Do you miss phones with replaceable batteries? By 2027, you won’t anymore because, by law, almost every smartphone will have them again.
Based EU
Pfft! By 2027 Smart phones will be irrelevant.
Why do you think that?
Because we’ll all have brainphones by then, duh.
I’m looking to upgrade my iPhone 11 for no reason other than the battery life is starting to bug me. None of the features released since the 11 hold any interest for me, I literally just want more battery life. Looks like that’ll cost me about $1000 if I want to stay with iOS. Absolutely insane.
Just hit up an apple store bud - they’ll swap a new battery for like $89. I had the battery replaced on my 11 a few months ago. Took like 20 minutes.
You know you can get the battery replaced, right? Not as cheap as buying a replacement yourself, but not that much compared to a 1000$ phone.
I’d also say an $89 battery replacement is pretty much the cheapest option (barring aftermarket batteries), especially if you don’t care about the developments in the latest phones.
Although I am not experienced with iPhone prices, shouldn’t a non-official replacement cost somewhere between $30 and $50? I tend to repair my Android phone batteries every 2-3 years at home, and alongside light software mods they become impressively more usable in the long run.
I mean this could happen in Europe, but I suspect something as integral to design/engineering might have Apple wanting to go ahead and split the designs between Europe and other markets. They just love control too much I think to go big in on this feature everywhere.
Only EU though
It’s only the EU bit these kind of law tend to impact products all around the world.
Maintaining different products for different markets is difficult and expensive. Making the battery replaceable is not very hard to do so it’s easier to produce one kind of product with replaceable battery for the whole world rather than maintaining two different production lines.
Boy you are underestimating apples pettyness
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Apple’s market share is quite a bit lower in the EU than in the US.
Maybe. I know it’s a different scale but in the EU there’s a standard connector for all electric cars (CCS Type 2 Combo) and that’s become the defacto standard for most cars in most countries, but Tesla maintains their own connector in non-EU territories. I wouldn’t put it past Apple is all I’m saying: controlling the charge port is very important to companies that profit from tight vertical integration.
To be fair a three-phase connector doesn’t make sense in the US with their bonkers electrical system where you get either 110V to neutral or -110V to +110V.
Separate DC charging standards make no sense at all, though. From what Technology Connections says Tesla at least switched the signalling to be compatible, so all you need is a physical adapter. Maybe they figured that they don’t want to fight all the other manufacturers, or make additional money from non-Tesla drivers using their network, or something.
At least Tesla eventually allowed other car companies to use their connector.
True, but we don’t know how many strings are attached to that. The Tesla connector is going to be made ‘open source’, but that doesn’t mean anything in terms of it being free to use or permissable. I hope it’s being done in good faith but The Dipshit has something of a record to the contrary…
I’m pretty sure it is free to use. Check this out: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Tesla-open-sources-its-connector-to-take-on-CCS-with-half-the-size-twice-the-power-North-American-Charging-Standard.668196.0.html
2027 wow they could have taken like 3999 With that. It has to come NOW or it has literally 0 effect.
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Tbh, I don’t miss this.
Phone batteries generally last 3-4 years (sometimes longer depending on the size), and by that point it’s usually time to upgrade to a new phone anyway for the latest security updates and such.
Here’s a thought, what if phones weren’t made to be disposable?
It’s not an original thought, but one that no-one has been able to realize. Turns out tech moves forward, and people want the latest and greatest.
There’s nothing I do on my current phone that I couldn’t do on a phone ten years ago, technologically speaking. When I upgraded my phone recently, it was solely because of battery deterioration and because the previous model was out of service for security updates. I don’t think I’m alone here.
On device ML.
The good news for you is that most 10 year old phones have user serviceable batteries, so you’re free to keep using those if you want.
Not much you can do about software updates, unless you want to pay significantly more for a new phone to cover the cost of OEMs having to pay their engineers to build those updates for the dozens of phones that get released over a 10 year window.
Exactly, every phone doesn’t need to be replaced 3-4 years. Fairphone is doing a great thing with Fairphone 3 getting 7 years of updates.
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Hell, I have a laptop that’s over 10 years old. It isn’t officially supported on Windows 11, but I’m sure I could get it on there in some unsupported way, using Rufus or another tool that removes the TPM requirements and have it be usable and secure. It runs Windows 10 without complaints. I can run an up to date Linux distro on it and be completely up to date and secure. So, like you said, why can’t phones do the same?
They don’t?
I’m pretty sure you can install iOS 16 on an iPhone 8, which came out in 2017, almost 6 years ago. And that’s a major system update. If you just need security updates, the latest one was in January and supported phones as far back as the iPhone 5s, released almost 10 years ago today.
But in reality, people want better phones and better cameras every few years, so they buy them. And they tend not to throw out their old ones, but sell/trade them or pass them along to someone else.
