Removable batteries were standard in the early days of mobile phones (and laptops) out of necessity: batteries in those days just weren’t very good. They didn’t last long, took hours to charge, and wore out relatively quickly. You’d carry a spare battery around and swap over when your first one ran out.

Now days, there is much less need for that because a charge lasts much longer, and if you do run low you can fast change in 30 minutes or so. Not buying extra spare batteries for every device means less e-waste, not more!

> Removable batteries were the industry standard in the early days of mobile phones, and it worked perfectly.

Phones back then were bad (so accommodating replaceable batteries was easy), and batteries degraded quickly (so it was a necessity).

Modern phones are smaller, need to be more water proof, stuffed to an unimaginable degree with components -- and modern batteries last a really long time.

I am not so sure it's a good idea to force them to become consumer replaceable again.

My iPhone SE (1st gen) ended up being pushed apart from the inside last year because the battery had swelled up. I could have had it replaced but the CPUs were a bit too weak for the modern world and the RAM too limited. A fresh new battery would not have upgraded the CPUs or the RAM.

Li-ion batteries have improved since 2016 so I expected the battery in my iPhone 16e to outlast the useful life of the CPUs and RAM in it.

> extract the remaining rare earths

More for the gold, I believe. There are youtubers who do it semi-professionally and are remarkably transparent about how they do it. It looks like the only really toxic fumes they contend with are a tiny bit of sulphuric acid vapour from their electrolytic baths.

I don't think we should ship the trash to Africa or poor parts of Asia. I don't see how replaceable batteries would have prevented my iPhone SE from becoming trash or have prevented my iPhone 16e from becoming trash in the future. Or preventing them from ending up in Africa/Asia, for that matter.

Edit: had accidentally written "back" in the first line when I meant "bad".

I have such mixed feelings about the EU right now. This battery initiative is definitely a good idea, but I am not onboard with their constant attempts at censorship.

Re. mobile phones it is because it allows sleeker and thinner design, and IMHO it wasn't that common to replace batteries, anyway.

But, really this is a non-issue because if you need a new battery for you phone, including iphone and samsung, just get it replaced. That's not super common to need it (again) but there is no issue having it done. I had it done before.

So overall I am skeptical that it will make a difference or that people will keep devices like phones longer because of this new mandate. I also doubt that the EU Parliament has data on this because many of those new regulations seem very hand-wavy to me and usually presented as obvious.

This is the role we need governments to take. If you want your government to work like a corporation for some reason, why not go to a country where the govnment is weak and corporations bribe it instead? Would give you some good image how well that works.

But I get it. This ideology has more to do with how much money these types can then extract from a government and if implemented fully you would have some sort of neo-feudalism where everybody needs to pay them to even exist. But that is not a real utopian vision of something that moves humanity forward (quite literally the opposite).

How do you make a phone with replaceable battery to also be water resistant?

> The device can default to booting software signed by the manufacturer but the user should always be able to use a physical key to unlock the device and install his own keys and certificates instead.

This part is not going to happen, because security services need their backdoors intact. If you supply user with keys, they might flash the device with more secure operating system rendering any surveillance effort fruitless.

Is this level of device ownership actually desirable by EU powers? Replaceable batteries enable all consumers, device rooting only a very small subset.

I would fly to Europe to buy my next phone if it ever happens though.

> in particular smartphones and tablets, if they fulfill certain durability and repairability requirements

Which is exactly the way it should be.

The moment I saw the post title, I knew this couldn’t actually be true. Thanks for confirming that it isn’t.

The EU directive doesn't even compel them to have those kinds of removable batteries in the EU, because being removable with commercially available tools is considered compliant [0]. The topic has been too obfuscated with hype pieces. Still, it would be nice to not have to break glass and melt glue to open up phones.

[0] https://repair.eu/news/making-batteries-removable-and-replac...

I don't see any Fairphone on the page, they are not sold in the US?

Is this comment AI-generated? All recent comments from this account are two paragraphs-long, and are a vague retelling or the article.

I hate that kind of thing though when it would come to smaller batteries. This battery passport prevents the user from replacing their car battery themselves easily. Which is entirely in contradiction to this legislation's objective for smaller devices which aims at making self-service easier. But it also links devices to their battery meaning one can not be recycled apart from the other!

It's already causing problems for me there. I often repair small electronic devices, or I remove the battery and repurpose them. For example I use some old tablets and phones with the (often bloated) battery removed, and replaced by a DC-DC converter set to 4 volts or so. This way the device 'thinks' there's a battery. Because most devices with an originally integrated battery will not even power up on USB power if they think the battery is not present or deep discharged. And bloated batteries are unsafe to keep on a charger 24/7 so I remove them.

