless charging hardware like apples MagSafe (which is great!).

> Removable backs would limit wireless charging hardware like apples MagSafe (which is great!).

I had a phone with a removable back and wireless charging back in 2012. This isn't rocket science.

Same. Was the Samsung Galaxy S3 (which in 2012 had wireless charging and a removable back) not sufficiently thin? It's less than a millimeter thicker than the current Galaxy S23, and I'm not sure that the <1mm of difference in the S23 comes from having a non-removable back (as opposed to the 11 years of advancements in other technologies.)

I had a Palm Pre in 2010 with a removable battery and wireless charging.

As long as we are sharing random opinions - my Samsung s2 and s5 were smaller thinner lighter than modern phones, with 3.5mm and replaceable battery and microsd card. And also had gps and wifi and phone. And were ip67 rated.

Modern phones are going for sexy, that's all. They are large in every dimension but Impractically thin even though everybody adds another 3mm - 6mm of case anyway because they're sleek to the point of unusable. I particularly love when we buy a sexy sleek thin phone and then put an otterbox on it :-)

I agree with you. But also, to be fair, I'm pretty sure in that time phone bodies have transitioned from mostly plastic to mostly metal? I'm sure that has something to do with the weight, and I would guess that the metal shell is probably thicker too?

Why should they be thicker? Metals are resilient and strong. That's why we use them to build all sorts of stuff. I expect metal bodies to be thinner not thicker.

I would imagine that thin plastic is more resistant to permanent deformation than thin metal. Or, in other words, when then metal bends, it tends to stay bent. Thin plastic can more easily bend, but then restore to its original shape.

But I'm not a materials engineer. This is just in my lay experience of how thin materials I've encountered perform.

> And also had gps and wifi and phone. And were ip67 rated.

Only if the flap covered the ports…

I had a Nexus one with wireless charging 10 years ago.

Wireless charging is stupid and inefficient. If someone tried to sell you a petrol pump which works by spraying a jet of petrol into your car from 5m away would you get it?

“Your customers won’t even have to plug anything into their car. FuelSafe just safely hoses down the car with fuel! Over 45% efficient!”

>"I don't think replaceable batteries or USB-C requirements restrict the industries ability to move forward. "

Compelling the use of USB-C will cause stagnation in connector innovation; there's no point in trying to to create new and more durable/water-proof/wear-resistant/faster connectors. The requirements for replaceable batteries may cause stagnation in other innovations; if we imagine that there'd been similar requirements in the alkaline era, we might never have gotten to Lithium-Ion.

> The requirements for replaceable batteries may cause stagnation in other innovations

What conceivable stagnation could requiring replaceable batteries cause?

How can we know?

This is part of the challenge with these regulations - by definition we're defining a framework based on existential knowledge.

What about batteries that can also be panes of glass that act as the display? What about ultra low-power devices that are powered kinetically by typical human movement or magnetic perturbations?

None of these currently exist in a commercially viable form, but if we regulate based on our current view of technology do we run the risk of making these innovations more challenging to bring to market? That's the challenging balance that needs to be considered.

The regulation gives manufacturers quite a lot of leeway on how easy it is to replace the battery. You could make the display a battery, just make sure users can replace the display with pull tabs, a set of precision screwdrivers and whatever other commercially available tools you want. And from just skimming the regulation, I don't see how devices would be forced to have a battery. It talks about devices with batteries, and batteries in mobile phones, but if your device doesn't have a battery then this regulation simply doesn't apply.

History is littered with examples of policy creating unintended consequences causing more harm than good. Or at least negating the early good it created over time. It’s usually fine at the start until cracks start to show and policies are often a one way street, that only get reformed many years after the problems become apparent, if at all.

It's also littered with examples of a lack of policy causing untold harms. A light-hearted one would be the time libertarians found out that policy helps keep the bears away[0].

The answer isn't to abandon policy, it's to design it to be flexible and to respond quickly when problems are discovered.

[0] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-...

There's no reason why devices can't have such a newer, better port alongside type-c. Until the new port gains traction the presence of type-c will help with compatibility, and presumably once this hypothetical connector has been proven better than type-c the regulation will simply be updated to mandate that instead.

How can it exist along site USB-C? You mean two ports or a converter or something?

Either a port that's compatible with USB-C charging but has otherwise different pins or electrical characteristics (just like how a USB-A port has 4 pins in USB 2 but 8 pins in USB 3, but is still compatible). Or you just add a second port.

Ugly to have 2 ports.

Before we standardized on micro USB, lots of phones had ports easily three times the width of USB-C. We were ok with that back then, so why would two USB-C sized ports next to each other be so bad? In return, all your gizmos and chargers continue to work in the transition period.

Or, just make the new port a barrel connector like a headphone jack, just with more segments. Bonus points if you can plug in an actual headphone and it works. Nobody seemed to have a problem with a headphone jack next to their USB port.

