It might lead to thicker phones, but battery and/or SW obsolescence are the main reasons I have been swapping phone in the last 10 years.
Back in the day when I had a Samsung S4, I bought this massive brick of a battery/new back plate and I LOVED it. Absolutely worth being a bit thick.
Now make SD cards mandatory and you’ve got something really good.
I can’t over state how much I want this, there is no way I get a new phone without an SD card slot
(Or having an unlockable boot loader, but that’s a separate issue)
Finally! Now to also force phonemakers to universally provide bootloader unlocks so we can put our own ROMs on our devices once the software support ends.
Hooray! Younger generations will finally be able to experience the joy of dropping their phone and having to pick up three to four different pieces! /s
(I’m all for this change, by the way)
Oh I remember that with Nokias. It’s like shock absorbing for cars lol.
I was 12, I think, when I got my first phone. A Nokia. I was mortified the first time it happened. Then clack-clack-clack I was taught to put it together again.
Happened many more times afterwards.
I was around the same age. :) I still have the old Nokias. What a time that was, with Symbian being an OS.
lego phone best phone
I was under the impression this is just stopping companies gluing batteries so the phones are repairable.
Are we going back to nokia style batteries?
And now they just have to force manufacturers to either at least security patch devices for, let’s say 10 years, or force them to open source everything the community needs to continue supporting this device. It never happened to me that the battery died before support ended.
Just had that issue with my Pixel 3a XL. No more security updates. Had to replace it with a Pixel 6a but I liked the 3a XL more. It there was any community support for the 3a XL, I would rather sell my 6a again.
As an Apple user, I definitely have batteries die before the product stops being useful. The company provides feature updates for old phones for several years, and when that runs out they continue to provide security patches for several more years.
A new iPhone battery is only $47 (if you do the repair yourself, and if you send your old battery back to Apple for a recycling credit), but it’s a pretty complex and arduous process with a fair chance of damaging your phone while attempting it. You also have to pay a deposit, over a thousand dollars, to rent the tools off Apple. Ouch.
You can take it to an Apple store, but that takes even longer than doing the repair yourself. And it costs more (though you don’t have to pay the outrageous deposit for the tools).
This legislation would force Apple to make it a simple process with no tools. Yes please.
Honestly, with Apple making it incredibly fucking hard to take out their batteries with excessive amounts of glue, I’m okay with this.
Do they not have the tabs you can pull out anymore?
They do, but they’re incredibly prone to breaking when you pull and sometimes they’re just hard as shit to grip so you have to use a screwdriver to twist and pull.
I don’t think I need to explain why that’s so dangerous.
As someone who has changed hundreds of iphone batteries, the adhesive sucks. At least they changed to a different adhesive around iphone 8 because alcohol does wonders on it. I don’t even attempt to pull the tabs on those anymore.
May I ask how you do that? Do you just…douse the battery in alcohol? There isn’t much of a gap between the adhesive and the battery in my experience, so it just sits inside the chasis and rolls around. I haven’t had any luck with that but I’m probably doing it wrong.
I drizzle some in the corner and then use a sturdy tool to gently pry up on the battery to allow the alcohol to get deeper under. Since the adhesive patches are small to fit around the wireless charging coil, it doesn’t take much. Once you get one side of the battery loose the other will easily come with it, especially if the alcohol got to them.
Although this is obviously a step in the right direction it needs to be followed up with security updates, no point increasing the life of the hardware without doing the same for the software.
Making it illegal to lock bootloaders would make each device community-maintainable.
Yes! That would be the best. We should have access to our hardware. And just like most things you want to keep around for a long time (e.g. cars) you will have to tinker with it to keep it running smoothly into old age.
While it is certainly nice to have continued support, I think I’d disagree that forcing companies to maintain software on legacy/outdated hardware is something that should be legislated. I think that would greatly stifle innovation in a lot of cases.
At a minimum, stuff should be put in place to allow for people to update legacy hardware to be maintained by individuals.
Do y’all remember the days when you dropped your phone and it exploded into 3 or 4 pieces? 🤣 Those were the good days.
