Is there any other details on what it means.

There is a difference between:

- Having a manufacturer promise that the battery will last with little oversight on how testing is done and no specific warranty.

- A lifetime warranty where any battery that gives less than 80% of its rating for 1000 cycles has to be replaced free of charge. With the added obligation that measurements should be user-readable and accurate (no cheating the cycle counter and battery gauge).

Last time this was discussed, it was stated that the text exempting based on cycle counts was removed from the final, adopted version. Is that incorrect?

i’m ok with this and an $80 battery replacement in exchange for better waterproofing

Still, the majority of the population would get a phone with replaceable battery.

Huh, my iPhones have never come close to this. They are always under 80% capacity before 1000 charge cycles.

displayedBatteryHealthPercent = max(80, actualBatteryHealthPercent);

(I suspect the health figures displayed are already somewhat fudged to try and downplay the reality of battery degradation?)

Doesn't seem like a problem. Assuming the phone needs recharging every 3 days, that's 80% capacity remaining after ~8.2 years; longer than the OS is likely to be supported. Assuming a recharge every 2 days, that's 80% capacity remaining after ~5.5 years.

I wonder who’s gonna verify the claims about holding or not holdings 80% charge after 1000 cycles.

And what consequences will there be for whoever lies.

That had me thinking as well. What if the manufacturer says that to get to that number you are only allowed to charge it to 80% ever? My iPhone pro battery is at 92% at 417 cycles over 20 months.

I wonder how much did the phone manufacturers spend on lobbying for this.

Yeah, and it's BS because in real usage iPhone batteries almost never reach this lifespan. Apple's lobby made this law ineffective, I hope customers start suing.

Apple doesn't comply with regulations that weren't their idea with sincerity.

The big question is, what happens when the manufacturer claims it can survive a reasonable number of cycles, then it turns out it can't. By the time this becomes obvious, the phones will be out of warranty.

Will the manufacturer simply be prohibited from selling those phones (which are probably no longer sold by that time anyways), will they be fined a "cost of doing business" level fine, or will customers have an actual remedy (e.g. full refund even after the 2 year warranty period)?

Many flagship phones promise 7 years of security updates now. 3-4 years means the battery will only last for half that time, and heavy users (1 cycle per day) will hit that quota in under 2.75 years.

> I don’t want to pay the extra penalties of reduced structural rigidity and water tightness for a battery that I don’t need to replace for 3-4 years anyway.

What are you doing to your phone that needs all that? Using it as a hammer? Temporary support while building a tunnel?

> a battery that I don’t need to replace for 3-4 years anyway.

This is not just about battery replacement. I used to keep several fully charged batteries stocked in my rucksack whenever I went hiking or anywhere else that was remote. After a day of taking photos in the wild its nice to be able to just chuck in a fresh batttery and off you go.

I feel like this feature of phones was not only lost, but pretty much forgotten about after smartphones stopped including user replaceable batteries.

This regulation isn't primarily for fans of replaceable batteries, it's driven by general concerns about e-waste. It's unclear how much it might actually reduce e-waste in practice but it will certainly increase compliance costs.

Should we not expect phones to last more than 3-4 years? We aren't in the exponential performance growth and requirements part of the smartphone world anymore, a 5-7 year old phone can be a perfectly functional device. Isn't it unfortunate that a perfectly good phone gets turned to e-waste years before it has to, just because a consumable part of it happens to be non-replaceable?

> I don’t want to pay the extra penalties of reduced structural rigidity and water tightness for a battery

This is a BS excuse. Lots and lots of gadgets with removable batteries and waterproof design as evidence.

> getting too slow to be usable

Not sure what the behavior is like on Android, but iOS will throttle performance if your battery has degraded past a certain state. So I'm sure that there are many iPhone users that are replacing their phone due to what they think is poor performance related to the age of the phone, when it's really due to the age of the battery.

Yes! Hope they deliver some decent enough device

A slightly thicker back so that in four years time it will take me 5 minutes versus 60 minutes to change the battery? Yes, that sounds like something I am not interested in.

I would also consider having to swapping a battery out once every four years to be a minor inconvenience.

> this does not even register as an inconvenience

You don’t have any idiosyncratic product preferences?

