In addition, the notion of "just switch from your lived-in ecosystem and flagship phone to some new ecosystem and cheap-o Android phone" just so the battery can be replaced without jumping through hoops seems like a bad take.

Or maybe people don't really care about replaceable batteries?

If there was truly a critical mass of users clamoring for this particular feature, surely a phone manufacturer would have already jumped at the opportunity to grab that market share?

Where are the phones with extendable antennas for better reception in areas with bad coverage? Government should step in and mandate that.

The demand simply isn't there for replaceable batteries. I know there's a loud minority on HN and other tech focused sites, but it's simply not something most people care about. How well did extra batteries sell when they were common?

I think you mistake this for "everyone should have 2 batteries in their backpack and be able to flip them out on the fly", when in fact it is "manufacturers shouldn't be glueing in batteries in so that they can be replaced reasonably easily as the battery degrades, so that the lifespan of a phone can be increased".

Considering how phones have pleateaued, I bet you'd get a lot more buy in if you frame it like that.

This is about avoiding electronic waste, not being able to plop out a battery every day. People may not care about that, but some people don't care about pollution in general.

I suspect the EU is trying to "enforce demand" for a few reasons. Individually I feel people have a bias towards checking the features and price of the phone they are buying right now and not so much resale value or if it will last 4+ years.

But the EU thinks society will benefit from less electronic waste and more durable devices. Or at least EUropean society, which AFAIK leans towards importing smartphones rather than making or design them. And this is far from the first time governments enforce features on products that the market doesn't seem to be demanding.

But is the EU thinking of something about enforcing longer software updates timelines? I suspect this law won't be so effective without it.

The Fairphone 4 would certainly be an option.