Three. Battery, cover and the rest. Weirdly, no damage to the plastic display. How? I guess it was the
weatherbezelWell, it was plastic. Pretty hard to crack plastic like glass
But it could get scratched
And when you scratched up the back you bought a new one for $12. No $200 glass or machined aluminum cases that we put $35 covers on just to protect them from every day use.
I do miss being able to swap out a phone battery and this will certainly be a step in the right direction in terms ewaste and device longevity.
One thing that I wonder about is waterproofing or water resistance. Some phones are basically waterproof in shallow water. How achievable is this with a device with a trivial way to remove the battery?
The Galaxy S5 sport had a battery door and water resistance. They just used gaskets.
This is my concern as well. Having a phone that is water and dust resistant is far more important to me than being able to replace the battery. I haven’t had the need to replace a phone battery in probably more than a decade.
They can just seal the rest of the components exposing just a connection for the battery. There were water resistant phones before, the major reason they decided to make the battery unremovable was to make people buy new phones. Nobody wants to charge their phones multiple times a day.
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People make this argument and barely anyone really uses the waterprooding features of a phone
Water proofing is for more than just taking it underwater though. It’s also for getting caught in the rain, leaving it on a bathroom counter while you shower, or accidentally dropping it in a puddle.
My cheap not-waterproof phone survives mild rain just fine, as does being in the bathroom while I shower, or being in my pocket under very heavy rain.
Waterproof means it can be submerged, but most technology meant for daily use have a fair bit of resilence baked in…
You don’t ever really ‘need to use’ the waterproof feature on your phone. It’s more insurance for most people.
I have personally known dozens of people for who’m it’s saved their phone including:
- Dropped it in the toilet.
- Dropped in pool.
- Dropped it in the bath.
- Bag flooded when water bottle broke.
- Flooded when coffee cup failed.
- Rained out.
- Pouring rain on a bike ride.
- Pouring rain when needed GPS on motorcycles.
The above are things that happened both to people I know individually and also all of the above have happened to be at some point.
I don’t necessarily like the lack of being able to swap out the batteries for a cheap replacement but I do like that waterproofing to a high degree should be a default feature for things like phones. It could be argued to get waterproof cases or keep it in a bag and that’s all good and well (except the waterproof cases as they suck and break) but isn’t it nice for the default to be that the device itself is waterproof if that was an option?
I imagine water resistance comes in handy quite often for many people. It has certainly saved me countless times. Not that I need to go swimming or deep sea diving with my phone, but I have dropped phones in water, been stuck in the rain, spilled a glass of water, etc. I ruined many phones before it became common.
You know, I really like my Essential Ph-1. It was a lovely little phone. I had the little 360 camera accessory that snapped on magentically and everything. It was so cool! Then, 1.5 seconds, dropped into water from which I grabbed it instantly, and it was done. No warranty coverage for dropping it in water, and zero waterproofing, and toasted phone. So, yes, more of us “use” waterproofing on our phones than you would think. The thing is that it didn’t need to be this way. There were waterproof phones back before everything was glued glass slabs all the time. Galaxy S5 Sport as mentioned by @HubbleST@lemm.ee above (and other “sport” edition phones). We have a lot of hygrophobic coatings and tech we didn’t have in the day of the Galaxy S5 series. We can do better now, if manufacturers are forced to.
I agree that is isn’t really necessary for mot people, but I do know quite a few people who use it because they know they know the phone will be safe. My partner uses her phone in the pool all the time. I’m often dripping wet after coming in from surfing, even after drying off with a towel. It is nice to be able to check my phone without worrying I’m going to mess it up.
I’m not saying it is a feature every phone needs, but it is something that some people use. I’m all for replaceable batteries and would like to see them more available. They will improve the longevity of devices as long as they aren’t damaged in other ways.
My last phone bit the dust because I made the mistake of taking it apart to repair it. It became a gluey piece of garbage. If I want it be waterproof I’ll stick it in a sandwich bag. Or maybe the manufacturer can use the novel tech of gaskets.