Why are you replacing it if it is perfectly fine?

> I am not allowed to replace it on my own as it would invalidate the five year long guarantee provided by the manufacturer. Why is this stuff not considered as well?

They're the ones paying for repairs, so it doesn't seem that unreasonable? That said: If you can prove the car is being maintained according to the manufacturer's specifications they can't require you to go to a brand dealership. That's just not necessarily easy to prove.

Who wants thinner? I want more battery capacity and thickness. I actually want a smaller screen too.

You can bet it will be measured in such a way that the major companies’ devices will qualify. And that it will have little bearing on the retained charge amount you’ll have in real life use. I’m at 82% and 714 cycles. But it’s a joke to suggest that all cycles are equal. Some people never go outside the 20-80 band, others charge to 100% and keep it there all day, then burn it down to 10%. Both of those generate “cycles” but are very far apart.

My iphone 15 pro max. manufactured in Aug 2023. 536 cycles. is at 84%. I doubt it will make it to 1k at above 80%.

100% probably.

0%.

Wait, that’s not true: In true regulatory capture fashion, I’ll bet the exemption requires some sort of testing/certification that makes it significantly more expensive for smaller firms to bring devices to market.

I wish they would stop trying to over regulate everything. If you want to use your tool battery in another brand just get an adapter.

Serious question: how are you worse off with a cover that breaks your nails vs. the status quo: a cover that’s glued on and a battery that’s glued in? If they did bring that back, couldn’t you just not open the cover and be just as happy?

So in order to save your nails you rather buy a new device? Makes total sense.

The previous discussion of the bill on HN noted that the newest version of the bill is the one without the exemption. Is that incorrect?

Looks like saner minds prevailed. Almost nobody needs or wants that. Having to pay a street corner repair shop to replace a battery only after 3 or 4 years of usage is completely worth a price to pay for having thinner batteries.

Agreed. $100 to replace a battery that must cost them maybe $10 is criminal. Source: https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/bom-analysis-ap...

Didn't they remove many of the exemptions in the final, adopted bill?

Would be easy to say "if the software says "< 80%" after 1000 cycles, the warranty applies and the manufacturer has to replace it for free.

I guess the law won't say that though.

When has a legally mandated metric ever been gamed into a loophole? /s

"Special tool" is not used in the actual regulation; the requirement is that replacement must be possible with basic tools, defined:

> (50) 'basic tools' means a screwdriver for slotted heads, a screwdriver for cross recess screws, a screwdriver for hexalobular recess heads [Torx], a hexagon socket key, a combination wrench, combination pliers, combination pliers for wire stripping and terminal crimping, half round nose pliers, diagonal cutters, multigrip pliers, locking pliers, a prying lever, tweezers, magnifying glass, a spudger and a pick;

(Excepted devices can require "commercially available tools" which is defined exactly as you'd expect.)

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1670/oj

> A portable battery should be considered to be removable by the end-user when it can be removed with the use of commercially available tools and without requiring the use of specialised tools, unless they are provided free of charge […] to disassemble it.

> Commercially available tools are considered to be tools available on the market to all end-users without the need for them to provide evidence of any proprietary rights and that can be used with no restriction, except health and safety-related restrictions.

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1542/oj

Why does the Pentalobe exist in the first place?

Any tool you can’t get at a random local hardware store.

I'm not sure I have a way to fact-check this, but the link claims

> That is significantly more than many batteries on the market today can achieve (often around 500–800 cycles).

> All flagship phones have hit the requirements

Lots of non-flagship phones making e-waste. This is a sensibly-tailored regulation, targeting the problem instead of specifying a solution because some bureaucrat likes replaceable batteries.

based on many comments in this thread your statement is not accurate.

for example my iphone 15 pro is at 83% with 654 cycles. clearly it will drop below 80% in less than 1000 cycles

SD cards and phone jacks!

> If a special tool is required for replacement, the manufacturer must provide it free of charge.

Also, removeable by who? Its all very well saying its removeable, but thats useless if only possible by a skilled techinician with tools. I dont see the term 'user-removable' anywhere.

