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!).
I had a phone with a removable back and wireless charging back in 2012. This isn't rocket science.
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 :-)
But I'm not a materials engineer. This is just in my lay experience of how thin materials I've encountered perform.
Only if the flap covered the ports…
“Your customers won’t even have to plug anything into their car. FuelSafe just safely hoses down the car with fuel! Over 45% efficient!”
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.
What conceivable stagnation could requiring replaceable batteries cause?
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 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-...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Oh wait, that’s entirely not the case today.
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.
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.