Why do I want a headphone jack on my phone?

I don’t. It’s all Bluetooth now. I like wireless headphones.

But you should be free to buy them and we can both vote with equally with our wallets.

Go buy phones that have the 3.5mm jacks and send the signal that consumers still want plugs invented in the 1950s. If that’s what you want to signal. You have a great way to tell Apple if you like what they are doing! So do I.

Maybe Europeans like wired headphones over wireless? That’s news to me, but they should vote with their wallets. If you like what a company does, but things that company makes. If you don’t, don’t.

It bugs me to see a government meddle with what customers want to buy.

Don’t rig the system so you get a bigger voice than others. That’s not fair.

it bugs me to see rabid "free market", after all europe is birthplace of socialism

Ugly to have 5 cameras on the back :-)

Note that USB-C was invented after the EU mandated Micro USB. Innovation still happens and the regulations get updated.

How did Apple sell phones in the EU without micro-USB?

Common EPS was a voluntary standard.

So the idea that mandatory standards don’t halt progress because phones moved past micro USB is hogwash, then?

"Connector innovation" is a solved problem. We really only needed symmetric connectors so we didn't have to insert a cable twice each time.

Parent commenter, and sure it was opinion, but based in good reasoning.

USB-C wasn't the problem, MFi was. The rumours are that Apple's USB-C implementation will be locked down in similar ways, accessory manufacturers will still need to pay Apple to create certified accessories, and data transfer speeds are going to be restricted to Lightning speeds. USB-C everything is nice, but no non-techies I know like it because it's the new cable that's not compatible with any of their stuff (as much as I advocate for it).

Removable batteries in smartphones just aren't workable. We have too high expectations for battery life, weight, durability, water resistance, and size. It negatively impacts all of these. There hasn't been a mass market smartphone with a replaceable battery in a long time, and if they were that great for customers there would have been. A much better option would be to focus on repairability, it would have almost all the benefits, and effectively none of the downsides.

> USB-C wasn't the problem, MFi was

I'm an Android user, but nearly everyone I know has an iPhone. And not even one of them has an iPhone accessory. So how important is this MFi thing, really? From my perspective, the main annoyance is that my partner (who has an iPhone) needs a special charging cable, and can't use the cables I use for my phone and we both use for our laptops.

And I suspect that's mainly what the EU cared about too: charging cables.

> USB-C everything is nice, but no non-techies I know like it because it's the new cable that's not compatible with any of their stuff

If you're talking about all their current stuff being Lightning, then that problem will work its way out in a few years. If their current stuff is all micro-USB or USB-A, then... what? How is that even possible these days? Even the cheap rechargeable motorized cat toys I've bought on Amazon use USB-C cables to charge.

And if it is micro-USB or USB-A that their other devices use, so what? They'd just be going from one charging cable that only works with iPhones (Lightning) to another that only works with iPhones (USB-C). And as their other non-USB-C devices wear out or become obsolete, and they replace them with new ones that charge using USB-C cables, this problem will also sort itself over time.

MFI may be THE problem. But we will never know because you can’t even plug in non Apple stuff in the phone because they use a proprietary connector.

Once Apple is required to use USB-C and then uses software to block non-MFI connections then the EU will (a) take them to court for trying to undermine the spirit of the legislation (b) if they lose in court pass a new law requiring them to prevent blocking non MFI connections (although they will probably allow them to display scary warning messages).

Yes, I’m sure Apple is going to block non certified devices in USB C phones just like they block non certified devices in USB C iPads and they don’t support stuff like standard USB devices, video over USB etc.

Oh wait, that’s entirely not the case today.

> ... if [removable batteries] were that great for customers there would have been [more mass market smartphones]...

Removable battery phones are more difficult to design.

Why would a company do something that's more difficult, absent a mandate to do so?

Modern smartphones are not the pinnacle of technical possibility -- they're an optimization between feature and price.

A feature could be beloved by customers but add another $1 to smartphone build costs, and still be cut by every remaining manufacturer in the market.

battery life is the driver of phone waste.

i buy used sub-flagship phones two or three cycles behind. they're much cheaper, they do what i need, they're not too slow for modern software.

but the battery is the worst part. i get a day's life at best. a year in i'm camping by outlets all day if i need to use my phone more than incidentally.

all of these phones would be perfectly good on the secondary market if a battery replacement service didn't cost as much as replacing the phone itself.

i used to swap batteries myself. but it's increasingly difficult to do without damaging the screen as you peel it apart, and at that point the phone is totaled.

I paid $99 to get my iPhone XS Max's battery replaced directly by Apple a few weeks back. That phone is almost 5 years old. I really don't think that $99 is unreasonable.

> I really don't think that $99 is unreasonable.

I do.