Excellent! Batteries in modern phones are surprisingly definitely removable and replaceable. I’ve done it multiple times. However, the unfriendly barrier to entry is glue and clips that require careful prying with spugers. It’s quite clear manufacturers are happy blocking you getting in; plenty people just buy new phones when the battery gets too old.
spudger
Worst was when the batteries were glued to the screen so you could break the entire phone apart trying to change it yourself.
See Pebble Classic
Man I loved that phone. WebOS felt so ahead of its time. Unfortunate hit to repairability though
W move for the EU. Very glad they’re mandating stuff that should have been common place to begin with (ex. USB C on iPhones).
Phones are getting more expensive so people are holding on to them longer, so it’s a nice quality of life improvement to remove the barriers to battery replacement so less people have to go down to a phone repair store to get it changed. The more of a hassle battery replacement is seen the more likely people are to just upgrade and create e-waste.
The problem here is that in order for most people to be able to replace the battery themselves safely they need to be really idiot proof. We’d need to return to back covers with latches or big screws and batteries in cases and contacts. This shit is bulky, heavy and hardly waterproof.
New iPhones use lipo pouch with a ZIF connector straight to the motherboard with a “pull to release” adhesive strip hidden under a panel with a single use sticky seal and two small screws. There is no black magic in replacing the battery yourself and the solution is small, lightweight and waterproof. However most people wouldn’t even know which way to turn the screws to loosen them and probably wouldn’t be bothered by throwing the phone away and getting the one with a better camera AI and more emojis.
@riodoro1 @NightOwl I dunno, if you compare capacities of say, iPhone 14 Pro (12.38Wh) to Fairphone 4 (15.03Wh) and then the product dimensions of the two. There’s not a huge amount in it. Adding the 14 Pro Max (16.68Wh) for additional comparisons.
The Fairphone is 2.6mm thicker than the iPhones. (Yes the screen bezels are chonk too lol) But the fairphone is also making allowance to make every single component swappable, and has an IPS display (switching to OLED would save 1+ millimeter)
Yeah, I wish there was some advancements made when it came to trying to create swappable battery devices that retain water proofing. That area has just stalled since expensive disposable tech is more lucrative. Average person should just get a new one like you said as long as the process is still more difficult than changing a light bulb.
Yeah, I wish there was some advancements made when it came to trying to create swappable battery devices that retain water proofing.
If nothing else, regulations like the one described in here will do just that. So far the tech giants haven’t had any incentive to design sleek, waterproof devices with replaceable batteries. But you’ve gotta believe that if they’re required to have replaceable batteries, they’re not going to say “OK, back to chonky non-waterproof devices for us!”. They’re going to spend some of their R&D budgets to innovate ways that makes it more realistic to do all three.
The original Moto Defy got it right the first time with ip67 rated, removable battery, expandable storage, and a headphone jack. The next major improvement came with the xperia z(or z3) and they got waterproof charge ports and headphone jacks (no port plug required) but ditched the removable battery. Every other phone since seems to have stripped away some useful feature since. The new defy 2 is going to have satelite messaging but is huge and no removabpe battery or headphone jack iirc.
Nah, the og motorola defy had removable battery, ip67 rating, expandable storage, and a headphone jack. It was a tiny phone and it was brilliant.
@Know_not_Scotty_does @riodoro1 for some reason when I was 16 I really wanted the Defy Mini (XT320)
Though it wasn’t ever cheap enough for my allowance 🤣 probably for the best, my first android smartphone came a couple years later in the Vodafone Smart 4 Turbo. (snapdragon 410 version)
my first smartphone was an lg optimus s. that thing saw more toilet time than my butt. i lost track of how many times i dropped it in the toilet. it went in a lake a few times, also. it was a beast
[edit: deleted, echo chamber here. Android good, Apple bad. Moving on and blocking this community, can’t have a reasonable conversation, just like reddit I guess].
The difference is that most of the people isn’t expected to own a mechanical watch, but having a smartphone is pretty much expected. You cannot treat a basic commodity as if it were a luxury item.
