TL;DR
- The European Council has ended its adoption procedure for rules related to phones with replaceable batteries.
- By 2027, all phones released in the EU must have a battery the user can easily replace with no tools or expertise.
- The regulation intends to introduce a circular economy for batteries.
Hopefully this doesn’t go the way of charging cables and we have a different battery shape for every phone… Otherwise a 2040 regulation will be to standardize battery shape(s)
Battery shape (and connector) will sadly still be a thing for a long time, and usually it’s for engineering reasons, so I don’t really think it will be possible to standardize it
We really should just adopt the “best one” that becomes the standard. Only change it with significant advancement
There isn’t one “best one”. Always depends on requirements, which vary by device, underlying technology and use case.
It depends on the layout of the phone though. Size of camera module, placement of fingerprint sensors, other sensors/modules, heat sinks. You name it, really.
As such the batteries tend to be oddly shaped, and even spread out in different places to get as much battery in as possible.
The “best one” differs from phone to phone.
I‘ve had a couple dozen different phone batteries in my hand. It’s really not that complicated if you have to make it work. Sure, manufacturers will yell that they couldn’t make their 27 lenses at the edge of the case work. I say make them 16:9 in 5 different sizes and manufacturers can work around that, end of story. New sizes can be adopted if the benefit for everyone outweighs the cost.
God bless the EU.
Remember to vote to keep this up next June, my fellow Europeans
hungarian here, i’ll try my best but please keep on overpowering us when we inevitably fail
Vote in what exactly? I’m lost.
God I love Europe so much <3
The headline says it’s official. But then the article mentions -
Now, the only step left is for the European Council and Parliament to sign on the dotted line.
So it’s not official?? Can anyone explain please??
Proposed and introduced legislation, but not ratified?
The political analogy might be a bill that’s been passed into the parliament, but the governor-general/president hasn’t signed it yet.
Now let me replace the operating system, have unified drivers and I’ll be fine with it
I really don’t think they should be dictating how companies must design their products. My guess is Apple either pulls out of Europe , or has a phone sold only there that’s much thicker and bulky and ugly. That being said I can’t see them making that phone as goes against the company DNA. We’ll see.
E-waste and Li-ion battery component shortages are gradually becoming a global problem. So ofcourse Governments will have to intervene at some point.
This law exists to force manufacturers to create a circular economy for batteries. A “circular economy” refers to a manufacturing model in which the resources put into it are recycled or reused as much as possible.
Not sure I’m on board with this one. Sure, swappable batteries are cool, but that’ s not something I really need, and the inherent bulk of battery enclosures isn’t either. And battery swap isnt that hard, actually, the chinese guys have figured this out, they can make any kind of battery you want, and a worker at a local store can learn to perform the swap with just a few hours of training.
What I’d like instead is something about 18650’s, they are everywhere but you cant buy them officially because battery manufacturers only sell them to other manufacturers to pass liability onto them, but they just wrap them in plastic and then people handle them willy-nilly. Maybe dd battery safety to school curicculum and make 18650 the new AA?