Luxury products have luxury repair costs

Sure, that's how they can get away with forcing you to pay $99 to change the battery, but that doesn't make the price reasonable.

John Gruber also does this a lot. Compared iPhones to luxury goods like an Hermes bag, or even locked down consoles like Playstationd and XBoxes and wonders why, for example, Apple should be prevented from locking down their App Store but Sony and Microsoft are not.

But it’s absolutely not a legitimate comparison. An Hermes bag, or a game console are very specialized devices. A smartphone is almost a necessity to live a modern life these days.

Especially if you step out of the U.S. to more developing countries, where many people don’t own computers, or have email addresses. Everything they do, from basic transactions, to government IDs, to receiving govt benefits, etc happens on the phone.

It’s absolutely legitimate for consumers to have different expectations for such essential computing devices, and for governments to step in when the providers of these devices are acting against their citizens’ interests.

> John Gruber also does this a lot. Compared iPhones to luxury goods like an Hermes bag,

Gruber does no such thing

https://daringfireball.net/2016/10/iphone_edition

> Especially if you step out of the U.S. to more developing countries, where many people don’t own computers, or have email addresses. Everything they do, from basic transactions, to government IDs, to receiving govt benefits, etc happens on the phone.

And those people aren’t buying iPhones….

Compared to $25 for a battery replacement that you could do yourself if it was replaceable kinda makes it seem unreasonable.

Affordable replacements are all good and important to have, with a caveat.

Lithium-ion batteries at the $25 pricepoint come from a single well known place of manufacturing and are usually of the unknown quality. They may or may not be safe to use, and there have been precendents of self-ignition and self-explosion to the point that some airlines have banned or have attempted to ban the Li-ion batteries in the carry-on.

A branded $99 battery (all brands) is not 100% immune to the same problems but occurences are much more rare, and typically each such failed specimen is taken back to the manufacturer for an investigation. The only forensic process in existence for failed $25 batteries is called «throw it into the dumpster».

That said, a better QA process by the phone manufacturer does make the $99 battery reasonable. If all suppliers of $25 batteries could guarantee the same rigid QA process for the $25 batteries they supply, that would make the $99 batteries unreasonable.

apple support is an exception. and that's still half the cost of a good used iphone xs. if you'd just bought new old stock, you'd be ahead.

i'm currently running a pixel 4, and a battery swap would cost more than i spent on the phone.

Used iPhone XSs are selling for <2/3 the price of new old stock (NOS). Why did you shift from one item to the other in the middle of your comment?

at the same price, i'd rather have new old stock than one that's been through god-knows-what plus open heart surgery.

not sure where you're getting your prices, but it doesn't matter. the fact that this is even a point of contention indicates that swappable batteries would make a difference.

Where can you get new old stock for the same price as used?

iFixit sells iPhone XS Max batteries for $35, nearly a third of the cost Apple is charging. $99 may not be a ton in some regions of the world, but it is enough that many are unwilling to spend that kind of money on a 5 year old phone, versus for $35, it's a low enough amount that many might just stick with their phone and replace the battery, leading to less e-waste.

And while $99 may not be a lot in some regions of the world, but it's a significant amount of people's discretionary income in other regions (they may not be buying iPhones but the situation isn't much better for other brands as far as I'm aware.) $99 is also enough to outright buy a new cheap Android phone.

>but it is enough that many are unwilling to spend that kind of money on a 5 year old phone, versus for $35, it's a low enough amount that many might just stick with their phone and replace the battery, leading to less e-waste.

Are there people that find spending $99 on a battery replacement expensive that are really making the decision to replace their whole phone for 5-10x that amount?

No, but they might just spend 2x that amount on a new Android phone.

I imagine that a good chunk of people that can't stand Android are those that did what you're saying: they used a $200 Android phone to replace their flagship iPhone.

Most people aren't spending 5-10x that amount on buying a new phone. Global average selling price of all smartphones was $317 in 2021. Excluding iPhones (only Androids), in 2019, the global average selling price was $269.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/788557/global-average-se...

And that's the average, likely brought up drastically by the sale of extremely expensive phones. Apple and Samsung's flagships start at $800 and go over double that for their absolute top of the line. Unfortunately I couldn't find the global median selling price of smartphones, but the source above mentions that 58.5% of all smartphones sold during the second quarter of 2019 in Latin America had a price tag of USD$199 or less, and 83% of all smartphones shipped to Africa during the 4th quarter of 2019 had a price tag of $199 or less.

From a quick search, one of the best selling phones right now in India is the Galaxy M13, which is Rs. 9,699, or about USD$118 — barely any more than what Apple charges for a battery replacement in the US (obviously it's not that much for a replacement in India, but it does show how unnecessarily expensive $100 for a battery replacement really is.)

https://www.bajajfinserv.in/insights/best-selling-phones-in-...