[edit: deleted, echo chamber here]
People disagreeing with you isn’t what an echo chamber is.
How is this an Android vs Apple thing? Most of the major manufacturers are making devices with the battery sealed in; they’ll all have to innovate ways of making them removable.
Fingers crossed that this will be implemented well, im tired of having sleek electronics be irrelevant in 2 years when the silicon could go for 5 or six
The silicon could go on for decades if both the modem and processor were fully documented hardware that the community can access and support in the Linux kernel.
I can run a secure and current form of Linux on 30+ year old hardware if I want to, because the hardware documentation was expected by everyone at the time even if some end users were oblivious to what this meant. The whole reason google pushes Android is because they provide a base Linux kernel that hardware manufacturers can easily slip their proprietary junk into without requiring them to add the kind of open source code needed for mainline kernel support by the community. This is the mechanism that depreciates your device. It is totally artificial and an end user exploitation by design.
It’s usually not silicon on the PCB that fails, but the other electronic components (usually the capacitors) that fails first, and since they are surface mounted devices it’s really difficult to solder them by hand.
There are no electrolytics in phones, and most newer phones don’t even have tantalums. So long as there are no flexing stresses induced, which is nearly impossible with the way phones are constructed now, the all MLC capacitors construction has the potential to outlast any PC motherboard or laptop by a large margin.
The most critical issue is board connectors and moisture ingress. The USB-C connector or any other high pin density micro sized connector with a tiny pin pitch, and large electrical potential will fail from charge cycling and a resistance forming between pins. USB-C is particularly bad because reversing the connector doubles the number of pins on the board in a ridiculous amount of space. Just using a standard USB-C connector when ordering a prototype to be fabed at any common board house will double the price. The USB-C pin pitch is too tight for the most common fab process resolution.
The pin pitch only matters for high power application to prevent arcing, and that can also be resolved through the most modern USB-PD standard (See: USB-PD Extended Power Range, which can support up to 240w), and the electrical adjustment you have to make are all on the device side.
I don’t know about the resistance forming between the pins, for low cycle applications the cheapest gold flash plating would easily last 10K plug cycles, and accounting for corrosion from hand sweat/oil/hand lotion, many companies favor going for thicker hard gold or platinum plating nowadays. (Rhodium is the absolute best, but it’s just too expensive now to do at scale because they are used in catalytic converters for electric cars). USB-C lasts for many more cycles than the Micro-USB standards before it (You can read the 4 axis and wrenching test standards for mechanical testing on the USB spec) so I’m not sure what you are talking about here.
Lab tests rarely reflect the real world. I’ve seen several issues with Pixels that had an issue with PD failing due to moisture, corrosion, and a bridge developing at the connector.
Actually, no, the lab tests are standard with all products of all large companies, and they are usually conducted in extreme conditions, like 100% moisture at 80-90C oven for 48 hours and highly concentrated salt spray kind of extreme.
You bring up the example of Google Pixel, yeah, because it’s Google, they are software people who think they can just cheap out on hardware and save a couple of cents by making it up in software. Look at the Nexus 5X and 6P, both devices had an absurd amount of quality control issues compared to the other products made by the manufacturers, and the only factor in common between them is Google.
Things change with time. The Pixel is now the most secure phone available due to its hardware encryption key verification system. It is the only phone that can run a verifiably secure bootloader and ROM on top of the same untrusted hardware situation found in all modern proprietary devices. Running a Pixel on Graphene OS is the most free and honestly liberating experience that has been available since the invention of capacitive touch technology made these handheld computers popular. The hardware build is on par with any similar device of the same price point, made in the same facilities as most devices.
Nice, good to know! And you were awesome in the Suicide Squad series
Thank you! Go see “Barbie” in theater too!
Add to that requirements for longer software support. At least for security patches.
About bloody time! Devices these days are so far technically advanced, no need to upgrade every 2 years. I can hold onto a phone for easily 3-5 years. Especially with hot swap batteries!