Ah, but then they’d have to use an iPhone if they want to keep their device for 10 years, and everyone knows Apple is evil doesn’t let you use old phones. /s
Hilarious that that only phone OEM that meaningfully supports hardware past 5 years is the one that the goofy goobers here love to shit on for checks notes not letting them use older hardware.
I have a ten year old iPad that i pretty much only use to watch TV in the shower. It just became incompatible with Hulu last week due to the iOS and I’m super frustrated by that. I can still use it for Netflix and paramount + but i was in the middle of several Hulu only series!
π🐀.
There’s abolutely no reason a smartphone couldn’t be designed to last +6 years. My laptop is 7 years old and it still works perfectly fine - even has the original battery in it. My PC on the other hand is almost 15 years old and still in use.
I kinda agree. Going back to back panels that fall off and batteries popping out isn’t a win in my book. However, making it so that batteries are replaceable by the consumer with some use of tools is a reasonable compromise.
On a side note I see that the Reddit etiquette of downvoting comments you disagree with is in full effect already.
Security/OS updates: 4 years on typical android at this point (fair phone claiming 7) 5 on an iPhone.
I did a battery replacement on my iPhone 7 at about the 3 year mark and got another 2 years out of it. Full updates from apple and 100% App Store app compatibility that whole time.
iPhones get OS updates for ~6 years, security patches for longer. In 2021, apple updated a 9 year old phone with a security patch.
Apple is objectively the only way to go if you want a device that you’ll be able to use for >5 years.
That’s been true, but I wouldn’t expect the year over year differences of phones to continue indefinitely.
Advances were very rapid when it was a nascent industry, but it’s already slowed down significantly. It will slow more by 2027.
Not it’s not. You should read about throttling down
Great
This is the best news I’ve read in a while. Hopefully the US (or at least Cali) jump on board as well.
Seeing as our (Cali) CCPA is about as strict (if not moreso) than the GDPR it’s not a longshot that they might.
I had an S3 for ages because you could get a replacement battery for like $12. Upgraded to an S10, can no longer swap the battery. Biding my time.
I hate this forced upgrade/payment model and how phones seemed to double in cost almost overnight.
They’re even trying to get sneakier with the contracts. 3 years now to payoff your device, instead of 2, but the payment is the same. Absolutely bonkers.
Wherever possible buy outright, it is always cheaper. If needed, get a 0% interest credit card and use that to buy it outright. Do not fall into their trap of paying hundreds more for convenience and interest, all while never actually owning the device.
I just hope the battery doesn’t cost as much as a new phone would.
The EU almost forced the phone industry to start using standardised/interchangeable batteries.
If the batteries cost as much as a new phone, they’ll reconsider that decision.
From what I got from the article posted a few days ago, I believe it is by large a sustainability/climate effort, targeting all kinds of industry machinery batteries as well as phones. There is likely a bonus for end user usability, but that is relatively incidental.
It’s so dumb that a standard hasn’t been developed yet. Like AA/C/D, 18650 batteries, etc. They could have modular batteries with different sizes and capacities that work interchangeably.
BL-5C is becoming a de facto standard size for random electronics, but it’s too small for a smartphone.
It took forty years for aa batteries to become a standard. They were a trademark type by I think everready.
One of my phones battery became swollen and hated not being able to change it without removing the adhesive stuck backing, camera, wireless charging cable, brackets preventing battery cable to be removed normally, battery being adhesive stuck to the battery slot. I hope all phones go back to removable batteries.
I am curious how Apple will get around that this time. I’m almost sure this will be as funny as the whole story about the USB-C cables
They’re now slowly moving to be repairable anyway, as far as i can see. Probably an Image thing.
Super capacitor instead of battery. lol
Simply remove the battery and sell iPhones with magsafe battery pack cases instead?
Hopefully all Apple employees are still on Reddit.
Lmao that’d be hilarious!
or just like the vision pro - a wired external power pack with a proprietary connector to the iPhone, but USB C on the power pack :D
I support replaceable batteries, I do. But I want one person to show me all the cellphone models that are going to have to change their design to comply with this law. No device I have done this repair on is affected. You don’t have to have thermal energy, and all the bits and picks needed are already available for $30 or less. So I’m seriously failing to understand just why people keep conflating this with cellphones when they already are abiding by this
The law affects every device with a rechargable battery. Not just phones.
So b3øecause the law just says all devices with a rechargable battery, and we all have phones…
A lot of phones are not easy to replace batteries on without ruining the glass back or whatever. Thats not “user replacable” basically. Some are easier than others though.
The law doesn’t touch on that at all my man. Commercially available tools and without the use of solvents or thermal energy. You may not consider that user replaceable but that’s the law as written. And that’s able to be done currently on the overwhelming majority of cell phones. In other devices it is a major change, but even this thread is “Smartphones”.