In China, those that can afford it seem to buy iPhones (10.7% of sales), but all the rest of the best selling phones seem to be cheaper phones (next best selling is around ~USD$220, and the ones after that seem to be a little above or below that.)

https://www.gizchina.com/2023/03/28/top-10-best-selling-mobi...

In Mexico, 63% of smartphones sold in 2021 were between 3,000 to 10,000 pesos (USD$175 to $585.)

https://expansion.mx/tecnologia/2022/08/04/smartphones-mas-v...

However, if I'm not mistaken that all is for new phones, and most phone sales worldwide aren't new. While used and refurbished smartphones make up only 24.4% of phone sales in North America as of 2020, they make up 75.6% of phone sales in the rest of the world.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1208609/used-smartphone-...

So the average person worldwide is not buying a new phone at all (and thus spending even less than whatever the median selling smartphone price is, let alone the average.) However, the percentage of phone sales that are used is projected to decrease over time (according to the source above.) Not super surprising, given that while flagship phones have ditched removable backs for a while now, in the past few years more and more budget phones don't even have removable backs, and if you have to spend a significant portion of the cost of a new phone on a battery replacement, then that's a risky decision, as you don't know how long the other parts in the phone will last, and that's a lot of money that you're gambling on it. Sure, 3rd party repair shops in developing countries aren't charging you USD$100 for a battery replacement, but the labor can still easily double the cost of getting a new battery.

At $35 (and that's from iFixit, which if I'm not mistaken doesn't even make the batteries — if the companies sold the batteries directly, it'd be even cheaper), a new battery would be a much smaller risk, and near certainly would lead to less e-waste.

I still don't understand the assertion that someone who bought an iPhone (used or otherwise) and finds $100 expensive is throwing away said iPhone and generating e-waste when every other option is both more expensive and riskier. Any "new" used phone is going to come with a battery of undetermined age and quality as well as its own set of potential problems and failures, where as a replacement for your existing phone is a known cost in a known (as much as can be with solid state devices) set of problems.

Certainly I can see them buying an iFixit battery and trying themselves, or paying a 3rd party vendor and taking a risk on that. But there's just no line of logic that makes any sense to me that says "$100 to replace my iPhone battery is expensive, better throw it away and spend even more money to get someone else's second hand phone of unknown state"

> Any "new" used phone is going to come with a battery of undetermined age and quality as well as its own set of potential problems and failures

Not necessarily, as I can't imagine most refurb/used sales worldwide come from individual sellers; most of them are probably sold by businesses, which sometimes provide a warranty and return policy on their used products. Right now, on the Amazon Renewed Store, the unlocked Galaxy S20 FE 5G 128GB is $187.50. Amazon states,

> The product is refurbished, fully functional, and in excellent condition. Backed by the 90-day Amazon Renewed Guarantee.

> - This pre-owned product has been professionally inspected, tested and cleaned by Amazon qualified vendors.

> - This product is in "Excellent condition". The screen and body show no signs of cosmetic damage visible from 12 inches away.

> - This product will have a battery that exceeds 80% capacity relative to new.

> ...

> - This product is eligible for a replacement or refund within 90-days of receipt if it does not work as expected.

from https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-128GB-Cloud-Mint/dp/B0...

So if 2.5 months into using that phone, you feel it doesn't function well, you can return it.

Even for sales from individuals, Swappa (an online user-to-user marketplace for used tech) requires you to list the battery health percentage on iPhones if it's below 80%. They also require that everything functions well and even is in good cosmetic condition. Their standard for "fair" is rather high.

Outside of pawn shops, I imagine most brick and mortar stores aren't selling phones in poor condition. In the US, the phone carriers, Best Buy, and even Apple themselves sell refurb phones, and they don't want to hurt their reputation by selling poor quality products. Apple in particular has high standards for their refurb phones:

> All refurbished iPhone models come with a new battery, new outer shell, are backed by a one-year warranty, have free delivery and returns, and also include:

> - Full functional testing, genuine Apple part replacements (if necessary), and a thorough cleaning

> - The original Operating System or a more recent version

> - All refurbished devices are repackaged in a brand new box with all accessories and cables

I guess anecdotally my iPhone 6S as of recently hasn't been performing well. Would a battery replacement help it? Maybe. But that's not certain (it could be that modern apps are so bloated that its 2015 hardware can't handle it despite most of those apps having essentially 0 new meaningful features in the past 8 years) and I'm surely not going to spend $100 on a nearly 8 year old phone to find out. I've replaced the battery myself before, but last time I broke the screen in the process (something that wouldn't have happened if the phone had a removable back), so I'm hesitant to do it again (I was being careful, and have done plenty of phone repairs at this point, but more than anything the ribbon cables break extremely easily.) But if I could just pop off the back and put a new battery in, I'd be willing to give it a try for $35. But instead I'll probably just deal with it for a little while and then get a different used or refurb phone with better battery health than my own device.