The size and shape of the battery depends on the size and shape of the phone, as well as the internal structure (which is highly variable). At that point you might as well just legislate that everyone must build iPhone 17's.

I think in general not being able to replace the battery toolless is quite an acceptable compromise nowadays. The needed mechanism and the protective shell the replaceable battery needs definitely takes up space which can be used for more capacity instead. You have (sometimes quite insane) fast charging and also powerbanks which support it. Also quality batteries can be quite durable.

The real problem I think is the hostility towards repair, glue everywhere, no spare parts, etc.

Are you sure the loophole exists?

AFAIK, this is the regulation:

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2023/1542/oj/eng

I don't see that exemption listed. The other ones are, but not that one.

I keep hearing this over and over, but it's neglected to add that it sets a minimum durability requirement which applies only for a very small niche of ruggedized waterproof devices

Unless your device complies to MIL-STD-810G CN1 and has the certification to back it up your product will be required to add user replaceable batteries

This makes no sense but I still see it mindlessly repeated to exhaustion. That mention is in no way Apple specific, it’s a quality of the battery itself. Any manufacturer is in the same position, not like Apple has a monopoly on batteries that hold 80% charge after 1000 cycles.

Yup, that’s a pretty wild loophole. I think they’re targeting the lower end of the market probably to reduce most of the ewaste.

not really! at the very least it requires more thought around battery quality

the choice for budget devices is now

1. better battery

2. removability (likely more expensive and complicates water-tightness )

Of course you can build a waterproof smartphone with screws (except the screen has to be bonded to the glass for capacitive touch to work and the glass to the frame so there’s still some glueing involved), but it would probably have 1cm bezels around the screen.

> If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't.

This argument gets thrown about every time companies make anti-consumer changes, and it completely ignores the information asymmetry and other dynamics at play. When I go to the store to buy a new phone, where does it list on the box how repairable the device is? Where does it show how expensive the repair will be? If I'm locked in the apple ecosystem, where do I buy an iPhone with a replaceable battery?

Your assumption that the market is driven by informed consumer choices presupposes that every buyer is an expert.

Which flagship phones with replaceable batteries can customers buy?

Samsung was the last major brand in the US to have one, and they made the choice to remove it.

I want removeable batteries in my phone, largely because it means I don't have to buy them a lot!

I ran my LG G5 with replaceable batteries from 2016 through 2021, at which point there were no affordable replaceable-battery phones left. I bought quite a few replacement batteries, even trying aftermarket batteries with varying levels of success after the OEM LG ones were discontinued.

That is, of course, a problem for manufacturers that want to sell a lot of phones.

Innovation generally happens because of some kind of impediment to doing things the old way. So this is more likely drive innovation than curtail it.

> "If people wanted removable batteries in their phones, they would buy them a lot. They don't."

For that to happen there obviously needs to be a supply worth writing home about. Furthermore, speaking purely for myself, a removable battery is not a must but a nice-to-have. A lot of slabs that have removable batteries are out of the game for entirely different reasons.

I absolutely would buy a Samsung Smartphone with replacable battery. The last one which had this was the S5 I think...

Even with a battery that can be replaced using a tiny screwdriver, this still doesn’t make it DIY for probably 80-90% of smartphone users.

Nonsense. It just mandates easier repairability and spare parts availability, not ad-hoc replacement. Also this does not apply if the battery is able to retain 80% of its original capacity after 1,000 charge cycles so "innovative" manufacturers just need to use high quality batteries.

that isnt how markets really work. you could say that if apple had two otherwise identical iphones except one has removable battery and one doesn't. but the enshittification cycle works via a ratcheting effect. once you achieve a certain level of dominance and lock-in, you can start getting away with all kinds of anti-consumer strategies to make more money and not get punished for it, and your competitors will follow suit. as long as you can ratchet above whatever detrimental thing you want to get away with is you'll probably be fine.

you can look at the lightning connector as an example. if you said "if people wanted usb connectivity they wouldn't buy iphones", nobody would take you seriously. and when apple was forced to switch, it absolutely didnt tank their sales because people just loved the lightning connector so much. the bad thing went away and it was great.

...is what people said when they brought in the mandate for usb charging but it didnt.

It turns out market consolidation is usually the biggest innovation killer.