However the local recycling point is getting increasingly difficult about accepting loose Li-Ion and Li-Po cells. I put them in individual ziplock bags and tape over the contacts but they seem to view them as industrial waste or something. They sent me to the central disposal unit far from the city center but even there they were very hesitant to accept them. And at one point they accused me of running a business because I had 5 different batteries to recycle (I had saved them up because they always give me such a hassle). I think businesses have to pay for recycling or something, I don't know and don't care because I don't run a business.

This in effect stimulates 2 things: People just throwing them in the normal bin which is a waste and can cause fire. Or recycling the whole device instead which is a waste of resources if the original device can still be used.

The battery passport links the device to its battery and only 'approved' facilities can break that link so I think this is a very bad idea for smaller devices when it comes to self-repair people like me. And I will fight that with a passion.

For EVs etc I don't know how that works, I don't use cars nor care about them. But I think even there being able to work on a car at home would be a good thing no?

It's 5am in New York, not even the most dedicated anti EU Americans are up yet.

I wish all states were as nanny as the EU. We would live in a way better world.

As soon as Australians and Canadians who have their governments captured by big interests and don't want to admit it wake up, no doubt

> I miss the days of that first google device where I could just pop the back and replace the battery,

1. That's not a "Google device", you mean a smartphone.

2. For a large fraction of the smartphones available today (probably also Google Pixel's), you can still pop the back and replace the battery. The popping may be a bit more complicated, but it's doable. Naturally there's a tradeoff between convenient ergonomics for battery replacement and smaller dimensions of the phone case.

> EU imports basically 100% of its lithium

We don't have to. There's a large spodumene resource in Portugal.

> and cobalt

Finland alone could cover all of the European Union's need for cobalt even with zero recycling.

https://www.lyellcollection.org/doi/full/10.1144/geoenergy20...

Not that I am against recycling of lithium and cobalt -- it's just that it isn't actually needed when we could fairly easily mine both if we wanted to. Lithium recycling is commercially viable as far as I know so there's no need for the EU to legislate anything. Cobalt recycling from bigger batteries probably is, other kinds of cobalt recycling probably isn't.

I mean, it's not really a costume. This is a case where a shrewd industrial policy genuinely goes hand-in-hand with what's best for the environment. Win-win.

I agree, disposable vapes are an absolute perversion. I never thought we would come to a point where throw-away "technology" (e.g. microsystems, batteries) would be acceptable like a throw-away cigarette. Absolutely wicked, and again many politicians that have been captured by the vape industry to not act against it.

The UK banned disposable vapes, the suppliers now add a charging port and the ability to put in refills. The refills cost as much or more than the vapes so now people throw away the "reusable" vapes as if they were disposable.

Yes, they will be banned to EU-wide

I would argue that under WEEE disposable vapes were never legal, it's just that nobody cares and EU directives rely on self-enforcement.

Next time you see one, look for the "no bin" symbol)

I have a pair of fairbuds that have user replaceable batteries.

I am not sure if thst is really a problem. Batteries of hearing aids have been replaceable for a while now.

There appears to be a few reason to become excempt from the rules, e.g. medical reasons (if it is in your body safety is more crucial than removability of the battery). So who knows what Apples lawyers will do with this.

The regulation is mostly meant for light electric vehicles for now

External battery and transparent duct tape?

Gluing batteries solved the old issue where you would drop your phone and it would shut down.

Why? You can use an o-ring around the seal and screws to press it together. Even simpler: a water bottle like you might bring to the gym or while hiking is water proof, without needing glue. It is a solved problem. But the solution adds tens of eurocents to the cost of the phone, so the manufacturers won't do it unless they are forced to.

Sony made a water-proof phone long before fixed batteries became fashionable.

I Can change the battery on my waterproof watch just fine

Before they found out they could sell more phones glueing batteries, my waterproof phone had a replaceable battery and a 3.5mm jack.

cutting out quite a bit from section 11:

    A portable battery shall be ... removable by the end-user ... with the use of commercially available tools, without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless provided free of charge with the product, proprietary tools, thermal energy, or solvents to disassemble the product.

    Any ... person that [markets] products incorporating portable batteries shall ensure that those products are accompanied with instructions ...

Waterproof products are also specifically exempt.

EDIT: the "waterproof" requirement might leave less room for abuse than you'd think. It only extends to

    appliances specifically designed to operate primarily in an environment that is regularly subject to splashing water, water streams or water immersion, and that are intended to be washable or rinseable;

It's not what they mean, they mean being able to re-generate a battery by replacing their cells, exactly what we're building at https://infinite-battery.com for ebikes