EDIT: another example of an affordable refurb phone: iPhone SE (2nd gen) is $147 in the US from the Amazon Renewed Store and has all the same benefits Amazon guarantees for the Galaxy S20 FE. So for $47 more than a battery replacement, you can essentially try out a "new" used phone for 80 days and determine whether you want to stick with it or return it.

https://www.amazon.com/Apple-iPhone-SE-64GB-Red/

My brand new android phone cost me $50, no plan attached or anything like that. Granted, that was a steal but I've never paid more than ~ $300 for my phones and I use them for 3 to 4 years.

My wife and I use to called the cheap slow Android phones that we have our sons when they lost/damage their iPhone - “punishment phones”. They were so slow they were painful.

They've come a looong way. I often find myself surprised at how long my girlfriend's brand new iphone takes to do basic things. I know Apple's A series processors are leagues ahead of what's in my mid range android phone but honestly it often feels like a wash. Granted I'm not playing mobile games or anything, just using maps and browsing reddit and it may often be network latency that I'm feeling not CPU perf.

>They were so slow they were painful.

I agree, apple make old phones slow on purpose by software update, apple is evil

Not this old canard.

The only time Apple made “an old phone slow” was when the battery was too old and couldn’t operate at peak without causing the phone to shut off.

I'd much rather be able to swap a charged battery for the drained one in my phone especially in such circumstances as when I'm in a foreign country and dependent on my phone (for e.g. safety, to get around) and there's not a iPhone cable or charge point around. It seems like a no brainer, certainly from a consumer benefit perspective. Using batteries as a mechanism for hardware upgrades is ridiculous, instead of the features of the new hardware that should be the compelling, selling point and the way to a value statement that wins hearts and minds.

If a battery lasts a couple of days, I would much rather my phone were waterproof than be able to swap the battery. Having a power bank solves the problem of discharged phone for me, and anyway I almost never have to use it. Being able to drop your phone in the water and pick it up still working is far more valuable to me.

> If a battery lasts a couple of days, I would much rather my phone were waterproof than be able to swap the battery.

You can have both.

> Having a power bank solves the problem of discharged phone for me

There are cases where a power bank isn't a good solution. They big and heavy. Not being able to swap in a fully-charged battery on demand means that I can no longer use my phone for certain things that I used to be able to do.

Seems like it should be possible for the phone (not the battery compartment and battery door, just the rest of the phone) to be waterproof, and for the battery to be waterproof, and the two can contact each other regardless of that contact being in a wet location. After all, we have plenty of electrical wiring methods rated for wet locations, so why not this? Water isn't the very best insulator (especially saltwater and other mineral content, which the contacts would need corrosion resistance for as well) but it should be sufficient at 4VDC.

Wikipedia says that the resistance of water is 0.2 Ω·m for sea water, 2 to 200 Ω·m for drinking water. This is very low and can drain your battery almost immediately.

Wikipedia also says that water starts conducting at 1.23V, and the common Li-Ion nominal voltage is 3.7V.

3.7V - 1.23V == 2.47V. 2.47V / 0.2Ω ~= 30W (12.5A).

You will be able the find your phone on the seabed from the bubble emanating from it.

Though the battery protect circuitry (which is inside the battery package) will most likely cut power before the battery is risks damages.

> protect circuitry (which is inside the battery package) will most likely cut power

I wonder if that's responsible for the experiences folks had way before waterproof phones were introduced: they would drop their phone into water, it would shut off and refuse to boot for a significant amount of time (enough to send them shopping for a replacement) and then they'd try it a week later only to find that it works fine. Accelerated by putting it in a bag with rice or other desiccant.

I completely agree, that overall water resistance and IP rating would be more valuable.

What's stopping figuring out how the hardware can achieve both battery replace-ability and water resistance?

Phones already have holes in them, e.g. speakers and charger port, and yet are able to survive a water immersion event.

Its way easier for the speaker ports, you just seal the drivers well enough and they'll be sealed unless there's just too much pressure. The seal never experiences any mechanical wear, you can practically just glue it around the edge.

Similar thing with the charger/data port. The outside of the port can be completely sealed up with just the electrical connections going through. The port isn't ever opened, there's no mechanical wear of actually going in and out of the sealed area. Glue it all up but leave the electrical connectors exposed and its sealed.

A battery door is a whole 'nother issue. Starting off, its probably going to have considerably more perimeter needing to seal, especially if its like the doors of yore where you popped off a significant part of the back. Then, you'll need this seal to handle a lot of open/close events and be able to handle the dirt and debris which it will be exposed to. Keeping the device's profile thin gets way more complicated with all of these requirements, and the seal will probably still be less reliable than the seals for the charging port and the speakers/mics.

> What's stopping figuring out how the hardware can achieve both battery replace-ability and water resistance?

Nothing, since it wasn't all that long ago that there were phones that did this.

Waterproof phones with replacable batteries might not be waterproof after the replacement - so why don't you just keep the original battery, and have a waterproof phone? Win-win for everyone.

From my understanding, sealant used to make phones waterproof is basically glue, which precludes "easy" replacement of batteries.

I don't think you properly understood my comment. I am specifically saying: even if replacing the battery makes the phone no longer waterproof, you can just not replace the battery. Nobody comes into your house at night and forces you to install a new battery because your old one isn't good anymore.

It's very nice to be able to replace a battery in the field. I used to carry a spare charged battery and swap it for an instant recharge. That use case is still valuable to me, but isn't possible anymore.

Yes, that is why I'm arguing that even if changing the battery must necessarily break the waterseal, the battery should still be changable. In this hypothetical scenario it would be worth it to leave it open to the individual.

I understood your comment. The article implies that the battery has to be _easily_ replaceable, i.e. that you could just take a battery and maybe a screwdriver out of your pocket and replace it.

I don't think it's easy to design a phone that would at the same time a) have easily replaceable battery, and b) be waterproof until the first battery replacement.

Why not?

Galaxy S5 did it 9 years ago

Galaxy S5 had both and at 8.1mm/0.31in was thinner than phones are now. I don't see why I should have to choose 9 years later

You’re at least the third person to say this without the disclaimer - only if the rubber flap was securely covering the ports when it was dropped in water.

You repeat this everywhere. The port requiring a flap has no bearing on the waterproofing of the battery which used an entirely separately gasket on the back cover.

You can clearly see here[0] that the gasket on the flap protects only the USB port from water ingress. The battery and sim are protected by the grey gasket on the rear cover.

The opening for the rear speakers in the back cover reinforces the fact that the flap is there to protect the interface of the USB port and its housing. The rear cover does not contact the USB port at all.

[0] https://www.paulstravelpictures.com/Samsung-Galaxy-S5-USB-Ch...

And you had to make really sure that the battery was completely secured when you replaced it. There was even a warning on the screen.

https://www.gottabemobile.com/samsung-galaxy-s5-water-test-d...

> If you remove the battery, the Galaxy S5 will remind you to make sure the back cover is back in place securely. reply

Making sure a rear cover has snapped into place is much less prone to failure than acquiring tools and applying heat to a glued on rear cover, de-soldering/disconnecting a battery and evenly re-applying and heating new glue.

> I'd much rather be able to swap a charged battery for the drained one in my phone especially in circumstances when I'm in a foreign country and dependent on my phone

I don’t deny that this is a valid use case for you, but I’ve absolutely never been in this position.

I carry around a battery phone charger in situations where I’d depend on my phone. If you squint, yes that’s pretty similar, but the big difference is that a USB charger can power my iPhone and my partners android phone without requiring the phones to use standardized batteries internally.

I think batteries should be replacing in a repair sense, but I’m not sure the “pop open the back and swap it on the streets of Tokyo” is a common use case we should legislate against.

Like others said, I would much rather have it be more durable (eg waterproof). Also I’ll add that thinness is a desirable trait (to a point).

Carrying around bulky power banks or worse, chargers to then tie you to sit close to an outlet and wait for the battery to charge, is not entirely ideal when you're on the go, foreign or domestic. It's also less anxiety-inducing to not have to worry about where will I get my next charge and how long will it interrupt my plans for.

When battery life is a concern, I carry around a small flashlight and a (very) short USB cable. The flashlight can both receive charge (from the wall) and send charge (to the phone) through its USB port.

Lots of high-end flashlights do this. Mine isn't much larger than the 21700 cell it contains. If you want to go smaller you can get a 1850-based flashlight and still almost double the capacity of your phone.

Plus, it's a flashlight.

But it doesn't really address the use case well. It won't fully charge the phone and it takes time to do the charging.

I don't understand. Why won't it fully charge the phone? And you can use the phone while it's plugged in. In all respects it gives you ~2X the number of useful hours at the cost of having to carry around a very small item.

The portable battery pack is no more bulky than carrying around portable phone batteries?

And it has the benefit of being sharable.

And it has the benefit of being able to work hot - you don’t have to turn off your phone to charge it.

> The portable battery pack is no more bulky than carrying around portable phone batteries

They're a lot bulkier. Phone batteries are physically very small and light. Good power banks aren't.

Power banks come in different sizes. The bigger ones also allow to recharge your phone several times. There are also small and light ones that contains energy for one full charge or less.

I've got a little 2_000mAh 3.7V (7.4Wh) USB battery pack here that was vendor swag from a conference, a probably 3.7v? 10_000mAh () that I'll then assume is ~37Wh. and a Canon NB-13L 3.6V 1250mAh (4.5Wh battery pack) for my camera.

For mm^3/Wh, the results are:

Small vendor swag power bank: 96 x 21 x 26

52_416 / 7.4

7,083 <-- worst one

Canon battery: 42 x 30 x 9

11_340 / 4.5

2,520 <-- wow that's way less

10,000mAh dual USB power bank: 139 x 22 x 60

183_480 / 37_000

~5 <-- wow

By volume / energy, the big power bank wins by a mile. And tbh its not that huge, similar footprint to my phone and about twice as thick. Plus, it can power two devices at once, which can be pretty handy. It has a bit over twice as much power as my phone's battery. This logically makes some sense, as phones these days are pretty much a battery and a screen with a small logic board tagging along for the ride.

If I'm on the go, I'd much rather have a large battery bank that provides a good bit of flexibility rather than a battery that only works with a single device. This one battery pack can charge my phone, my camera, my wireless mouse, my keyboard, my headphones, my e-reader, and then all the same list of stuff for my spouse. If I got a fancier one, it could even provide extra juice to my laptop. If I only had a battery specifically made for my phone, I'd only be able to swap out my phone battery and all of the rest of my devices would need their own batteries or just be left dead.

On top of that, if I wanted to then charge that battery outside of the phone I'd have to lug some specific charger for that model of battery. Meanwhile if I bothered getting a newer USB-C power pack the same power cable that charges my laptop and my phone and my headphones can also recharge my spare battery along with all the rest of the devices I mentioned. I'm much happier having a 10,000mAh battery pack in my backpack to recharge when needed than needing to think about having a few different batteries around and their related chargers to keep track of. Once this one dies I'll probably

I'm dumb. Should have been 37, not 37,000. So actually 4,953 mm3/Wh, meaning the battery pack is definitely the winner.

I agree with your point completely but that use case is an edge case, would it be worth it regulating all phone design in order to address such a specific scenario?

Such use cases are normally handled by creating specialty products.

For your use case, powerbanks work very well. Because then you dont have to turn the phone of.

My main motivation for only using battery removable phones is privacy, because I know they are really off, when I remove the battery.

But the choice is currently very limited.

What's the difference between carrying an extra replaceable battery with you, vs carrying an external battery you can use to charge the phone?

Weight, bulk, and the time it takes to actually do the charge.

External power banks charge via USB. Most people don't want to walk around with their phone tethered via 4ft USB cable to a power bank in their backpack.

I feel like those rarer circumstances can be handled pretty easily with a portable battery bank, and also pull double duty for any other USB devices you might have.

With my 14 Pro Max I charge my phone every 2-3 days, and I'm not letting it get down to <20% when doing this, either. I'm obviously not making heavy use of it over this time, but even on days when I am out and about and using it more, I'm never in danger of it running out of battery.

Personally, at least, I'll take the sleeker design vs. an easily swap-able battery. Thankfully, it sounds like the EU law doesn't actually require it be replaceable in a tool-less manner, so it sounds like the type of design the iPhone 14 (non-max) uses will qualify.

If you held a 2014 Galaxy Note 4 in one hand, and a modern iPhone in the other, I think you'd notice that the sleekness factor is not that different.

From GSM Arena

Galaxy Note 4

Dimensions 153.5 x 78.6 x 8.5 mm (6.04 x 3.09 x 0.33 in) Weight 176 g (6.21 oz)

iPhone 14 Pro

Dimensions 146.7 x 71.5 x 7.8 mm (5.78 x 2.81 x 0.31 in) Weight 172 g (6.07 oz)

iPhone 14 Pro Max

Dimensions 160.7 x 77.6 x 7.9 mm (6.33 x 3.06 x 0.31 in) Weight 240 g (8.47 oz)

240 g? What did they put into that phone?

> neutralising Apple's MFi program for example

That's an interesting idea. It gets me thinking, in the history of computing have patents on hardware and data protocols overall been a net positive or negative?

I normally tend towards being a supporter of market-based solutions and typically patents are seen as an important part of that. But things like the MFi program, mp3s, all the different video formats, various Dolby formats have all been quite annoying for consumers and set back a lot of products. If these things had never been patentable, then maybe companies would have invested less research into them and the protocols we would have ended up with in their places would have been marginally less efficient. But I think open source efforts could have done a good enough job in their place and the upside of more interoperability and more competition built on top of these things would have vastly outweighed the downsides.

> misguided, policies from people who aren't qualified to to make the decisions they are making, and aren't listening to experts.

Ask yourself what kind of game regulators are really playing?

See how many former banking regulators end up working at large banks, same is true for pharma and without even looking probably many other industries. The regulatory system is in place only partially to safeguard people, it is also in place to enforce barriers of entry and it is in place to act as a nice career pathway for it's participants.

This is misguided, even though Apple is going to implement USB-C on the iPhone for the EU market, they're still not going to offer it in the US. It's naive to think big companies act in any interest besides their own unless forced.

If it drives an uptick in sales in the EU you can count on it being eventually implemented for customers in the US and elsewhere too. Though it's even possible Apple knows it will help sell the devices better - at least initially, but they prefer to have users more firmly locked into the Apple ecosystem.

> they prefer to have users more firmly locked into the Apple ecosystem.

Every time someone says shit like "locked into the Apple ecosystem", god kills a kitten. Lots of people switch back and forth between iOS and Android.

Nobody's going to go for USB-C on their iPhones if they can get Lightning ports. The Lightning port is far superior mechanically (both more durable and easier to clean from debris) and unlike most Android phones, not attached to the mainboard - so it can be replaced if damaged.

I only claimed it were possible, but it would (pleasantly) surprise me if there were executives at Apple that thought interoperability with competing technologies should be part of their corporate strategy.

Lightning ports may well be technically superior (I can't really judge as I've had dozens of devices using USB-C, 95% of the time with no issues, but relatively few occasions to use lightning ports - thought I do have an iPad that's bricked currently because I can't find a cable for it), but if Apple is unwilling to license the technology to other manufacturers then there's no chance of it ever being any sort of universal standard.

Personally I'd rather hoped that by now we didn't need cables/plugs at all!

I wouldn't really make swooping generalizations like that, just because you like an option doesn't mean everyone is that way. For example I would much rather have USB-C on my iPhone because then I would only ever need one charger cable for everything I need to charge.

> the EU was born from authoritarianism and has no democratic value

Oh please. Enlighten us how it's undemocratic and authoritarian.

I would like to reminder before you start that every country joined willingly (and Brexit proved they can leave), its parliament is elected by the population of the member states, and the council of ministers are representatives of each member state democratic elected governments.

But please tell us all how it's undemocratic.

> this and the USB-C issue strike me as misguided, policies from people who aren't qualified to to make the decisions they are making, and aren't listening to experts

Experts? <chuckle> In Brussels - just as in Washington - they listen to lobbyists.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/08/lobbyists-euro...

https://www.lemonde.fr/en/european-union/article/2023/04/24/...

https://www.economist.com/business/2021/05/15/the-power-of-l...

Battery is the only part of the phone that is guaranteed to fail with normal use, and making the battery hard to replace is a huge pain for end users (and in turn, to their wallets and the environment). Just pulling off the back plate and using your fingernail to replace the battery has turned to having to heat the screen, insert a wedge under the glass, but not deeper than X mm, scrub away the glue, without beaking the screen, unscewing a zillion screws, removing the mainboard, just to reach the battery, then unglueing the battery and the nfc antennas, inserting a new battery, which is sometimes impossible to buy from an OEM, assembling all together, reapplying glue, sticking it all together and hoping it won't fall apart in the pocket... or paying >100eur for a battery replacement, which is sometimes more than half the price of a new phone.

> Battery is the only part of the phone that is guaranteed to fail with normal use

I hang onto my phones until the software becomes unusable, either because apps drop support for my OS (and I can't update any more) or I get scared into upgrading for security. I've never had a battery fail or even get to the point where it doesn't last a whole day—the software fails first.

My understanding is that it's different with iOS, because Apple is much better at supporting their old phones than most Android manufacturers.

My experience is that it's neither the battery nor the software that fails: It's the phone modem.

Every single one of my Android phones stopped working as phones 3 to 5 years down the line. Couldn't take calls, the phone never became aware of them. Couldn't call anyone, not even emergency services, the phone never connected despite full bars. It's always the fucking phone modem.

I'm still using an Android, but when this one eventually fails (this one's starting to flake out at not even a year old, bought new...) I might seriously move over to an iPhone simply because every single iPhone I've seen others use has apparently never stopped working as phones. That's even if they fried a couple Lightning cables and whatnot.

I bought a phone, I expect it to phone. God damn.

That’s quite amazing because I have phones from 10 years ago that function fully (only one is an Android - Nexus 5).

One reason I like not having user-replaceable batteries is it makes the phones smaller, or the batteries bigger. I'd rather have an extra 50% capacity and pay $100 to replace the battery once in my phone's life than not have the capacity and go through two replacement cycles.

> but this and the USB-C issue strike me as misguided, policies from people who aren't qualified to to make the decisions they are making, and aren't listening to experts.

You do realise that the EU gave the industry (i.e. the "experts") the task of defining and agreeing on a standard for charging cables? The manufacturers worked on this and agreed on USB-C, all except one US based fruit company.

USB-C wasn't a problem because that legislation was being talked about for a long time, and everybody "got in line" except Apple

But it was the reason why we moved from the crapfest of earlier 2000's "everybody has a different charger"